Joseph Berkovitz

Day 3: Hike Long Eddy Point / Ashburton Head

This day featured a strong low passing to our north, with S winds building throughout the day over 20 kt ending in heavy rain showers and ultimately a cold front passage early the next morning. We would not be paddling. However, Grand Manan is a big hiking destination and we determined to check out some trails. Not surprisingly, they were great.

In the southwest we awoke to dense fog. We began with a brief detour to nearby Seal Cove to scout out potential launching spots nearer to Southwest Head, and found a very nice beach launch among some antique-looking herring smokehouses that now house more recent businesses. We then drove north from our foggy campground to Long Eddy Point on the extreme north of the island. As we’d been told might be the case, the northwest of the island was free of fog even while other areas were still socked in.

As we stood on the observation deck of Long Eddy Light, looking out at what can only be described as a long eddy, a strange black disc came flying into view in front of us, maybe 100 feet offshore, spinning in the air. It looked to be 3 or 4 feet in diameter. It slowly descended and landed on the water, continuing to spin on edge and skim the surface of the ocean, quickly disappearing from view. There appeared to be two reflective spots on it, going around and around. A couple of bicyclists turned up next to us, asking if we had also seen the strange object—so it wasn’t some strange folie à deux. Whatever it was, it seemed to be passively blown by the wind. Not a flying saucer. But darn close to one. Obviously artificial. And a mystery. Probably constructed by humans. But we can’t prove that. It’s no wonder that The X Files was largely filmed in Canada.

Our hike retraced a little bit of our previous day’s trip but this time journeying on land along the heights of the cliffs, from Long Eddy Lighthouse just past Ashburton Head to the start of Whale Cove. This trail is part of a longer trail system called the Lighthouse Trail. Basically, trails go around almost the entire island uninterrupted. In many places they pass through private land, but there doesn’t appear to be any conflict about that: for the established trails, arrangements have been worked out or the landowners have in some cases even placed benches to sit on. I don’t think we ever saw a “PRIVATE KEEP OUT” type of sign. (You can find out more about hiking on Grand Manan from the Hiking NB website.)

The views from the cliff tops were spectacular to say the least. Wildflowers abounded. The day was hot and sunny, but there was a stiff breeze from the building storm system. We could see much more of what the currents were doing from up there on the cliffs where numerous trail lookouts afforded panoramic views out over the water as fog trailed from the other side of the island, partly obscuring the ferry:

We ended our hike at an overlook that gave us an oblique view of the Seven Days Work. The trail continued, but it had been a rough and strenuous hike to that point with a lot of steep ups and downs. I was grateful for the single hiking pole I carried with me (the other one was supporting our camp tarp). We both decided to turn around at that point and work our way back to the lighthouse, stopping for lunch, with a total of maybe 3 hours or so on the trail. We found some nice wild strawberries along the way:

Our second stop that day—and a much shorter one—was at the Swallow Tail, a lighthouse on a dramatic outcrop on the southern tip of North Head. For a donation it is possible to enter the lighthouse and climb up to the lantern room at the top, which we did. Here we could look down the chain of islands that lie east, offshore of the settled area of Grand Manan that runs from North Head down through Castalia and Grand Harbour.

Our final stop, after a brief rest at the campsite, was at Southwest Head. By now the warm front was delivering steady pulses of heavy rain. I ran outside to capture a picture from near the lighthouse of the beach we had stopped on, on the first day. There are trails here too along the cliffs, but not for us this time. The rest of the day was devoted to staying warm and dry under our tarp and, ultimately, in our tents.

Day 2 Paddle (Sun 6/26/22): Dark Harbor / Hole in the Wall

Distance: 15 nm
Time: 7h
Tides (Seal Cove): HW 10:52am 15.6’; LW 4:59pm 4.0’
Currents (GM Channel): 7:55am 1.8 kt; 11:17am SBE; 2:10pm 1.5 kt; 4:51pm SBF
Weather: Sunny, 60s F air, high 40s F water, light wind building to 10 kt SW (again)
Sea state: < 1 foot
 

Our second trip was dedicated to exploring the northern section of the island, which features dramatic rockscapes on both sides, east and west. Dark Harbour on the western side is the single point on that coast which is reachable by road. And below North Head on the eastern side, the island topography becomes mostly flat. This decided the extent of this trip.

We already knew that Dark Harbour featured a large saltwater lagoon (known as Dark Harbour Pond) with a seawall on its outside and a single narrow channel communicating with the ocean on the north side. We wondered how we would make it out to open water, recognizing that the tides were exactly wrong: we would be starting around max flood, with water rushing into the lagoon. However we also knew that Dark Harbour is a port for boats collecting dulse seaweed (one of the economic mainstays of the island) and that they had some way or other of getting the boats in and out over the seawall, said to involve winches(!). We didn’t know exactly what that technique would look like for kayaks. We also didn’t know the parking situation, although a poster advertising an upcoming rock concert at Dark Harbor implied it must have some places to put a number of cars.

Dark Harbour has a reputation as a sort of rough place where kids go to escape the “hustle and bustle” of the rest of the island—a odd-sounding need when you first hear it, but it makes sense once you spend time on the island. It’s a local party spot, a place where it feels OK to break some rules; the rest of the island feels very orderly by comparison. It is nicknamed “The City”, which is a sort of in-joke: it’s anything but urban.

The road there goes over the island through high wooded plateaus and then abruptly drops down through a dramatic gorge to a tiny seawall-enclosed harbor. Small camp-like houses are jammed up against each other on the shore with cliffs right behind them. Dulse boats are carefully spaced around the pond on the shore and perched on the seawall. In places the high water line covers the rough road encircling the lagoon rendering it impassable. It is a strange, improbable, atmospheric place—and it was indeed quite dark in the morning shadows, with bright water just offshore.

When we arrived we scouted the shore on foot. The narrow channel looked quite intimidating with a strong inflow of what looked like 4+ knots coming over a gravel bar.

We hoped the level would come up and the current would drop while we prepared to launch. At the same time we observed flattened road-like grooves or gullies cut into the seawall with channels leading up to them through the ledges at the edge of the lagoon. These were the hauling pathways for the dulse boats.

Returning to a small pier at the terminus of the road into the harbor, we talked to a young man working on a provincial salmon restoration project. He said it would be fine to park right on the pier today and that the tide would “be very unlikely” to come up over the parking lot. OK… so the tide sometimes covers the pier entirely… good stuff to know! The next local fisherman to turn up at the pier likewise reassured us. “These here are horrible tides right now. These dead tides aren’t going to give you any problems!” Further noted: neap tides were described as “horrible”. What’s the local adjective for a spring tide? We’ll have to come back to find out. In the meantime, we unloaded the boats and Bob parked a little ways up the hill from the pier. In any event, the later high water approached neither pier nor car.

We had to try going up the channel to get out of the lagoon although it seemed a bit hopeless. It was just about possible in terms of paddle power, but the bigger challenge was to avoid banging the hell out of our paddles trying to progress up the wafer-thin shallow eddy (it barely deserved to be called that) along the edge of the inlet. View of the inlet from the inside:

In the end it was recognized that the dulse-boat haulout was the easier way to go… and so it went.

On the ocean side, crystal calm conditions awaited us. We stayed well offshore to catch the flood current and get a fast ride up to Long Eddy Point at the northern tip of the island, with the expectation that there would be ample eddies to work with on the northeastern side. In fact, we found ourselves drifting in and out of a complex eddy line even well offshore. We’d be paddling in glassy water and suddenly a little rotating vortex would appear in front of us. As we’ve found before on the Bold Coast, the current doesn’t always approach the shore even when there are no obvious obstructions.

Going around Long Eddy Light, we hugged the coast and entered a magical realm of more huge cliffs, pinnacles and hollows. Out of even the modest SW wind, with no swell, we explored channels running between all of these features as guillemots flitted in and out of hollows in the rocks above us. We paddled past many deserted and inaccessible pocket beaches in the stretch from “The Bishop” to Ashburton Head, a place of many northeaster-driven shipwrecks.

Finally, rounding Ashburton Head and running against a countercurrent through a narrow slot, we reached Whale Cove with enormous views of the Seven Days Work cliffs—so named because it took the earth’s creator a whole extra day to create the cliffs with their 7 rock strata. (Neither Bob nor I came up with 7 when we counted, but the creator surely has poetic license alongside their other powers.)

Our final outward leg of our trip took us to an iconic rock feature of Grand Manan: the Hole In the Wall. Invisible while on an approach to it, it is very prominent when viewed from the side: an arch some 20 feet high in a rock wall sticking straight out from the shore. Since the water sadly did not reach up to the bottom of the arch on this occasion, we resolved to climb out of our boats and stand inside the archway for respective photo ops. Maybe it can be traversed in a kayak on a spring tide.

Shades of American Gothic, eh?

Coming back we found a lunch stop at a pocket beach with overhanging rock spires behind it.

Eventually we made our way back around for a long trip along the cliffs, temporarily assisted by the ebb just north of Long Eddy Point, staying closer to shore this time. The assistance changed to modest resistance from a countercurrent in the eddy behind the point. We passed Indian Cove and Money Cove, two places where there are gaps in the cliffs with berms of large cobbles that allow one to land and potentially find refuge from the higher tides. There are shacks in both spots, many derelict. Conceivably camping could be possible here (in Dark Harbour, it would be unpleasant if at all possible). The property ownership situation was unknown to us and would need to be researched.

Reaching Dark Harbour, the inlet was now an outlet, even shallower and running strongly against us. After Bob made a sustained attempt to walk the shore of the channel back into the harbor (without his boat), we decided it was just too much to try to go in that way, towing the boats. The cobbles were very large and unstable to walk on. It was dulse-boat haulout time again. Finally the carrying ordeal was over and we landed in the harbor, back next to the pier. It had become quite windy at last, as promised, and the cool breeze kept the heat and the deer flies at bay as we unloaded the boats. Kids were riding dirt bikes up and down the hill leading to the harbor. A man passed us slowly in his pickup truck as his dog barked loudly; without his making eye contact we heard him say to no one in particular, “It’s only a dog… it’s only a dog…” We silently agreed and continued unpacking. Day two drew to a close.

Day 1 Paddle (Sat 6/25/22): Anchorage / Hay Point

Distance: 17.9 nm
Time: 6h 45m
Tides (Seal Cove): HW 10:01am 15.7’; LW 4:12pm 3.76’
Currents (GM Channel): 7:01am 1.7 kt; 10:23am SBE; 1:18pm 1.5 kt; 3:59pm SBF
Weather: Sunny, 60s F air, high 40s F water, light wind building to 10 kt SW
Sea state: 2-3 feet @ 10 sec diminishing through the day

We arrived bright and early at the pristine, mile-long sand beach that makes up a large part of the park where we were camping. (Every morning of our trip I went for a long quiet walk on this beach with my coffee—a wonderful benefit of this location.) Our first goal for the day was to paddle from the campground to Southwest Head along Grand Manan’s southern coast. The flood would be running against us until we rounded the headland so we would hug the coast and look for back eddies. We hoped to reach Southwest Head around slack, with high water allowing free exploration near the cliffs and around outcrops, perhaps heading north a bit if conditions allowed. From there we planned to turn around as the ebb began to build in Grand Manan Channel, then we’d come back around the headland, cross the channel and explore the Wood Island area after midday before returning to the campground at Anchorage. We thought the opposing ebb might remain mild in the shallow area of Long Pond Bay to the east of Wood and Outer Wood.

Our 8:30 launch on the Anchorage campground beach was uneventful, a matter of timing the modest dumping waves arriving on the shallow sandy beach. It was really pleasant to drive only 2 minutes from the tent site to our put-in. Thankfully the dense fog that had descended during the night had left in the early morning; a local woman on the ferry had told us that the southwest of the island is a place where fog can stick around, while other parts can have bright sun at the same time.

At Red Point right near the campground, we had an opportunity to view a geological boundary that cuts across the entire island roughly o a north-south orientation, emerging at two points, of which this was the southern one:

After Red Point we continued up into Seal Cove. Sure enough, a back eddy helped us progress through this area as some helpful seaweed hanging off of a nav buoy demonstrated:

Seal Cove appeared to be one of the most densely populated areas anywhere on Grand Manan, with many houses and marine businesses as well as antique herring smokehouses. A large marine farm lay just offshore from the town. Soon enough the human population seemed to fade away, as we progressed westwards towards Deep Cove and Southwest Head. The cliffs became larger and the character changed from typical rock faces to striking columnar crystals of basalt. We reached the first of a series of rock formations known as the Flock(s) of Sheep: these are collections of round, light-colored glacial erratic boulders that sit on top of dark basalt pillars:

The visual contrast between the two kinds of rocks is very striking. As we continued, one or another of these “flocks of rocks” would come into view from time to time. They do look sort of like grazing sheep if you are far enough away… and if you pretend that sheep like to eat rocks…

As we got nearer and nearer to Southwest Head, the swells became larger and an element of spooky unpredictability crept in. Larger sets would suddenly arrive, rearing up in places we did not expect, presumably over hidden shoals. We kept our eye on what was coming from outside and pressed on, reading the water ahead of us carefully.

We rounded Southwest Head around 10:30, right as the flood ended, to the astonishing view of 150-foot sheer basalt cliffs facing Grand Manan Channel with mist floating around their base:

Maine’s Bold Coast was clearly visible across the strait and we could make out West Quoddy Light and the Quoddy Narrows in the far distance. While the point of the headland attracted considerable wave energy, as soon as we rounded the point and started up the west side the swells fell off rapidly. We landed below Southwest Head Light in a small pocket beach surrounded by rock walls on all sides:

Birds wheeled overhead. A few lighthouse visitors looked down from far above on the clifftops. The scene reminded me much more of Northern California more than the Northeast. The scale of the landscape here is simply huge.

While on the beach for a quick snack and leg stretch, we encountered the remains of an ATV that looked as though it had plunged to the beach from above, hopefully with no one on it. There is a rowdy ATV and dirtbike scene on the island and there have been more than a few accidents over the years. A picture I took from the cliff top two days later shows the pieces of ATV widely separated, so presumably this had been recent.

The beach was well protected from the swells by rock buttresses. Coming off the beach I snagged my skeg on some rocks and put the slider out of commission, but my trusty roll of Velcro tape (acquired thanks to WFA training) was able to bind the skeg up quickly so I could keep paddling. A good piece of kit, that Velcro.

The ebb had not begun yet so we continued up to Hay Point to take in a multi-mile view north along the cliffs, as far as Big Head and Pandora Head. This side of the island is profoundly empty. No roads access it, only hiking trails. It is a serene and austere place. There were a few rock play opportunities here but we were hesitant to do anything resulting in a damaged boat in an area with no takeouts and questionable radio reception. 

We turned back at Hay and returned around Southwest Head. Bob darted out to catch the ebb current while I stayed a bit further inside to catch more of a view. Bob was winning big-time on the speed front, and my advantage on the distance front was in the end not significant. We reconvened at the headland and decided to paddle from the buoy at Black Rock across to Wood and Outer Wood Islands for our lunch stop, a 1 nm crossing. We hoped the ebb would not drift us further away from Grand Manan, as the arrow on the map suggested it might. As we crossed, we didn’t detect any set to the left or to the right. But as we discovered when we reached the first lobster buoy (in what were to be many current-related surprises), we were actually paddling directly against a modest ebb current. Maybe we were far enough outside of Wood Island that we were encountering some part of the ebb that comes past it heading west. One just has to learn what the currents actually do here; often it’s not what one would expect.

Crossing to the narrow, shallow spot between the low islands of Wood and Outer Wood, we saw a couple of lunch beach candidates, but first we had to negotiate a rough spot where swells were breaking over shoals as they entered this area. With some timing and observation it was possible to get a ride rather than a capsize. Then on to our quiet lunch beach on tiny, deserted Western Green Island.

The remainder of the trip was a trip past marine farms and extensive rockweed ledges to the east of Wood that jutted a long way out. Our final leg back to the Anchorage beach was marked by a current helping us reach the beach—another total surprise, an ebb current pushing us towards land! The swell had mostly died out but one last tiny surfing wave helped us reach our low-tide landing spot. A perfect first day of exploration had ended.

Paddling Grand Manan Island: A Bolder Coast

Grand Manan is quite a large island in New Brunswick, Canada that sits right at the junction of the Gulf or Maine and the Bay of Fundy. It is comparable in size to Mount Desert Island but it is more triangular than round, resembling an arrowhead pointing north. The long sides of this triangle are 13-15 nautical miles in length. It’s right in the center of this map:

Bob Levine and I both wanted to go to Grand Manan for a long time, having seen it looming on the eastern horizon whenever we went to Maine’s Bold Coast. From that vantage point all you can see is a single line of high distant cliffs. One can paddle there from Campobello, a crossing of some 7 miles.

Jason Kates also joined the trip, and he had been there before; Jason wisely encouraged us to take the ferry rather than paddling over from the mainland. Not so much because of the hazards of the crossing—which do exist—but because Grand Manan has such a long coastline that it is difficult to explore its various regions without a car, and few solid camping options exist on the west side of the island. We took Jason’s advice, and it was very good indeed.

Unfortunately Jason had to drop out of the trip due to last-minute car problems. So in the end the trip consisted only of Bob and myself.

Travel and Amenities

Grand Manan is reached by a car ferry from Blacks Harbour, NB. The ferry is quite economical and at 6+ hours from Salem MA, the drive time to the terminal via I-95, Route 9 and NB-1 is comparable to the Bold Coast. The ferry crossing takes about 90 minutes and is a very pleasing part of the trip with great views of coastal NB, Campobello Island, The Wolves and of course Grand Manan. The ferries are substantial boats and run 365 days a year; they are essential lifelines for the island.

The island itself is a quiet place with a year round population of about 2,500. There is summer tourism to be sure but a lot of the island economy seems to be running on fishing, aquaculture, dulse harvesting and the support systems for those industries. It is hard to describe the feel of the place after such a short time there, but it is comfortable to be in. The people are very friendly. Appearances aren’t everything, but you don’t see broken-down houses and yards full of rusty stuff.

We opted to camp at Anchorage Provincial Park because it was cheap, seemed to get good reviews and was right on the water. In fact, the park is truly very beautiful and well maintained with super clean facilities. It includes long wooded trails and is adjacent to miles of deserted sand beach. The bugs were not bad at all (although the deer flies did annoy us on hot days, more by buzzing than by biting). There did not seem to be any wild animals around other than bunnies; more on those later. In June, it was not crowded because schools were not out yet. Cell coverage seemed quite reliable over the island. 

Geography

The Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world, and all of this tidal range moves in and out of the bay past Grand Manan on either side, twice a day. So it sits in an extremely dynamic environment, although there are also many quiet spots.

The entire west side of Grand Manan Island consists of near-vertical volcanic cliffs reaching several hundred feet in height. The coastline runs in an almost straight line. On this side of the island, the 7-to-10 mile wide Grand Manan Channel acts as a deep conduit where the currents can flow unimpeded. On the flood, the conduit narrows and acts like a funnel with a tide rip extending off the northern point for a mile or more.

On the east side, the island is flatter and consists of non-volcanic rocks, with an archipelago of outlying islands and shoals. The Fundy currents, encountering these obstacles and shallows, accelerate and become turbulent especially on the ebb tide. Many ships have met their end off the southeast of the island.

The timing of this trip was on a neap tide, so currents were not at their strongest: maybe 50-60% of the maximum speed that they reach on a spring tide.

[Continue to the next post in this thread for the description of the first day of the trip]

UPDATE: This session will be launching from Odiorne State Park, not from Marblehead. 

I am subbing for Janet on 7/10 so I’ll respond - this session will cover assessing weather/tide predictions, trip planning, use of nautical charts, interacting with boat traffic and live observation of the environment we encounter that day. It’s unlike most of the other skills practice sessions in that it’s not about specific boat handling or paddling techniques.

Hope you can join us!

How odd, I didn’t even notice the person wasn’t wearing a PFD. Yes, a big mistake, but I still applaud some coverage that brings more attention to the sport and dispels some misconceptions about what it’s about physically. It’s not a perfect article but better than many.

I don’t know if the photo caption originally said this when the article came out, but it now reads: “

Serious kayak racers generally don’t wear life vests, but recreational paddlers should always do so. Credit...

”

I guess they’re trying to fix this and don’t have another photo on hand…

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/22/well/move/kayak-paddle-exercise.html
 

A surprisingly decent article on kayaking as exercise in the major print media - even to the point of including some reasonable starter tips on forward and sweep strokes. 

It might be good to think about drumming up some wing paddle loaners. I know there are a fair few people in the club who have wings for use with their sea kayaks. 

the one time I tried a surfski I used a Cyprus first and then an Epic wing paddle. There was no comparison, they were completely different experiences. The wing worked so much better with the ski. 

Interested and July is a good timeframe for me. 

I regret to announce that Bob and I will not be able to organize the WLP for the next 2 weeks due to travel and family plans. 

Lunch and paddling and Wednesdays will resume in combination on or around July 6.

I forgot to mention that we briefly met up with Nancy at lunchtime - Nancy I’m glad you had a good day after all the aggravation!

ALSO - many many oystercatchers were seen, I should have mentioned. They really like Snake Island. 

As advertised, we set out this morning around 10:20 from Winthrop Boat Launch to visit Belle Isle Marsh, where “we” means myself, Jane Cobb, Ricardo Caivano and Sue Hriciga. Nancy hill was at the launch but due to a surprise  encounter with the severe US Open traffic she decided to visit the marsh on foot so she could return home early.

The sun overhead was creating an unusual triple halo in the high clouds:

with this auspicious start we set out around Snake Island to view the narrow and shallow entrance to its lagoon at mid-tide. High water not being until 12:45 or so, the entrance was impassable but we could see that mysterious terrain lay within!

we forged on around the perimeter of Logan. Mercifully the east wind meant that the landing path was over the city and the takeoff path was just south of our put-in, increasingly distant as we paddled on. with The entire airport downwind from us, we watched planes land and taxi in eerie silence with only the sounds of birds and paddles splashing. 

Right after we entered the marsh under a bridge with the flood current Ben Rechel caught up with us. He had arrived too late to launch with us but sans coordination (Ben apparently thought he heard us hailing him on VHF, but none of us had) he managed to launch from a closer point and rendezvous with perfect timing. 
 

we explored the perimeter of the marsh in a highly inefficient irregular and satisfying way, prowling down a number of dead end channels. I talked to a couple of locals who were paddling sit on tops near us. There are lots of boardwalks and trails running around the place used by locals. The east side of the marsh goes right up to the back of Short Beach in Winthrop but there is no access from the marsh to cross the road to the beach. 
 

we doubled back to the observation point on the west side of the marsh which is also accessible by car. A very beautiful and peaceful place for our lunch and postprandial stroll. 

It was now 1 and we left the marsh on the ebb, dropping off Ben on the way back to Snake Island. The entrance to Snake’s lagoon was draining once again when we got there, but it was just barely possible to fight through the current and shallows and Ricardo and I made it in. It is a little quiet oasis of birds and shrubs and trees inside:

birds I observed included blue heron, tree swallows, redwing blackbirds, snowy egret, great egret, common tern, and of course many seagulls. 
 

this was a truly enjoyable trip and we should do it again on an even higher tide if possible! Thanks everyone and please add your pictures. 

We're going off-script this week! Our June 15 Wednesday Lunch Paddle features an exploration of the City of Boston's only remaining salt marsh, Belle Isle Marsh, and the unique harbor island of Snake Island with its interior lagoon. Both are important bird habitats and feature egrets, ibis, herons and more. For my part, I've never visited either location although I go right past them often.

This is not really a sea kayaking trip: it is a protected saltwater paddle, great for anyone at any level. Forecast is sunny, temps in the 60s with easterly wind 8-kt. High water is around 12:45pm which should be perfect for exploring this place.  The east wind will hopefully put most Logan air traffic on the 09-27 runway to our south.

We will meet at Winthrop Boat Launch at 10 am and depart at 10:30. We will probably visit the marsh first on the flood, then hit Snake Island post-lunch at high tide.

Interested? Please sign up here: https://forms.gle/DjLKWFgvuwNHzkZr7

To join the trip you must be a paid-up NSPN member, and have signed the club participant waiver for this season. Your signup information will only be shared with other members on the trip.

Covid-19 paddling: this trip requires paddlers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 and symptom-free per request of the trip organizers, as rescues or first aid may require close physical contact.

Trip level: WLPs do not have a specific level. All properly equipped members are welcome: please bring boats with rigged deck lines, bulkheads, spray skirts, and dress for immersion.

NOTE: The Wednesday Lunch Paddles are cooperative adventures, not guided trips. We encourage paddlers to make their own independent decision about their comfort level with conditions at the time of the paddle. Each participant is responsible for her/his own safety. Don’t assume the trip initiators are smarter, stronger, better at rough water, more attractive, or more skilled paddlers than you are. For more information, see this description of our trip philosophy from the NSPN web site. 

Please PM one of us if you have questions or if you haven’t paddled with us before.

Hope to see you there!

Joe Berkovitz & Bob Levine

@DM2787 Others have already provided terrific detail here. I just want to second Ed’s sage advice that if you haven’t paddled this area before, there are challenges that may not be familiar if your home base is the Hudson. As Ed said, conditions can change abruptly in a short distance or a short time, from calm and placid to extremely rough. So the option of contacting Nate Hanson (who is Pinniped) to arrange a day trip sounds like a good one; he’s a superb paddler, guide, instructor and human being all rolled into one. 

Well we actually had a very nice time. We launched just after the last of the showers and headed from fisherman’s to egg rock to East point for our lunch spot. It was windy at first although my impression was that it was more SW becoming W. It was not super fast paddling into the wind but it was very enjoyable as the day was nice.The sun came out and the wind began to moderate as the day went on. at the end Bill delivered an impromptu seminar on how to empty a skin on frame kayak in an assisted rescue. It is challenging! You have to lift the boat straight up, slowly, while it is on edge, then flip it back into its bottom. 

I plan on attending the paddle but I would rather not commit to a group until we’re on the beach and see who’s there and what’s happening that day. So consider this a “nondenominational” signup.

have plans later in the day so I won’t be attending the potluck, at least not for long  

Here comes an instant replay of last week's paddle plan, since there were few takers in the chilly weather! This week may be a little wobbly too as regards the weather...

Predictions and Plan:  

The plan is to meet at Fishermans Beach in Swampscott at 11:00 am on Wed. June 8, 2022, planning to launch at 11:30 am and head south towards Nahant where we can paddle out to East Point for lunch, mostly in the lee of the cliffs. (We're starting later than usual this week.)

The forecast currently calls for mix of showers/sun with a chance of T-storms. Temps 60-65 F, seas around 2 ft, wind S around 15 kt. Yup, it will be windy! But we will have some protection and head into the wind at the start, to have it at our back later.

Registration: To attend, please fill out this form. We will cancel the paddle and notify registrants if the T-storm forecast becomes a problem.

To join the trip you must be a paid-up NSPN member, and have signed the club participant waiver for this season. Your signup information will only be shared with other members on the trip.

Covid-19 paddling: this trip requires paddlers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 and symptom-free per request of the trip organizers, as rescues or first aid may require close physical contact.

Trip level: WLPs do not have a specific level. All properly equipped members are welcome: please bring boats with rigged deck lines, bulkheads, spray skirts, and dress for immersion.

NOTE: The Wednesday Lunch Paddles are cooperative adventures, not guided trips. We encourage paddlers to make their own independent decision about their comfort level with conditions at the time of the paddle. Each participant is responsible for her/his own safety. Don’t assume the trip initiators are smarter, stronger, better at rough water, more attractive, or more skilled paddlers than you are. For more information, see this description of our trip philosophy from the NSPN web site. 

Please PM me if you have questions or if you haven’t paddled with me before.

Hope to see you there!

While one doesn’t need a compass rose, it does provide something useful beyond noting what the numeric variation is.

I’ve found that for many map users the rose serves as a reference for the visual angle of a magnetic bearing - it shows directly what it looks like.  And of course there are procedures for using it to convert between true and magnetic that don’t involve adding or subtracting, which for some people is challenging or error prone. (Personally I do the math but I’m facile with numbers!)

The roses in the new NOAA POD tool are a work in progress. It is virtually impossible to control where and how they appear. 

At the moment I think it’s best to become adept at adding or subtracting 15 degrees as needed when calculating bearings using these charts. Mnemonic: Magnetic is More in Massachusetts and Maine.

Another choice which is graphically easier than creating your own compass roses is to overlay an array of vertical lines oriented to magnetic north. 

I added my own single cross bungee right behind the cockpit. This allows the helmet to attach securely to either of the bungees just in front of the rear hatch. 

helmet goes here:

looks like this in action:

Yesterday Mike Habich, Sue Hriciga, Prudence Baxter, Jody Harris, Barbara Ryan, Dan Foster and I (Joe Berkovitz) paddled from Lanes to Rockport. And back to Lanes, too, if you were wondering about that. The weather was beautiful and sunny, temp maybe around 60 F although it felt warmer to me.

On the initial leg we had very little wind until we rounded Halibut Point, after which we had a 5-8 kt headwind out of the south. Some of us hugged the coast and rocks in the modest swell while others stayed further offshore. We all moved at a relaxed, exploratory pace enjoying the beautiful conditions and the soft air and light. Eventually we reached Rockport and landed at our usual place, below a small parking lot on Bearskin Neck.

Immediately a young guy appeared above us in the parking lot and politely—and perhaps a bit apologetically—explained that we were on private property and would not be able to land there. We protested, equally politely, that we'd been landing there for some years now, but he said he was from the adjacent kayak rental place and it was not up to him: the policy was due to the owners of the adjacent building (the Lauri Kaihlanen Gallery) and that someone from there might come out and yell at us.

Barb gamely offered that she knew the owner of the kayak shop... but it turned out that the kayak shop had been sold recently and had a new owner. Nice try!

Some of us wished to stay and risk the ire of the property owner, but we could not access the rest of the town (ice cream, bathrooms... did I mention ice cream?) without going right next to the owner's building through a gate clearly marked PRIVATE NO TRESPASSING PRIVATE PRIVATE PRIVATE etc. I made myself slightly unpopular by suggesting we cave in and land at the public boat ramp, which we did. Below is a picture of Rockport Harbor with the forbidden landing and the public landing marked appropriately:

The public landing is a broken down old concrete ramp in a state of extreme disrepair that at low tide is not usable by any wheeled vehicle and for that matter is barely walkable. Perfect for a bunch of kayaks on a pre-season day: we could leave our boats there without inconveniencing anyone. Off we went to enjoy the as-yet sparsely touristed environs of Rockport. Sadly the beloved Helmut's Strudel was "temporarily closed for the season" (perhaps this amounts to abuse of the word "temporarily") for reasons of staffing shortages and supply chain problems. Mike wondered aloud about the supply chain for strudel. However, a workable ice cream stand was found by some to provide a good nutritional supplement to our packaged lunches.

Back we went through Sandy Bay, now with a strengthening tailwind that had turned a bit more to a quartering SE. Again around Halibut and back to Lanes. Approaching Lanes at low tide we entered an area with gently pouring pour-overs over seaweed-cushioned rocks. We noted how bright the colors were, especially the verdant sea-lettuce glowing through the shallow water. We had a nice play session there for another 30 minutes, and then returned to Lanes. A beautiful and rejuvenating paddle with friends on a late spring day. Not much more I could ask for...

...except some photos from the trip. If anyone has some, please post!

Hi Tom,

The answer depends on what the wind weather is doing that day. You can find a list of many good locations here:

https://www.nspn.org/put-in-locations/

I'd suggest any of the Annisquam River locations listed under Gloucester in the list above. However if the weather is nice the river can be jammed up with powerboats. There will be some current. The tide will also be quite low in the morning on those dates and the river features some tidal flats in some places.

Barring strong wind or swell out of the south I think another good option that is fairly sheltered from ocean conditions is Pavilion Beach in Gloucester which is a small launch-friendly sand beach right on the harbor in the center of town and parking is not too hard if you get there early. There is significant boat traffic to take care with nearby, but away from the canal and the inner harbor, the shoreline is pretty quiet. If it's nice weather on a Sunday the beach lot will get parked up fast although you can park on the street.

Weather forecast is here:

https://marine.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lon=-70.66809&lat=42.59505#.Yo0v_pPMKDU

Tides are here:

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/noaatidepredictions.html?id=8441571&units=standard&bdate=20220605&edate=20220606&timezone=LST/LDT&clock=12hour&datum=MLLW&interval=hilo&action=dailychart

Hope this helps and hope to see you around.

We will meet at 9:00 am (yes, this is earlier than last week!) and launch promptly at 9:30 am. We are launching from Lanes Cove in Gloucester MA at the Andrews Street state-owned lot: https://goo.gl/maps/rUPYUwnVD8q6WNeJA

Registration: To attend, please fill out this registration form: https://forms.gle/wuyFNv7nrCHUqtoW8

To join the trip you must be a paid-up NSPN member, and have signed the club participant waiver for this season. Your signup information will only be shared with other members on the trip.

Predictions and Plan:  It looks like a very nice morning. NOAA Forecast is light winds becoming SE 8-12 kt around midday (the reason for the somewhat earlier launch). Sunny with 2 ft seas, air 60 F, water 50-55 F.  Rockport tides:

A suggested plan as of this moment is to paddle north and east around Halibut Point to Rockport for lunch. If the forecast holds we will have a tailwind on the way back and some lee after we round Halibut on the return. If the forecast doesn't hold, we could go south from Lanes instead.

Covid-19 paddling: this trip requires paddlers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 per request of the trip organizers, as rescues or first aid may require close physical contact.

Trip level: WLPs do not have a specific level. All properly equipped members are welcome: please bring boats with rigged deck lines, bulkheads, spray skirts, and dress for immersion.

NOTE: The Wednesday Lunch Paddles are cooperative adventures, not guided trips. We encourage paddlers to make their own independent decision about their comfort level with conditions at the time of the paddle. Each participant is responsible for her/his own safety. Don’t assume the trip initiators are smarter, stronger, better at rough water, more attractive, or more skilled paddlers than you are. For more information, see this description of our trip philosophy from the NSPN web site. 

Please PM me if you have questions or if you haven’t paddled with me before.

Hope to see you there!

Hi Julia (and any other interested folks)

You can get on the waiting list by filling out the form at the top of this thread where it says how to get on the waitlist. That way we have all your info.

Best,

Joe