I had a rare opportunity to spend the day paddling last weekend, in honor of Fathers' Day. (My philosophy about being a Dad is that Father's Day is the one day a year that Dads get to do whatever they want, and luckily my wife and daughter went along with it.)
Meanwhile, Phil and Lorrie Allen (Pallen and Rubberduckie here on the Turkey board) were going through some serious paddling withdrawal, having just returned from a sea kayaking trip to Wales, where they spent a couple days playing in the 6-knot tidal race known as The Bitches.
(Check out the embedded video for a sample of what THAT's like.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDngohX2IE0
We decided to go play in the fast currents and rough water of Woods Hole for the day. It's not The Bitches, but on an otherwise flat calm day it was the best we could manage for these two rough water addicts.
Official current speeds in Woods Hole are only about four knots, but if you read around the internet you see references to current speeds up to ten knots when tides are extreme (and presumably at some of the more constricted spots.) But fast moving water is not that interesting unless it has some shallow spots that it runs over to kick it up into standing waves and/or there is wind or swell opposing the current to kick it up. In Woods Hole, at least on a calm-weather day, you largely are dependent on big boat wakes to rough things up, so busy summer weekends are best (as long as you stay out of the boat channels!)
Photo: Boat wakes kicking up some standing waves in Woods Hole:
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We had one of the biggest tides of the month to play on. We planned to put in at 10AM as the peak of the flood tide would be at around 11:30. This was my first time in my sea boat since last year, so I asked Phil and Lorrie to go easy on me. We paddled out to the play spot off Penzance Point and, after working pretty hard against the already strong current, worked our way up to the shallows off Devil's Foot Island. Not too much was happening, and we were about to head over to Middle Ledge to try our luck when a bunch of big boats started coming through the Hole. Whoo Hoo! Suddenly we had waves to surf and all kinds of mayhem to deal with.
Photo: Boat wakes collide with the current in the shallows off Penzance Point. Fun!
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We played for about two hours, until things started to die down some and we had tired ourselves out. Time for lunch.
After a nice rest, we debated what next. The max ebb wouldn't be until 4:30 or so, so we had a few hours to kill. We decided to paddle out through Hadley Harbor and over to Weepecket Island for a short snooze in the sand. Buzzards Bay was as flat as a millpond, with barely a breath of air. On the way, Phil complained a bit of a nasty potato chip, slowing him down. I hypothesized that what the real problem was is that Phil is allergic to flat water. We decided we could test my theory when we got back to Woods Hole: if Phil perked up when he got back in the rough water, theory confirmed. If he still didn't feel well, we would blame the potato chips. (Guess what.)
When we got back to Woods Hole around 3:30, the current was really ripping already. We had an interesting ferry across the channel back to the mainland side. We peeled out from behind a large day marker and immediately lost a couple hundred yards downstream before we could get across the narrow boat channel.
Photo: Working back across the current was hard work.
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We worked our way back up to Penzance Point where the outgoing tide was racing through the constriction out of Great Harbor at probably about six knots. It was about the fastest I have seen it. The current was so strong that boat wakes from the channel right next to it just died when they hit the fast water, so there weren't really any waves to surf. We played around in the swirlies for a while, but ultimately decided to call it a day.
Woods Hole had other ideas. We poked around a few spots trying to see where we could work up against the current and slip back into the harbor. Nothing doing! Every spot we tried had too much outgoing current for us to get by. Eventually Phil and Lorrie ended up dragging their boats over some rocks to slower water, and I managed to slip around a day marker and fight my way into an eddy after nearly getting shoved sideways into a big Red Nun at the edge of the channel.
We got back to the put in at 5PM. So much for these two going easy on me my first day out.
Thanks Phil and Lorrie for a really fun day!
Mark
