Around Martha’s Vineyard

April-May 2006

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
To download a pdf copy of the magazine click here: > DOWNLOAD

by Mark Stephens

Sam and I were up at 4:30 am with a plan to be paddling by sunrise. It was Day Two of a two-day, 60-mile circumnavigation of Martha’s Vineyard, a large island which lies several miles south of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. It was the middle of November. Our float plan called for rounding Gay Head by 9:30, if not earlier, in order to catch the best of the flood tide up Vineyard Sound. We soon realized we weren’t going to make it. I was paddling in some discomfort, with a nagging ache in my neck and left shoulder from a minor upper back injury I had managed to burden myself with a few days earlier. Sam was not feeling too well, and was paddling below his optimal performance level.

We took a short break south of Gay Head where Sam seemed weak and I started to worry about him. We finally rounded the headland at 10:30, an hour behind schedule. We had come twelve miles in about three hours, roughly a four knot pace, which didn’t seem too bad. Our float plan called for this pace the rest of the way back to Falmouth, and we hoped to make up some lost time as we entered the flood current in Vineyard Sound for the ten-mile run to Cedar Tree Neck and our lunch stop.

Unfortunately, we had missed the best of the flood tide, and we weren’t able to catch much of a ride. But the northwest breeze was light and so we made steady, plodding progress north. We stayed offshore to ride the weak residual current, but in so doing we couldn’t really enjoy the scenery of the shoreline. At this point, paddling endlessly over the gray waters under the gray skies in the November cold, I was thinking that this was about as much fun as sitting on a rowing machine in a cold, damp basement, surrounded by dripping, gray walls, just rowing and rowing for six hours straight. In a drysuit that wasn’t dry. Then doing it again. This two-day circumnavigation was something that I had wanted to do, but I wouldn’t need to repeat.

We landed at Cedar Tree Neck at 1 pm, still an hour behind schedule, as we had not made up any time on the crossing from Gay Head. Still, I declared a ‘banker’s lunch’, thinking we needed a full hour’s rest before continuing. Sam had derided my long lunch breaks on previous trips, but he didn’t seem to mind taking an hour today. He didn’t eat much and I was worried about his energy reserves. Dehydration was also a concern, although we had plenty of liquids.

The float plan had called for reaching West Chop by 2 pm, which would be slack tide for our crossing of Vineyard Sound back to the mainland. But after our banker’s lunch, it was already 2 pm and we were 6.5 miles from West Chop. Sam suggested that we should just cross straight back to Falmouth from here, saving a couple of miles of paddling distance. I reminded him that the ebb tide was starting and that would mean fighting the Vineyard Sound current.

We paddled the three miles up to Norton Point where we then needed to decide which route to take. It was three o’clock by the time we got there, and less than an hour and a half till sunset. Paddling to West Chop and then crossing from there would most likely mean crossing the ferry lanes in the dark, which was not a pleasant prospect. I calculated that if we could cross straight from Norton Point to Nobska Point, it would save us about 2.5 miles of paddling distance, but the four mile crossing would be against the current and the wind.

Although unwell, Sam paddled gamely on.

We had ninety minutes until sunset and it was four miles to the mainland. It seemed do-able. However, if I had been thinking more clearly, the arithmetic was simple enough and the ramifications of this decision should have been obvious. We had been paddling at around three knots for the past several hours. By 4:30 the ebb current would be running between 2.5-3.0 knots off Nobska Point, in a west-southwesterly direction. Our route from Norton Point to Nobska Point was north-northeast, which meant that at some point in this crossing our forward progress would come to a virtual standstill if we weren’t able to paddle any faster than we had been. I had a vague understanding of this as we decided to attempt the crossing, and I emphasized to Sam that we needed to really pour it on for this last leg of the trip.

We started across, aiming the boats well to the east of Nobska Point. About two miles out I increased the ferry angle as we were starting to drift west. But the sun still shone brightly on the white pillar of Nobska Light as we paddled toward this beacon of safety, and a hoped for haven of rest.

Soon our forward progress toward Nobska Point slowed to a crawl. The lighthouse didn’t seem to be getting any closer as the sun sank to the horizon. We had drifted to the point where our heading was now nearly directly into the current, so we were forced to change tactics and aim north for Woods Hole. We needed to get out of the southwest flow of the main Vineyard Sound current, and try to get caught by the northerly flow ebbing up through Woods Hole. I knew we had a better chance of crossing the current in Woods Hole than fighting our way northeast against the maximum ebb in the Sound. It was nearly dark now, and there was still ferry traffic and other boat traffic around Woods Hole.

I asked Sam if he had a headlamp that was easily accessible. He didn’t, so I asked him to raft up and get a drybag out of my rear hatch where my headlamp was. I got my headlamp on and gave the drybag back to Sam so he could close up the hatch.

“Where’s the hatch cover?” he said.

I turned around aghast. No hatch cover. “What the hell did you do with it?”

“I just set it on the deck,” he replied. “I thought it was tethered.”

Oh great, this is just what we needed. We’re stuck in a three knot current, in heavy boat traffic, it’s getting dark, and now I have a gaping hole in the deck of my boat. We looked for it briefly, but the hatch cover was gone, drifted away on the current or sunk to the bottom, I didn’t know which. We couldn’t afford the time to keep looking for it, so Sam arranged the blades of my spare paddle over the hole and we resumed our battle against the current. Fortunately the seas were light, and I had three filled drybags in the rear hatch, so I wouldn’t be taking on much water.

We finally got out of the main Vineyard Sound flow south of Nonamesset Island and started working our way up toward Woods Hole. A Coast Guard patrol boat spotted us and motored up to check on us. “Long day, guys?” one of them asked. “Yeah, we’ve come about thirty miles already today,” I answered, trying to sound competent.

He whistled. I told him we needed to get around Nobska Point and up the coast another mile or so. He told us to give a yell if we needed any help. “Just watch out for those ferries,” he warned, and they motored off.

As we reached the buoys marking the channels around Woods Hole, we could see that we were definitely being sucked north. Now if we could just avoid being run over in the dark or crashing into the rocks around Nobska Point, we had it licked.

As we got across the ferry lane, a big barge passed in front of us heading into Woods Hole. They put a bright spotlight on us, effectively ruining my night vision. Sam doesn’t have good night vision to begin with, and now mine was temporarily impaired. Once out of the boat channels, our next hazard was the rocks around Nobska Point. Sam couldn’t see anything, so I asked him to follow close behind me. The water was calm, and seeing the rocks was not too difficult. As we rounded the Point, we came into the large eddy that forms on the ebb tide. The eddy current was flowing like a big river in the sea, and we were caught up in it and pushed along quickly toward our goal. Then we were out of it and in calm waters. It was very dark as I felt my way along the dim shoreline in search of the unlit, unmarked parking area where we had left my truck. When I got to a point that I thought was reasonably close, I decided to land and scout the rest of the way on foot. I was relieved to find that I had landed only twenty yards from my truck. It was 6:15 pm and it had taken us over three hours to paddle the last, grueling six miles of this trip. Sam was physically ill, from exhaustion or dehydration or both, and threw up in my driveway when we finally got home.

After this trip, I have a new respect for the Vineyard Sound current which is so much fun when you are riding with it, but can be a real bear if you screw up. Sam admitted that he went pretty deep into his reserves in order to finish this trip. That is not a good thing. The margins of safety that we try to maintain, especially when paddling in cold weather, get very thin when paddlers are exhausted, and when paddling at night. We actually had been lucky in many ways, including good weather, light seas and no really close calls with ships or rocks in the darkness. We are both smarter after this trip, and will apply the experience to make our future expeditions safer and more enjoyable.

© Mark Stephens, a futures trader who lives in southeastern Massachusetts, is an avid kayaker and occasional adventure writer.