Harboring: Kingston

Harboring takes us to Kingston today...

This isn't technically a Harbor, and is more of a river... but it has boats, and that's good enough for Cranberry County Online.

This little boat spot is nestled on the lovely Jones River. The Jones River runs between the Bay Farm area and Rooky Nook. Jones runs back to Silver Lake and then enters into the Taunton River Watershed. It drains a pretty good chunk of our reading area.

As you can see, it goes way back into the sticks.

The worst place in the area to walk around at night.

Being on a river introduces certain logistical difficulties. This marina has a 3 Hours Before/After High Tide policy regarding entry into the marina. Otherwise, the river runs shallow, and you get grounded. Exemptions are made for fishermen and old salts, who presumably have more skill and familiarity with the mud flats than the pleasure-craftin' Yachty types. Fishermen get 4 hours leeway.

I should have zoomed in more and clipped that other boat off of the right side, but that's why you can read this for free.

From here, the party moves out into Cape Cod Bay, via the PDK Bay system. P(lymouth) Bay, D(uxbury) Bay and K(ingston) Bay = PDK.

The sides of the river are mud/alluvium, but the bottom is bedrock. They tried to lay power lines across the river into Rocky Nook back in the day, but they had to give it up because they couldn't get through the bed of the river.

I love this boat.

I also have a weak spot for things like personal-use piers.

They lack the giant fishing boats you see in places like Fairhaven or New Bedford, as those boats would have trouble with the river depths.

She actually set sail to raid British commerce during the Revolution, and had orders to avoid direct battle with British warships. They screwed that second part up and inadvertently attacked a British warship (HMS Hope) off of Cape Sable Island in Nova Scotia. HMS Nancy joined the party, and that was all she wrote for Independence.

Independence, captained by Simeon Sampson, was outnumbered two to one in boats, guns and men. They still made a four hour fight of it, and only surrendered after the crew revolted. Sampson ran through several of his own men (who were urging surrender) with his sword before eventually accepting his fate and striking the colors. Independence fought so hard, the British sailors- the undisputed best in the world- cheered the crew of the Kingston-made ship in salute, and their captain refused to accept Sampson's sword in surrender. The sword is in the Kingston town museum, or whatever they call it.

Independence is what the former Independence Mall (I've never wanted to punch a mall before hearing the name "Kingston Collection") was named after, and it is that little boat that you see on the Kingston town seal.

There's actually a Jones River Landing further downriver there, but I'll check them out in some future article. I like to spread out my Kingston work.

If you had the right boat and could convince Martin Sheen to go along, you could go up the Jones River and pretend to be in Apocalypse Now all the way to Silver Lake.

Brown Water Navy

They enjoy spectacular barrier beach protection from Duxbury Beach and Plymouth's Long Beach. They are guarded from whatever gets past those two by Rocky Nook and the Standish Monument part of Duxbury.

Everybody parks nose-in, and the docks don't stretch out past the stern of the boat, so I was unable to pursue my Boat Name fetish in Kingston. If a particularly heavy photographer steps on the ends of these docks, the dock is pushed underwater... or so they tell me.

Little boats!

The multiple barrier beach thing allows you to build very close to the water without a seawall.

The nicely stocked Take A Vest, Leave A Vest stand restored my faith in humanity a little bit.

If they had a Take A Boat, Leave A Boat policy, I'd have had better pictures... OK, I'd have had the same rotten pictures, but from cooler angles.

The Kingston Harbormaster has a cool little beach shack working there.

The area around Rocky Nook, as well as Duxbury Bay and Plymouth Bay, are prime Sand Tiger Shark nursery grounds. Even STS that are born elsewhere will come into the PDK Bay system as juveniles. They are drawn here by the opportunity to feast on bunker/menhaden. They don't/can't eat people and only bite sloppy fishermen, so don't have a panic or anything.

This 4.5 foot tooth machine was caught at the mouth of the Jones River. I asked the Harbormaster, who is the owner of the picture, where the shark was caught. "Right there," he said, pointing towards Rocky Nook. " I wanted more details, and asked "How far offshore?" He smiled the way that people of the seas do to curious landlubbers, pointed more directly to a spot 50 yards from where we stood, and said "No... right there."

That's a nice tangent, as we have an article on River Sharks coming up. 

It really does add variety to a spot where God went a little too heavy with the GREEN crayon.

If you miss the tide cycle, you're hanging out in your boat for 12 hours or swimming/wading in.

Best house in Kingston, for my money.

Cordage Park smokestack, Manomet in the background...

Duxbury, with the Standish Monument barely visible and urging me to update the camera.

Thanks to my man KHM, who showed me around and told me most of the technical stuff in this article. For all the harbors I go to, I'm a bit of an idiot with boats. The only one I ever owned is at the bottom of West Monponsett Lake in Halifax.

Thanks for having us, Kingston!