Penzance Bay (Near Woods Hole) anchorage

Wednesday September 2, 2015
41 31 912 N
70 40 633 W

Another nice day - at least on the north side of the Cape. Today we were planning to transit the Cape Cod Canal into Buzzards Bay and then find an anchorage in the vicinity of Wood's Hole. Cavara was also making their way to the canal, timed to transit in our company, but we expected to part ways on the other side.

The CCC is the largest sea level ship canal in the world - no locks etc - but the result of that was some pretty strong currents. Because of the strong tidal current thru the canal we needed to time our arrival for the "slack before the ebb" at the north end.

The 24 NM run across Cape Cod bay was achieved right on schedule and we entered the canal right at slack with no current. It picked up strongly as we headed south and by the time we reached the only impediment - a lifting railway bridge we were seeing 3 or 4 knots of current. According to the guide "the railway bridge is seldom in the closed position" but as we approached at "light speed" down it came! As we rapidly approached we did notice an Army Corp of Engineers patrol boat flashing its lights and broadcasting a warning on the radio.

Whoa! The railway bridge is down!

There were several pleasure craft of various sizes in the canal. Doing a "U turn" in a 49' boat in a 4 knot current in a 300' wide canal is not that simple, especially if the other boats do not "dance" well with us. We immediately broadcast our intentions to create an anti-clockwise race track pattern and fortunately all the boats fell into step. After only one loop the bridge reopened.

The wind on the north side was a pleasant 5 to 10 kts. On the south side it was blowing at least 20 kts, and created a "wind against tide" situation, resulting in 4' to 6' "square waves" as we entered Buzzards bay, right on our bow. The next 10 miles in these conditions proved to be very rough, with Tide Hiker making lots of spray.

The anchorage we targeted had anticipated these conditions and got us entirely out of the fetch and most of the wind. We anchored in 15' with a solid sandy bottom. Out of the wind and waves it was a very pleasant spot. I barbecued chicken and veges for dinner. We picked up about 30 TV stations but there was nothing worth watching.