Fort Stark, 6/4/24

[Jim Snyder]

This was the first time back for me to Fort Stark after the parking lot improvement. Their website says they're not open until 10 but several of us arrived around 9:30 and the gate was open. The new lot is very nice, with access both to Little Harbor and the ocean. We were myself, Bill Voss, Dan Carr, Sandy Blanchard, Prudence Baxter, Jody Harris and Bill Doucet.

Conditions were very mild and the weather couldn't have been nicer, with a light sea breeze keeping us comfortable despite being dressed for sub 60 water. We first went to Wood Island to see what progress had been made on repairing the winter storm damage. Sam Reid, president of Wood Island Life Saving Station Association (https://woodislandlifesaving.org/) was on the island and met us on the beach. We talked about storm damage and plans for repairs and he walked us through the progress on the building restoration.

We decided to eat lunch before heading across to the Gerrish coast. A ways up the coast we decided to split into two pods, one wanting to cover distance, maybe up to Brave Boat Harbor, and the other looking for more poking around and enjoying the coast. Hopefully someone from the Brave Boat pod will chime in to complete the report.

[prudenceb]

The Braveboat crew (Dan, Bill D, Sandra and I) had a delightful paddle up the coast.  It was particularly fun to find a fairly lively tide race fully developed across most of the mouth into Braveboat.  I had never seen one there before.  We just had hit a good combo of outgoing tide and incoming wind.  On the way back, conditions became a bit more bouncy.   Fun!  We landed on the Piscataqua side of Ft Stark, thinking it would be a shorter carry.  It actually wasn't and next time I'd go around for the less rocky/seaweedy beach landing on the Little Harbor side.  A really nice day! Thanks to all!