Cohasset - Saturday June 4

[cfolster]

What an annoyingly interesting day . . .

All week, the forecast was dropping hints of patchy fog.  Each day I checked, the time before which there would be fog got later and later, until on the day of the trip it said 'Patchy fog before 11am'.  So I expected there to be some mild fog in the area that would hopefully soon burn off.

When I arrived at the launch, I could clearly see the ocean beyond the harbor was blanketed in fog.  But I reasoned that it was early and it would go away by launch.  That was not to be the case - it looked no different when our 11am launch time arrived.

The group still wanted to attempt to paddle out to Minot Light even with the fog and a couple people suggested handrailing along the rocks/islands to get out there.  When we reached the last point of land on the east side of the harbor, I took a heading to Gull Island and off we went into the fog. After a short paddle we reached what I thought was Gull Island and I took another heading to East Shag and off we went.  We did not get very far when an island appeared in the fog to our right that should not have been there.  I called for everyone to stop and asked for assistance in determining where we were.  I realized my mistake in not timing the leg to Gull Island, and surmised that the newly appearing island was Gull and we were at Sheppard Ledges.  Bill Voss then pulls out a GPS and we verify our true location, and my new guess was correct (I'm pretty sure).  Folks were ready to keep paddling to the lighthouse, but I told them I was uncomfortable relying on my navigation even with the GPS to a tiny point 2 miles off shore.

So we made a decision to head south along the shore towards Scituate.  There wasn't much to see other than the nearby rocks, in which Dave Carroll had some fun.  There was small, but active clapotis, which made the paddle interesting.  Eventually, we came upon a sandy beach that looked suitable for lunch.

Then it was time to head off into the fog again to make our way over to Little Harbor to play in the current.  As we were just about there, the fog lifted somewhat from the land and there was a delightful rainbow over Cohasset.  We arrived at Little Harbor a little later than I had planned and the current was already running pretty good.  Mike and I took a couple passes at it, but never did much more than go through the messy wave train behind the front wave.  Dave Carroll was right in there and managed to get up on it a few times!  Another person showed up (John Martinsen) and was quite good at getting up on the wave.  After a while, though it got too big for anyone and we played with ferrying across the messiness, hanging out in the eddy, and just generally goofing off and talking. 

Around 3:30 or so, we called it a day and headed back to the launch.  We arrived just in time to see the beginning of a wedding at the function hall.  There's a motley crew of kayakers in the background of all of their photos!

So it was a good day and we made the best of it and someday we'll go back to paddle out to Minot and conquer the currents at Little Harbor. 

P.S.  Minot Light never appeared.  Even as we headed in around 4pm, it was still lost in the fog.

P.P.S.  If anyone took pictures of our little group and would like to share, feel free to post them.