Suz Posted January 4, 2009 Share Posted January 4, 2009 As I sit home recovering from a cold, I read over the Merrimac River trip report. Sounds like you all had god fun. I remember another cold winter day there where I launched alone from the parking lot in Salisbury near the breakwater - as close to the mouth as I could get. Then paddled out against the current. I knew that I would have to fight to get back up the mouth and my plan was that if the current was too strong, I would land on the ocean side near the breakwater and just carry my boat up. Much easier than launching at the boat launch as it allows for a back up plan for the return. Anyhoo, it was sooo cold that day that the ice froze on my chest and boat as I headed north, coming back, the ice froze on my back - really cold day. I got my courage up and started to round the breakwater and paddled really hard and as close to the breakwater as I could although now I know, there is barely any eddy there at all and better to drop over to the Newburyport side and paddle up and then cross back over to the Salisbury side further up stream. SO I am paddling really hard and then looked a bit up stream and lo and behold, I see giant car sized ice bergs coming fast at me - first one hit with a terrible sound. So I quickly changed my mind and started paddling backwards and waited for a clearing to spin around and high tail it out of there and used my backup plan of landing on the beach. BUT this brings me to the point of the story - you might be wondering if I actually had a point Merrimac is a tricky place and even those who go there regularly find it can surprise. One source that I use for tides and current is JTides - http://www.arachnoid.com/JTides/ you do have to down load the program and it might be a bit of a fiddle to find stations but the Merrimac is there as is Popham. For the day that you guys went out, it predicted max ebb to be about 4 pm. (The coordinates for the current station are: lat 42 48.79'N lng 70 52.09' Does anyone know how to pinpoint those lat/long using google?) Things to consider when deciding if the conditions are right to paddle there - whether you are looking for conditions or looking to avoid conditions - know the tide and know the current know the weather and the current wind and predicted wind - anticipate what it will do if/when changes occur know that when there are minus tides (look ahead to Jan 10 - 16) against any incoming swell, it will be big at the mouth. The mouth of the Merrimac is a great place to play and the closest to a tide race that we have here. It is a dangerous place but plan your launch time/location carefully and it will help. Winter might not be the best time to push your limits there. Fall is the best time, the summer boat traffic has died down and the water is warmer. Sure that others have more info to add. Suz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spuglisi Posted January 4, 2009 Share Posted January 4, 2009 As I sit home recovering from a cold, I read over the Merrimac River trip report. Sounds like you all had god fun. I remember another cold winter day there where I launched alone from the parking lot in Salisbury near the breakwater - as close to the mouth as I could get. Then paddled out against the current. I knew that I would have to fight to get back up the mouth and my plan was that if the current was too strong, I would land on the ocean side near the breakwater and just carry my boat up. Much easier than launching at the boat launch as it allows for a back up plan for the return. Anyhoo, it was sooo cold that day that the ice froze on my chest and boat as I headed north, coming back, the ice froze on my back - really cold day. I got my courage up and started to round the breakwater and paddled really hard and as close to the breakwater as I could although now I know, there is barely any eddy there at all and better to drop over to the Newburyport side and paddle up and then cross back over to the Salisbury side further up stream. SO I am paddling really hard and then looked a bit up stream and lo and behold, I see giant car sized ice bergs coming fast at me - first one hit with a terrible sound. So I quickly changed my mind and started paddling backwards and waited for a clearing to spin around and high tail it out of there and used my backup plan of landing on the beach. BUT this brings me to the point of the story - you might be wondering if I actually had a point Merrimac is a tricky place and even those who go there regularly find it can surprise. One source that I use for tides and current is JTides - http://www.arachnoid.com/JTides/ you do have to down load the program and it might be a bit of a fiddle to find stations but the Merrimac is there as is Popham. For the day that you guys went out, it predicted max ebb to be about 4 pm. (The coordinates for the current station are: lat 42 48.79'N lng 70 52.09' Does anyone know how to pinpoint those lat/long using google?) Things to consider when deciding if the conditions are right to paddle there - whether you are looking for conditions or looking to avoid conditions - know the tide and know the current know the weather and the current wind and predicted wind - anticipate what it will do if/when changes occur know that when there are minus tides (look ahead to Jan 10 - 16) against any incoming swell, it will be big at the mouth. The mouth of the Merrimac is a great place to play and the closest to a tide race that we have here. It is a dangerous place but plan your launch time/location carefully and it will help. Winter might not be the best time to push your limits there. Fall is the best time, the summer boat traffic has died down and the water is warmer. Sure that others have more info to add. Suz I've lived in the area long enough and paddled on the Merrimack often enough (I've still never been through the mouth) to treat the river with a great deal of respect in any season. Thanks for adding some additional food for thought. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnHuth Posted January 4, 2009 Share Posted January 4, 2009 There should be a "fly-to" option on Google earth that allows you to get to the coordinates. In any case, the location of the tide station (using your coord's) appears to be just east of the crossing of I-95. (every time I drive over that bridge, I always check out the current action) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnHuth Posted January 4, 2009 Share Posted January 4, 2009 There should be a "fly-to" option on Google earth that allows you to get to the coordinates. In any case, the location of the tide station (using your coord's) appears to be a mile or so east of the I-95 bridge (every time I drive over that bridge, I always check out the current action) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deb Millar Posted January 4, 2009 Share Posted January 4, 2009 Another source for tide and current predictions is: http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/currents08/tab2ac2.html#8 If you really are into learning how currents work and figuring things out on your own, Reeds is an invaluable source book and also explains how to do the calculations. Note, too, that there is a difference between the times of tide/current from the Mouth of the Merrimac and Newburyport. Deb M Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bazzert Posted January 4, 2009 Share Posted January 4, 2009 (The coordinates for the current station are: lat 42 48.79'N lng 70 52.09' Does anyone know how to pinpoint those lat/long using google?) Hi Suz: If you punch "42 48.79N 70 52.09W" into Google Earth it should work. Here's a screenshot. Looks like downtown Newburyport. Barry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spuglisi Posted January 4, 2009 Share Posted January 4, 2009 Another source for tide and current predictions is: http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/currents08/tab2ac2.html#8 If you really are into learning how currents work and figuring things out on your own, Reeds is an invaluable source book and also explains how to do the calculations. Note, too, that there is a difference between the times of tide/current from the Mouth of the Merrimac and Newburyport. Deb M The high tide in newburyport that day was predicted to be about a 1/2 hour later than at the mouth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spuglisi Posted January 4, 2009 Share Posted January 4, 2009 Hi Suz: If you punch "42 48.79N 70 52.09W" into Google Earth it should work. Here's a screenshot. Looks like downtown Newburyport. Barry. That spot is just downstream of the route 1 bridge and looks to be very near the coast guard station Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Suz Posted January 4, 2009 Author Share Posted January 4, 2009 That spot is just downstream of the route 1 bridge and looks to be very near the coast guard station Ah ha... google earth! I hadn't downloaded it to my mac so couldn't figure out why it didn't work to put in the coordinates. Anyway - that spot is quite far from the place where the current feels the strongest. Thanks, Suz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spider Posted January 5, 2009 Share Posted January 5, 2009 I'm not quite getting it...? I also downloaded Google Earth (free version), but when I type in the numbers (waypoint) I get nothing just a message saying ..."your search returned no results".... I did go to the GPS section for typing in waypoints and it said that Google Earth Plus, Google Earth Pro ($400), Google Earth EC, would do it but not the freee version. So I'm pretty confused. I recently purchased a SPOT device which uses Google Maps to show all it's way points, no problem super easy. So I was surprised that Google Maps was not the place to go to to enter waypoints. Pretty feisty stuff dodging ice floes in the mouth of the Merrimac, haven't worked up to that yet, but was scoping out landing options by the breakwater the other day. There were gale warning in effect and I wanted to compare the river with the open water, check wind direction, etc. etc (Mostly working up to doing the Plum Island circumnavagation but not this winter, probably in the spring) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NPSheehan Posted January 5, 2009 Share Posted January 5, 2009 Cool Stuff! For those of you Gadget lovers like me who like to compare technologies take a look at this Tide Software for the iPhone. I've compared it against NOAA and Garmin GPS Nautical Stations and it's accurate. It shows 3 tide stations in the Merrimac and makes a nice backup if you haven't done your research prior and it's always on-hand. It also shows max flood & ebb with rate of feet/hr. Cost is 99 cents and gets 4 1/2 out of 5 stars from reviewers Tide Graph for iPhone Neil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spider Posted January 5, 2009 Share Posted January 5, 2009 Google Earth...Excellent ! Worked on it in the wee hrs this morning to no avail but finally... "Dawn broke over Marblehead" (is that still an expression? haven't heard it in years) As it was all I needed to do wastoseparate the numbers correctly. so no more confusion. now for the "Dawn broke over" such an such a place is a feature of google Earth....cool... should have some fun with that. ( and in real life it might come handy....something I learned the hard way when trying to return to a campsite at sunset once upon a time not so long ago...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdkilroy Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 There is also an accurate program that I use on my palm for quick reference called X-Tide. Provides other basic celestial phenomena as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EEL Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 There is also an accurate program that I use on my palm for quick reference called X-Tide. Excellent program with many locations available. The Palm version I am aware of is called Tide-Tool and you need to use the Beta version for the new DST dates. http://www.toolworks.com/bilofsky/tidetool/ Not sure how good the port of X-Tide to Windows is, but it is a great, industrial strength tool for tides and currents. http://www.flaterco.com/xtide/ If you like to have a book in hand, my favorite is Tide-Log which to me is handier and more useful than say Reed's, etc. as it provides a daily graphical representation of tides along with astronomical info. http://www.tidelog.com Ed Lawson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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