We launched on the east side of the causeway. The plan was to head down the Southway and cross over to the sound between North and South Monomoy, then head down to the lighthouse.
Abby and Steve launching.
Bea and Briggsy at the top of the Southway.
Heading down the Southway, I was having trouble with my boat weather-cocking and stopped on North Monomoy to transfer some weight to the front of my boat. I should have also checked my skeg as it turned out it was not deploying all the way, apparently fouled with grass when we launched. We enjoyed the little break from the wind when I stopped. As we got back out into the open between the islands, we could see the line of breaking waves off in the distance along the sand bars to the west of the Monomoy Islands. It became obvious that it was not going to be an easy trip if we continued to try to reach the lighthouse. Steve and Abby decided to turn back after a stop on the northern end of South Monomoy Island. The rest of us wanted to take a closer look at the breakers out beyond Minimoy, so we headed out in that direction but didn't go past Minimoy. When we felt the strength of the wind and considered our options, we decided to turn back and explore the bottom of the Southway and take a walk across the land bridge to the ocean side.
I was curious again about when the land bridge was created, so I looked it up. Sand clogged the channel during a storm in November 2006 and the land bridge has been growing ever since then. It also mentions that North and South Monomoy were a single island till the Great Blizzard of 1978 split them apart. Here's a short article that mentions these facts: http://www.yankeemagazine.com/issues/2008-03/travel/monomoy
I was also curious about the Southway and what it was like before the land bridge formed and I found this info: http://chatham-ma.gov/Public_Documents/ChathamMA_Coastal/SCPDOCS1/Ch%203.pdf
But, back to pictures, because unless you've visited Monomoy a lot, you probably don't care about this old history stuff.
We pulled up near the end of the Southway and looked for a path to cross to the ocean side without disturbing the grass. Since there were two large storms, hurricane Sandy and a noreaster in the past couple weeks, any tracks we came across were not very old. The first tracks we saw looked like they were from coyotes.
The land bridge area is high enough now that a normal high tide will not wet the entire area. But with the recent storms, the whole area was soaked and full of puddles.
Grass has grown across most of the land bridge, so I think it would take an extreme storm to re-open the Southway.
The patterns in the sand were interesting along with the small bird footprints.
When we reached the beach on the ocean side, the sand had wave and wind patterns uninterrupted by anything except this lone buoy.
The only footprints on the beach were ours. Jay taking a picture of Bea taking a picture of Jay and I.
We sat and had lunch and watched the waves breaking on a sandbar forming 20 yards offshore.
Monomoy Lighthouse was just barely visible off in the distance. This is as close as we'd get today.
Everything looks the same when you're walking around on South Beach. We used our footprints to navigate back to where we left our kayaks.
When you get to a fairly open area, you can spot the two water towers on the mainland to help get your bearings.
The tide had gone out a bit while we were having lunch but there was a pretty good channel once we carried the boats out about 40 yards. At least it was firm sand, not mud or soft sand you sink into up to your knees.
A sand dune on South Beach. I wonder how they stay so steep when there are constant winds to knock them down or smooth them over,
Heading up the Southway into the wind. It was a fairly easy return trip...just have to stay in the channels on the falling tide.
A last look for this year at North Monomoy Island.
I failed to make sure my GPS was working before securing it in my kayak front hatch and ended up with no actual track for the day. Jay had his GPS and said we traveled about 12.4 miles. I've created a Google Earth estimated track of where we went and added a few labels to show the places I mentioned in the trip report. Charts are useless for navigation around Monomoy - they have not been updated to show the actual land masses. The only way to navigate the channels and keep from getting stranded on a sand bar is to have a satellite view picture of the area.
Here is the estimated Google Earth picture of our where we traveled.
Thanks for a fun day everyone. Too bad the weather didn't cooperate and let us make the full trip down to the lighthouse.
Norm
