Cape Cod in Winter

December, 2004

The Chatham Breach

As I often do, I made a visit to some of my favorite Cape Cod locations this weekend.

Chatham, a town of magnificent natural gifts, is located on the outer elbow of Cape Cod. It has coastline on both Nantucket Sound to the south and the open Atlantic to the east. The Atlantic coastline had always been protected by a barrier beach, a long, narrow sandbar about a half mile offshore. In 1987, a powerful ocean storm breached the barrier beach, creating a new channel to the sea but exposing fragile coastline to pounding waves.
The break has shortened the route to the sea for most of the fishing fleet; however, the new channel is often the location of crosscurrents and riptides. The sands continue to shift, closing off the former channel and creating a new beach at the south side of the break. As if to defy man, nature chose to perform her mischief directly in front of the Chatham Coast Guard Station and Lighthouse.

Rock Harbor

Rock Harbor is located in Orleans, on the inside of the Cape's elbow. The tides in Cape Cod Bay can have extremes of ebb and flow, and sometimes the exposed flats at the opening of this tiny harbor extend more than a half-mile out. The channel can be used during the flood part of the tide only, so the boats in the small fishing fleet have to monitor time and tide closely. The channel cannot be marked with traditional red and green buoys, because during ebb tides they would either sit on the flats or float into the channel. The channel is therefore marked with trees, which are driven into the bottom alongside it. Rock Harbor has a tiny lobster fleet that operates year round, and a larger sportfishing fleet that pursues fluke, bass, bluefish, tuna, and cod during the warmer months. The sportfishing captains have pooled their resources to staff a charter booth to book reservations while they are out on the saltwater. While many Cape Cod tourists flock to chain seafood restaurants, I’ve always favored more rustic locations. Capt. Cass is a great place to sit down to platter of fried clams or broiled schrod.

You have, of course, heard about the two Boston blueblood matrons who run into each other on Nantucket. "I always come to Nantucket to get schrod," intones the first. "I didn't know it had a pluperfect tense," replies the second.