Hadley Harbor, Elizabeth Islands, Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Thu 20 Sep 2007 02:44
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41:30.914N 70:42.081W
On Sunday (9/16), after we exited the Cape Cod
Canal, we motorsailed through the northeast end of Buzzards Bay to
Hadley Harbor, which is situated between three of the Elizabeth Islands and
across the famous, nasty Woods Hole passage from the town of Woods Hole.
Ok, maybe the Woods Hole passage is only famous to boaters...but its a
narrow passage between the Elizabeth Islands and the south shore of Cape Cod
known for its massive currents. More on that in the next blog
entry.
Our trip through Buzzards Bay was very nice, and
just when dusk was settling in, we got the picture below of a sailboat crossing
the tranquil bay.
We had already scoped out several potential
anchoring spots on the chart, so when we reached Hadley Harbor just before
sunset, we proceeded to enter a miniscule cove off of the harbor that
looked like a really good spot. We squeaked into the cove scraping bottom
as we went (no worries, no rocks) and set down the anchor. Once that was
done, we looked around and noticed that we were about two feet from the shore in
all directions, about one foot from a private dock (I'm exaggerating,
but you get the picture) and upon further inspection, had dropped our
anchor directly in line with two signs on land that said, 'Submerged
Cable, Do Not Anchor!'. Oops. Up came the anchor and we
squeaked back out of the cove into another slightly less miniscule cove that
happened to have another sailboat already snugly anchored in it. Don
didn't feel this was a problem and so dropped the anchor again. As we
started to back down on the anchor, which caused us to move in the direction of
the snugly anchored sailboat, we received what could only be called the giant
evil eye from the captain of the snugly anchored boat, as he watched
us from his cockpit. After suffering under the evil eye for a
few more minutes, we decided it might be best if we moved to a less snug spot in
the outer harbor. Up came the anchor and move we did. We shared
the outer harbor with a motorboat, but they didn't give us the evil eye.
Down went the anchor just in time for sunset. See the picture below of outer Hadley Harbor at sunset. At
least here south of the Cape Cod Canal, the tide range is only about 3 feet as
opposed to the 10ish feet we were dealing with before. This makes low tide
something to fear less, and a repeat performance of our experience in Plymouth
unlikely.
Anne
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