lovell's island Sep 15-16

[Guest guest]

Eight of us met at City Point, Saturday morning to load our boats and head off to Lovell's Island for an overnight camping trip and a few days of paddling in Boston Harbor. The outbound route took us past Spectacle Island under the Long Island bridge and up the inside of Long Island. Conditions were calm, boat traffic minimal, with an impressive spinnaker show between Long and George's.

The channel between George's and Lovell's Islands sees a lot of boat traffic, especially the ferries which leave huge wakes. Sometimes two ferries go through in opposite directions making for lively water!

After setting up camp, we were joined by Adam, who was slightly put out that we weren't listening for him on the VHF. (I had been hailing him for about an hour but gave up and turned off the radio). So the 9 of us set out towards Great Brewster where we split up into two groups. Five of us headed out to the Graves; the other four hung around the Brewsters.

The trip out to the Graves was fabulous. It was my first time in this part of the Harbor and I was really impressed. Leaving the protective arms of Calf Island and Middle Brewster, we headed out into 3-4 ft. rollers. Adam and Tom often disappeared in front of me, but we made steady progress out past the Roaring Bulls, which at low tide were generating a mini-pipeline.

Once out at the Graves we executed a low tide rock landing, Adam's specialty. There were a few lost footings (and wet rear ends) but we all landed safely and managed not to wipe out scrambling over the rocks.

We headed back between Outer and Middle Brewster toward Boston Light. Here, the seas were much less organized and we picked our way through a choppy beam sea. At Boston Light, Adam gave me an assignment: find a safe way over the shoal. It was a bit intimidating because the waves were kicking up a foot high rooster tail, which whipped along the shoal. So I picked a spot and sent Tom through first (he's such a good guinea pig). After an uneventful crossing, we arrived back at camp in the fading light.

A spontaneous potluck occurred at dinner, with everyone sharing their culinary delights. Unfortunately, fish was not one of those delights as Adam and Art did not deliver. Peter even had the "Caution Men Cooking" yellow barrier tape ready, just in case. One of the stoves blew up (after serving its owner well for many, many years) and had to be doused before it caught the picnic table on fire. We were also visited at dusk by the vorpal bunnies (Peter called them atomic rabbits), which populate the island.

After a roaring bonfire (white gas is good) we headed to bed for a good night's sleep. This was the first weekend after the highjackings, so it was more of a relief than annoyance to hear the jets overhead all night long.

We made breakfast and broke camp. Adam and Art headed out to fish in earnest (still no luck). After a fishless lunch, we headed back from Great Brewster around the outer edge of Lovell's to Nix's Mate - the infamous former island, now pile of rocks, where the murderous mate of Captain Nix was hanged. There was an impressive washing machine effect around the rocks and we rode them out to begin the first of many hairy channel crossings - unbelievable boat traffic whipped up 2-3 ft waves in places - welcome to Sunday afternoon on Boston Harbor. The craziest channel crossing was from Spectacle over to City Point, which we did in two legs. It was absolutely the scariest crossing I've ever done, only seconded by last weekend's blind crossing in Maine fog.

Arriving back at City Point, we all came down from the adrenaline rush, carried the boats from the low tide line up to the grass where we attracted the attention of passersby. Post-paddle-pigout was skipped by most, but consisted of great Thai food in Arlington.

Lovell's is a great place to camp - the more off-season the better!