Harboring: Hyannis Port

Hyannis Port gets the duke today in our Harboring series.

Hyannis Port has a big rep, but a small harbor. HP only has 115 residents, so Proportion enters the equation.

I was kind of hoping for more Sea Cadillac-type boats. 

Wealhy people tend to have more of a sailboat harbor than a Fairhaven-like working harbor. There weren't many tuna boats parked docked at the Hyannis Port Yacht Club.

I was expecting more than one pier. Subtlety is good, but I'm not expecting it from Hyannis Port. At least one Kennedy should own a Superyacht.

I was going to sneak over and get a pic of the Kennedy Compound, but I think I have a warrant and didn't need to bump heads with a very influential family over what would have been a pic as blurry as this one. On the other hand, if you are going to get busted for trespassing, you may as well do so at the infamous Kennedy Compound.

I refer to my cottage as a "Compound" at times. It is 484 square feet.

They probably pulled the boat this high up to keep it from the tide... but it is fun to imagine that some Kennedy whelp made a navigational error and just walked home after.

Thanks for having us, Hyannis Port!

Osterville Nature Check, Armstrong Kelley Park and Skunknett River

I lead a pretty technological/industrial lifestyle, am just smart enough to be aware of it, and try to get out into nature now and then. These are some shots from Armstrong Kelley Park in Osterville.

Armstrong Kelley Park has been around for almost 90 years, and is run by the Cape Cod Horticultural Society.

Among the offerings here are a Garden of Verses, a Pet Memorial Garden, rhododendron, magnolias, cedars, hillside trails and God knows what else. I'm pretty sure that this tree is a Weeping Pine.

I went in June, took a bunch of pics, forgot about them for 2 months... so if you go down there today and the flowers aren't as nice as they look in my pics, I apologize. 

At least one photographer superior to myself has told me that I need to remember to Get Low on some shots. It may have been post-June, however.

If you went to any of my high school teachers and told them that I'd grow up (in a sense) to be a nature photographer, they'd think that you have the wrong guy. When I went back to Duxbury High School to do my student teaching, one teacher who I had as a kid came up to me, asked if I had been in jail since graduation, and- when I answered no- went over and handed a $20 bet payoff to another of my old teachers.

Prolly shoulda zoomed out...

... but, instead, I zoomed IN.

A few poems for you...

God or the gardener went a little Full Rhododendron when designing AKP.

We also trekked over to the Skunknett River Wildlife Sanctuary. "Skunknett" is Algonquin for "a place to fish for eels."

We managed to scare a duck.

Thanks for having us, Osterville!

Harboring: Archives (Still Growing)

Marshfield

Barnstable

Padanaram

Cataumet

Kingston

Fairhaven

Cohasset

Westport

Hyannis Port

Onset

Hull

Monument Beach

Hingham

Sandwich

Marion

Weymouth

Harwich Port

Swansea

Duxbury

Somerset

Buzzards Bay

Chatham

Plymouth

Harboring: Barnstable

We took our Harboring series onto Cape Cod this week, to check out Barnstable Harbor. Barnstable is Cape Cod's largest town.

Barnstable is home to 45,000 souls, many of whom have boats in the water already.

We've sort of been saving Cape Cod for the summer, and our Cape versions of Harboring should have more rich guy boats for us to gawk at.

Barnstable Harbor is a sweet place to roll into. You can do some gift shop action, eat dinner at the Mattakeese Wharf (free plug for them...they let me shoot some pics off the deck), watch the fishermen, cast a line in the water... and perhaps even go on a whale watch, if I'm interpreting that sign above properly.

Barnstable is the whale watch that you want to go on if you want a longer boat ride for your money. If you go from Provincetown, you're there more quickly and don't have to be seasick as long.

This setup also comes in handy if you're a kid used to slipping unwanted dinnertime vegetables to the family dog. If you can get one of those windows open, you can feed crabs, seals, stripers,,,,

I like to think that if you pulled your boat up to the Wharf and managed to pass some money up. they'd do Boat Takeout. If not, they should... parking boats is a pain in the ass, and sometimes you're too drunk to get out.

This diving ban is more for recreational divers instead of suicidal ones. You'd have a hard time killing yourself with a jump off this bridge, you can almost step down from it.

I advocate hanging on for as long as possible.

There are better ways to go, such as taking one of those boats from the picture below and trying to jump a jetty or something like the M/V Iyanough did.

Skiff Row

Barnstable was Wampanoag for thousands of years, and Mr. White showed up in the 1630s. Barnstable has expanded ever since.

She is the regional center, the largest town in both area and population, and is one of the earlier settlements.

Even in the modern era, you can still get a little taste of how the town was founded if you hang around the harbor long enough.

The pilings in Barnstable Harbor suffered mightily during the glacial winter of 2015. They still have a Pisa-style lean to them that you will hardly notice at all unless you roller-skated there.

Cape Cod has strange weather. You don't have to look too hard to find someone old enough to remember a winter where we had no snow, but you also get winters cold enough for iceberg-style activity.

Barnstable Harbor is sheltered by Sandy Neck to the north. Sandy Neck serves as Barnstable's barrier beach, and is invaluable to the health of the region.

Of course, it only goes so far, which is why everything is on stilts around here.

Mattakeese is a Wampanoag sub-group, and the term turns up a lot in eastern Massachusetts. I saw a lot of Mattakeesett usage growing up in Duxbury, and I have seen the term used in other South Shore and Cape Cod areas.

The basic definition is "fields by the harbor," and it fits well enough everywhere they apply it.

The Mattakeese people were also known as Mashpee and Cummaquid, and you see those names all over the area as well.

Sometimes, a little boat is just as much fun as a big boat.

Barnstable Harbor isn't that large. It does have the advantage of Location, however. One can head right out into Cape Cod Bay, or hook into the Canal to try Buzzards Bay,

You also have the navigational advantage of being able to hit a harbor with a pub no matter which way you sail. It may be Maine if you sail North long enough, but that's on you.

Barnstable has a shellfish harvesting operation going, and we hope to visit it later this summer.

Barnstable, although a fairly well off area, had a busier harbor than some I saw in Dartmouth, Wesport and Duxbury. Barnstable... and I was there pre-4th, too.

One of the side gigs when shooting at harbors is finding and shooting rich guy houses.

Owning a giant house with a dock leading to your luxury boats is pretty much the end game you should be planning for, kids.

Even the whales pitch in to advertise on Cape Cod.

... and the fish fish.

Barnstable Harbor on either side of the marina...

Salt Water Lures Show In Bourne

Bourne is sort of Cape Cod's flyover territory for a lot of tourists, but not for the fishermen. Bourne is Fisherman Nirvana.

Bourne is the only town touching both Cape Cod Bay and Buzzards Bay... although to be quite honest, we're not 100% sure that Plymouth doesn't make contact with the upper reaches of the body of water that is Buzzards Bay. That's something for a future article.

You can also cut between those two bays via the Cape Cod Canal, another fishy factor favoring Bourne. This canal, which runs for 5 miles or so, is a fisherman's destination in itself.

Bourne is the home of legendary fisherman Stan Gibbs. He was the uberfisher who designed many of the basic lures that every fishing supplier copies today. His reputation among scholars of salt water fishing lures is similar to the reputation Karl Marx has among Communists. He has his own statue in town, and his legend is everywhere. If you heard the story about someone fishing a cap off of a yachtsmen's head, that was Gibbs. If you hear about a guy who can cast all the way across the Cape Cod Canal, that was also Gibbs.

No matter how you slice it, Bourne is a fisherman's paradise. You can cast from anywhere in town and stand a chance of catching some sort of fish.

It is the repeatedly stated opinion of this column that Bourne should attempt to cash in on all of these factors and exploit the Angler Potential of their numerous and potentially lucrative fishing hot spots.

This could be accomplished via simple things (advertising in the right places, better access, and so forth) and complicated things (construction of fishing piers, etc...) that might pay off if done properly.

I'm not the Answer Man when it comes to how this should be done. There's a reason I am not running Bourne, and instead seemed to have peaked at writing articles about how the town can profit from things like fisherman conventions.

Speaking of which...

The Salt Water Lures Collectors Club is having their annual convention in Bourne this week. Friday is a members-only affair, but they will be open to the public from 8 AM to 3 PM on Saturday.

You can come in and see the top of the line in salt water fishing lures. You can buy, sell or trade. You can also Gawk, which isn't a bad thing to do whenever you are in a room full of experts. If you live on Cape Cod, you should probably try to have some working knowledge of angler-type stuff. If you fish here, you may as well fish with excellent gear.

I mean, you can go down to the ol' fishing hole with some shoddy rubber lure that you got at Wal-Mart if you're not serious about catching fish. There's a reason that they put sandwich shops on the way home from fishing holes.

Orrrrr, you can ante up and get the good ish. These guys (and girls, fish are tasty and fun to catch for both genders) don't mess around. While I am not a member of the Salt Water Lures Collectors Club, it stands to reason that you don't join up to hock junk to people who will know better/be able to spot junk.

The show is happening at the Trowbridge Tavern and Canal Club. The Trow is an excellent place to have dinner, and is a fine spot to fortify yourself with some Fisherman Fuel before heading downstairs to gawk at the goods.

See you there!