Surf Check: South Shore, Cape Cod

A storm offshore stirred up the surf for Massachusetts. 

We checked Sagamore Beach out Thursday night..

We hit Scituate an hour before high tide on Friday morning.

The gods were not pleaed with Scituate, as she was taking heavy hits. Scituate an hour before high tide was as bad as Marshfield directly at high tide.

I will eventually do a full high tide at Scituate, but today we were shootin' and scootin'.

Next stop, Marshfield.

We were in Vegas at high tide.

I actually stayed dry on this one, but visibility was reduced to 25 feet.

Marshfield is always good in storms, be it Ocean Bluff or Brant Rock.

I actually got sea-sprayed through an open window in Vegas today.

We stopped at The Coffee Shack for a linguica bagel, then it was off to the next stop...

Duxbury!

Duck Town is where I try to end up for high tide. I can park on a hill, and I can hide behind someone's shed when I shoot. I didn't even try to get down to Ocean Road North.

Mostly because stuff like that was happening on Ocean Road North.

As we mentioned in a prior article, we were very lucky that this storm didn't arrive a week later, when we have 11 foot tides.

The DBC is the southern anchor of Nor'easter Alley, a stretch of coastline running from Duxbury to Hull.

The blocker in the seawall opening held up, but plenty of water splashed over the wall.

Wetted

I was soaked to the bone when I was in Scituate, which is why none of the Scituate pics are from closer than 25 feet from the seawall. Duxbury was no problem.

There were some genuinely large waves 100 yards offshore, but we had a long ride to our next vantage point...

Eastham!

Fortunately for storm chaser types, Nauset Light Beach had a high tide 2 hours later than Brant Rock. A well motivated crew can reach both at the right time.

The Outer Cape sees larger waves than a Scituate or a Hull does. It's just very sand-duney out there, and people don't build on the waterline as much. Duxbury has waves breaking on houses, so we usually concentrate our photographic firepower on the South Shore. Still, the Cape rocks.