Surf Check, Nauset Light Beach, At Dawn

Good morning!

I slept well last night, woke up early with a ton of energy and decided to check an Atlantic sunrise.

Off to Nauset Light Beach we go. As Thoreau sorta said, a man with a camera phone can stand on a Cape Cod beach at sunrise and put all of America behind him.

For a guy who dates a girl who my friends refer to as "a dime piece," I tend to have to sneak up on my models and shoot (with a camera) them surreptitiously .

There is a storm offshore which aspires to become a tropical storm but doesn't quite have the moxie, but it is rolling some beautiful waves back at us.

The bluffs look awesome in the right light.

My initial thoughts were to head out and shoot me a shark, as they are most active around dawn and dusk, but I rolled up on Nauset at sunrise time, so we had a theme switch.

The surf was too rough for sharking, although I did see a few seals. They were too fast for me to get the camera on them.

I also saw a huge doe crossing the road just before I got to the beach. She was faster than my camera skills, and also won't be appearing in this article. 

I can catch the surf, however...

I was leaving as the surfers were arriving, so no Hang Ten stuff...

I get into my own articles now and then, but only with Funhouse camera angles... it's for the best, trust me, I look like the Frankenstein monster.

The surf is a better model, anyhow.

No houses were going to get torn down by this surf, but it teamed with the sunrise to be article worthy.

There was a bit of a rip current and some surf was moving at odd angles.

Looking north...

...and looking south.

When you only see one set of footsteps, that is when God carried you... unless you see these footprints, which just mean that you are following a seagull.

The gull and I know the good spots.

Dune Goldenrod, which sounds like a guy's porno name.

Day was coming on full speed, and the beach was ready for the walkers. I grew up on lonely Duxbury Beach, am too used to having it to myself...

... so I bid Eastham farewell. 

Nauset Light's lights are red and white, just like the lighthouse itself.

SE Mass Football Schedule, Picks, 9/28, 9/29

FRIDAY

Needham at Weymouth, 1 PM

3-0 meets 0-3, which should equal 0 if what I recall from Algebra is correct, will instead equal Needham, 34-7


Tri-County at Bristol-Plymouth, 5 PM

Having two counties to fill a football team is good, unless your opponent has three... TC, 21-10



New Bedford at Barnstable, 6 PM

Barney is able to defend the Cape against New Beffuh... Barnstable, 28-27



Bourne at Martha's Vineyard, 6 PM

Bourne looks to get back on track after catching a bad Case of First Loss Of The Season... Bourne, 30-24


Holbrook/Avon at Monomoy, 6 PM

I hate the ride to Monomoy, and I live in Bourne. I also hate the ride to Holbrook. Combining both? ... H/A, 10-9


Pembroke at Dennis-Yarmouth, 6

A few years ago, Pemby would have taken on Dee Why with Kingston, Halifax and Plympton by her side. They go it alone in this time, and pay for it... D/Y, 21-18


Greater New Bedford at Apponequet, 6:30

It came Appon a midnight clear... Appo, 30-13


Old Colony at Blue Hills, 6:30

Old Colony is in Rochester, while Old Rochester is in Mattapoisett. Confused?... The OC, 17-15



Malden Catholic at Bishop Feehan, 6:30

It'd be cool if there were a few Muslim and/or Jewish high schools for the Catholic schools to play... Feehan, 21-20


Georgetown at Coyle-Cassidy, 7

Even if he is a little skinny white guy, Georgetown's coach should wear a suit and have a towel draped over his shoulder like John Thompson during the Ewing era... CC, 18-14


Bishop Stang at Carver/Sacred Heart,

Carver should play home games at Edaville Railroad... BS, 20-17


BC High at Brockton, 7

Brockton is undefeated and looking for Dub #3... Brockton, 21-19


Dartmouth at Durfee, 7

Someone has to win this game, and one of the people making these picks dates a Durfee alum... Durfee, 12-10


Plymouth South at Hanover, 7

Hangover is unbeaten through 4 games... Hanover, 29-13


Duxbury at Whitman Hanson, 7

Duxbury is always picked to win, seeing as the founder of this page was Most School Spirit at DHS in 1986... Duxbury, 21-17


Maspee at Abington, 7

Two undefeateds lock up, but Mashpee has like a 23 game unbeaten streak to protect... Mashpee, 31-30

Falmouth at Sandwich, 7

I was just in Falmouth, so I choose them... Falmouth, 21-6


Case at Fairhaven, 7

If they play the game quickly enough, it would be a brief Case... Case, 28-14


Quincy at Plymouth North, 7

Quincy sees no need to add South to their name, but Plymouth does... PN, 13-12


Randolph at Hull, 7

Randolph gets too close to the ocean and it knocks them down to .500... Hull, 18-14


Milford at North Attleboro, 7

I hate betting against a school with MILF in the title, but North Attleboro isn't messing around... NA, 28-13


Marshfield at Nauset, 7

Marsh Vegas is too good to go 0-4... Marshfield, 17-13


East Bridgewater at Norwell, 7

Norwell needs to defend the home turf to get Win #1... Norwell, 10-7


Taunton at Attleboro,  7

The two mall towns of the region slug it out... Attleboro, 38-35


Wareham at Seekonk, 7

The 'Ham will not be denied... Wareham, 15-14


North Quincy at Scituate, 7

I hate betting against NQ, but I gotta go with my gut... Scituate, 21-17


Dighton-Rehoboth at Old Rochester, 7

OR isn't having that Lose On Your Home Field stuff, not this week... OR, 23-16


Matignon at St. John Paul II at , 7

Nothing like a Cambridge to Hyannis bus ride after a long day of Catholic school... SJP, 33-28


Rockland at Middleboro, 7

Rocky refuses to fall to 0-4... Rockland, 17-14


Atlantis at Cohasset, 7

The more Atlantis loses, the more it will cost them to sign Aquaman... Cohasset, 38-7

SATURDAY


Diman at South Shore RVT, 11 AM

Who's Di-Man?... Diman, 18-13


Upper Cape RVT at Cape Cod RVT, 1 PM

I might make it over to this one, I need stock photos... UC, 17-12


Nantucket at West Bridgewater, 1:30

You've heard of the Nantucket Sleigh Ride, but the Nantucket Triathlon  (Stacey, should that have another A in it?) is an hour on the ferry, an hour and change on the bus, a football game, then the bus ride and the ferry ride home... WB, 19-14


Hingham at Silver Lake, 2:30

Can Hingham stay undefeated? No!... SL, 20-17

Last week, 26-10... Season, 44-23

Nobska Light, Falmouth MA

Nobska Light, aka Nobska Point Light or Nobsque Light, is a 42 foot tall tower in Falmouth, Massachusetts. I assume it is named after some guy named Nobsque.

It sits on the southwestern tip of Cape Cod, at the junction of Buzzards Bat and Vineyard Sound. If you wish to be specific, it is in the Woods Hole section of Falmouth.

It went up in 1826, with the tower originally protruding from the house of the light keeper . It was replaced in 1876 with the setup you see in these pictures.

Nobska Light was run by the US Lighthouse Service until 1939, when ownership was given to the US Coast Guard. It was automated in 1985 and the keeper was retired. Joseph Hindley, who ran it from 1978 to 1982, may have been the last civilian lighthouse keeper in New England. It is now the house of whoever is the Commanding Officer of the Southeastern New England sector of the Coast Guard.

Bye, Nobska!

Will A Fatal Shark Attack Hurt Cape Cod's Tourism?

One of the great fears of Cape Cod was realized this September. A bather was attacked and killed by a Great White Shark.

It was the first shark attack fatality (on a human) in Massachusetts since 1936, when a child was partially devoured off of Mattapoisett. Our previous shark attack fatality, off of Scituate, was from before the Civil War, and the one before that- and the only other shark attack fatality in Massachusetts since the Pilgrims arrived- was before the American Revolution.

Your chances of becoming a shark's dinner are, according to the Daily Mirror, 300000000 to 1. By rate of comparison, 250000000 to 1 is your chance of being killed by a falling coconut.

Sharks swam by thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of swimmers on Cape Cod this summer. They tasted two of them.

All of this means very little to a tourist region. Millions of people will see the headlines touting a shark attack fatality on Cape Cod. Not many of them will bother to look up the frequency of such events. They react viscerally, essentially crossing Cape Cod off of the Let's Go There list.

Cape Cod can't afford that. As Mayor Vaughan once said, "summer towns need summer dollars." If they don't get those dollars, as Quint noted, they'll "be on the welfare all winter."

In a number of surveys, "the beach" is listed as the top reason for coming to Cape Cod. Anywhere between 1.6% (Bourne) and 5.6% (Provincetown) of the workforce is directly related to tourism, while the indirect associations are probably closer to the 90s.

In 2011, which I am reading a summary of, $852 billion was spent on Cape Cod by visitors. Over $200 million of that went to wages. Orleans makes $900k on parking fees alone, while Truro does $300k.

Tourism is the golden goose of Cape Cod, and things would be less kosher here if our goose is cooked.

It remains to be seen if the fatality (I've attended a lecture by Dr. Gregory Skomal, and he refers to shark attacks as "interactions") does damage to Cape Cod's tourist industry.  Some damage is inevitable, but is it a crippling blow?

Old Cape Cod has a few things going for her in this situation. The numbers favor us in several ways. This attack, nasty as it was, was the first fatality in 82 years. In about 400 years, we have had 4 fatal interactions. If you ignore the recent upward trend, it would seem that the next attack would be far enough in the future that it happens to someone with a George Jetson lifestyle.

That 1 in 300 million number works in our favor, as well. There are 6 billion people or so on the planet. In the last 60 years, there have been 2785 shark attacks, 439 of which were fatal. Massachusetts has one of those. At about 7 fatalities a year, someone else is going to be killed somewhere, and the odds are that it will be somewhere else.

The Wellfleet attack also happened at the very end of our tourist season, especially the Let's Go Swimming part. We had pretty much already juiced the tourists this year, and the next round is 8-9 months away. Our wound has time to heal.

That also buys us time to work on solutions. It will be tempting for pols to ignore this, and hope that the Wellfleet attack was an anomaly. You'll hear a lot of ideas floated around, some good and some bad.

We really should reverse engineer backwards from a scene where we suffer an attack or two early in the season that crushes Cape Cod tourism, and see where we could have made a difference.

Sharks getting a taste for People Food is only going to be bad for us.

Cape Cod Surf Check, 9/20/18

Former Hurricane Florence was nice enough to kick some surf back at us as she went back out to sea. We sent our people to the Outer Cape on Thursday to see what was what.

Not this person, she just got into one of our shots. We needed someone in the foreground for scale, as Hooper once told Brody.

We started at Coast Guard Beach, in Eastham.

We got out there way after high tide, so the pics have a bit less drama.

The surf on Cape Cod was about a foot higher than the South Shore surf.

Outer Cape seawall 

"The path of the righteous man..."

Surf always.looks better from an angle until it gets really big.

My kid calls this "Potato Chip light"

After Nauset, we were off to Marconi Beach, in Wellfleet. 

We were there hours after high tide, but we did our level best for you.

My phone keeps auto-correcting Marconi Beach into Macaroni Beach... and when I spam it around Facebook, it keeps changing it to Missy Marconi, some girl I went to high school with.

Either way, that's all for today's Cape Cod surf check.

We also did a South Shore Surf Check.

South Shore Surf Check, 9/20/18

Hurricane Florence, in remnant form, gave us some rain before going back out to sea. As an extra parting gift, she sent some surf back to us, bolstered by an East wind. 

This wasn't the kind of surf that tears down cottages or drowns Carolinians, but it made for a good road trip Thursday.

We started in Duxbury, mostly to check on the seawall. The waves were good, but the tide was astronomically low. We saw no chance of damages, but we did take some video.

We then headed to Marshfield. We usually park at the former Charlie's, but decided to try the Ocean Bluff seawall instead. In the background, you can see the tower from which Denzel tossed that terrorist guy in Equalizer II. 

By the time we got there, the worst of high tide had passed. I did get hit by some spray, but I managed to turn away at the last second, so I was totally soaked on the left and perfectly dry on the right.

We were in road trip mode, so we aimed for Scituate. We decided not to stop for pics until we saw a woman collecting sea glass. Fortunately, God shall provide.

We were past high tide, and everywhere in Scituate is a long drive, so we went to Humarock.

I would look up how Humarock got her name, but I am afraid that the answer isn't "Some guy in 1640 set a village boundary by how far he could hum a rock." Any different answer, other than "It's really 'Hummer Rock,' but the Pilgrims changed it" would be a disappointment.

Scituate is always a good show during a storm. I'd do more storm chasing there, but I don't know the nooks and crannies of Scituate like I do with Duxbury. You can perish because of stuff like that in a bad storm, or at least get really drenched and ruin a camera.

Humarock is cool because, if you park well, you can film out of your car window.

We were just warming up... next up, Plymouth. 

Manomet is rocky, and very few locals saw that boulder in the former Bert's and wondered how it got there. Some may ask which storm did it.

My chances of getting hit by a wave were pretty low up by The Lobster Pound, 

Next stop... Sagamore Beach 

Sagamore Beach is either South Shore or Cape Cod, depending on how you define several different areas. She's South Shore today, because we had a lot of Cape Cod pics. You can see that article here in some form.

.......