Wed Lunch Paddle 7/28/21: Tuck Point to Misery Islands

[Joseph Berkovitz]

People: Jody Harris, Mike Habich, Ben Rechel, Dana Sigall, Joe Berkovitz, Sue Hriciga, Robert Levine, Barbara Ryan

Today's excellent paddle began from Tuck Point, Beverly MA which is a friendly and free place to launch near downtown Beverly. We started with a beach discussion on where we were, where we might be going, where the wind was blowing (from the north), where the current was flowing (to the east), and the meaning of life. No conclusions were reached on that last topic, but we did decide to head east to the Misery Islands, with the expectation that we would get some lee from Cape Ann to our north and the potential for a nice tailwind on the way back as the wind was expected to veer to the east. At this point it had just stopped drizzling and was cloudy but even so, some blue patches could be seen.

So it was onwards to the pleasant and poorly-named Misery Islands. (Originally they were called "Moulton's Misery", Moulton being the name of their owner at the time. Somehow he managed to sell them off though.) We arrived at the ruins of the 1900s-era country club/casino, which once may have looked like this:

(The text above is pretty vintage stuff too. "Sons of Fair Harvard" indeed! The Daughters of Fair Radcliffe were apparently not invited either. And could there really have been 8000 of these male scions of privilege cavorting around the island? A bit of research shows that the Class of 1890 consisted of about 350 "sons".)

Anyway, one of those once-impressive bungalows once kitted out for the Harvard boys now looks like this:

Times change, and it was now time for lunch, without which a WLP is no more than... a WP. The sky was blue now, with 70 F air and water. Pretty hard to beat!

The magnificent view from the top of Little Misery was taken in by those brave or foolhardy enough to traipse around the extensive plantations of poison ivy:

Then it was a turn around the rocks on the outside of Little Miz, and back along the Beverly shore to our put-in with many opportunities to fool around.

On the way back we had a pretty nice tailwind plus the flood current. You can see some of the effects of wind and current on my GPS track from today (it includes some other
"commuting to work" segments on my way to and from the WLP). The speedup in the Beverly channel at the end is pretty impressive:

https://www.gaiagps.com/datasummary/track/0e58bf038cbedea2327c9f6f516918eb/?layer=gaianoaarnc

We expect to do something this fun again... next Wednesday! If not sooner.

[Thanks Ben for the pictures. Others please post your own pics to this thread if you have any!]

Edited July 29, 2021 by Joseph Berkovitz

[Jody Harris]

[rylevine]

Great paddle everyone. Thanks for attending.

Joe, 

Thanks for the historical note on Misery. I found this on the Trustees website. Even during the Great Depression, people realized the value of the islands as something other than an industrial site. Yet, it took until 1997 to seal the deal. 

In 1935, the Coastal Oils Terminal Company of Beverly petitioned the Salem City Council for a permit to build storage tanks on the Island to hold 12 million gallons of oil. The Council rejected the proposal following intense public outcry.

Compelled to protect the Island from this sort of commercial development, communities from Marblehead to Manchester-by-the-Sea quickly formed the North Shore Association and raised money to buy all but 15 privately-owned acres on Great Misery Island. By the end of 1935, the Association had deeded the land to The Trustees of Reservations for permanent protection. Additional land was acquired through gift and purchase in 1938, 1940, 1950, 1955, 1983, and 1988. In 1988, The Trustees thwarted an effort to site a sewage treatment plant on Great Misery Island and eventually purchased the last three acres on the Island in 1997.

The low-tide ship ribs are from 1923, nearly a hundred years ago. 

On September 2, 1923 a steamship named the ‘City of Rockland’ ran aground on a reef at Dix’s Island in the Kennebec River. The ship was later taken to Salem for salvage and burned in between Little Misery and Great Misery Island in October of 1924. The ribs of the ship are still visible at low tide.

[BLConaway]

So happy to see this TR--this is a favorite paddle of mine. Last year parking near Tuck Point was really tough. I take it they are allowing on-street parking down there again?

Edited July 30, 2021 by BLConaway