Tag: Eastham

Bouncy 2 hour row

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Tuesday:  I went for another nice walk.  This time a bit closer to low tide.  Again, Itraced out the water’s edge.

 

Here is Monday and Tuesday’s walk superimposed.

Screen Shot 2018-07-04 at 12.57.42 PM

It was about a 5km walk.  My wife and I went into Wellfleet for lunch and some exploring, so no row in the afternoon onTuesday.

Wednesday, July 4:  2 hour row

On the right morning, I would really like to row down to Rock Creek Harbor.  Today was not the day.  I would need nice flat conditions, no wind, or a light breeze from the east, and close to high tide.  Today there was a wind from the northwest and nearly low tide.  The coast off of Eastham is really a huge sand flat goes out a mile or more from shore.  That means that when there is an onshore breeze, the chop really piles up, and I was essentially trying to row across it.  It was slow, tough going.

But I get ahead of myself.  I knew that today would be a reasonably busy day, and I wanted to do a long row.  I knew that I would be rowing around low tide, but I figured it would work out OK.

I launched from  the north beach on Loagy Bay and headed out following the deep water as near as I could tell.  I rowed west until the big rock was on my beam, and then I turned south.  These first two parts were great fun.  Light wind, flat water.  But as soon as I hit the shoals off of Eastham (at 28 mimutes in the time plot), things got a lot more difficult.  The chop became much steeper and more irregular, the water was less than 2 feet deep.  I don’t know if it was my imagination, but rowing in the shallow water made the boat feel heavier.  It was certainly slower.  On the plus side, every now and then I could see lobsters crawling along the sand.  Some of them were big!

The goal for today was a 2 hour row, so I slogged along until I reached the 1 hour mark.  When I turned around, I was hoping that the wind would be a bit behind me, but it seemed like it was still right on my beam, and I was still rowing beam on to the waves.  I experimented with rating up and that seemed a bit more effective in these cross seas.  I steered a bit farther off shore on the way north, at least at first.  Ultimately I turned back  to the northeast and this was a bit easier going with the waves on my stern quarter.

I kept going this way until I spotted the big rock.  I had come a fair bit too far onshore, and I needed swing around and row out to the rock.  I could see my oar blades stirring up the sand on the bottom.  I swung around the rock and headed in to channel on the north side of the island.  I managed to lose the channel and had to get out and walk to find the way to go to get back to the beach.

Screen Shot 2018-07-04 at 7.48.30 PM.png

          Workout Summary - media/20180704-1555230o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|20744|131:21.0|03:10.0|000.0|21.9|142.5|158.0|07.2
W-|19870|120:08.0|03:01.4|000.0|21.7|143.5|158.0|07.7
R-|00881|11:13.0|06:22.1|000.0|24.1|132.3|158.0|02.4
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|05138|27:15.0|02:39.1|000.0|20.3|137.4|151.0|09.3 nice water
02|05007|32:13.0|03:13.0|000.0|21.4|141.5|149.0|07.3 shallow choppy
03|05246|33:57.0|03:14.1|000.0|22.4|145.7|154.0|06.9 choppy way home
04|01958|11:56.0|03:02.8|000.0|23.1|148.2|154.0|07.1 after water break
05|00401|02:36.0|03:14.4|000.0|21.9|151.5|155.0|07.1 
06|01661|09:36.0|02:53.4|000.0|22.1|151.8|158.0|07.8
07|00458|02:35.0|02:49.2|000.0|20.5|141.3|149.0|08.6

Very tired after this.

Here are the last 4 rows that I have done to the south.

  • Blue:  90 minutes, hot, flat water (launched from stairs)
  • Green:  70′ row, launched from stairs.
  • Yellow: 80′ row, tough northerly wind
  • Red:  Today, 120′ row, launched from beach, low tide, choppy

Screen Shot 2018-07-04 at 7.40.14 PM.png

Today’s row was about 20.5km, and 120 minutes.  Rock Harbor is about 12km from the bottom of the stairs, so I think on the right day, I could totally make the run.

Great day! – Walking and rowing

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After I got up this morning and had breakfast, I decided to go for a walk.  It was low tide, which is a blast because the sand flats are exposed and you can see all kinds of marine life.

I headed down the stairs from our deck and headed straight out to the water’s edge.  Then turned south.  My first goal was to walk to the rock that I nearly hit going down to Eastham.

Here it is about an hour after low tide.  It’s hard to get a sense of scale, but the rock is about 8 feet tall and 16 feet long.  It’s a big rock.

2018-07-02 10.37.52

I then continued to walk along the edge of the water.  The tide was coming in, so the shore was receding visibly as I walked.  But I had never really walked all along the south edge of the sand flats before and I was eager to explore.  I ultimately decided to try to find my way to the tidal creek that runs under the little bridge to our island.

Along the way I saw some really nice shore birds.  I think the white one was an Egret and the pair was, I think, Willets.

I had a couple of false starts as I went into streams that turned into dead ends in the marsh.  As I got further along, the sand turned to mud and at times I was buried to the middle of my calves, making slow progress.  Ultimately I found the creek and it was about 6 inches deep with a nice sandy bottom.  I was able to rise off all the muck.

As I got close to the bridge, I found a little tidal pool off to the side of the stream and there were 3 horseshoe crabs in it swimming around.

I made it to the bridge and walked back across the causeway, and then out to the Loagy Bay Beach.  I then followed the north shore of the island back around to the house.

Here’s the whole path.  It was just over 6km.

Screen Shot 2018-07-02 at 10.22.01 PM.png

The last bit was really sunny and the southerly breeze was entirely blocked by the island.  It was hot and the sand was soft.  I was pretty sweaty by the time I got home about an hour a twenty minutes after I started.

We chilled out at the house for most of the day, and then around high tide, I decided to go for a row.  I can launch from our stairs at high tide, so I did that and headed south.  The wind was in the process of swinging from the SSE to the SSW as I went.

I followed the shore of the island on my way south to give a wide berth to that damn rock (and also because the marsh is fun to look at).  Once I was well into the bay, I turned and followed the south shore out nd then turned to follow it.

That took about 20 minutes or so.  I decided that I would row south and turn at the 40 minute mark.  With a more direct course and a tail wind, I figured I would end up with a nice 70 minute row.

I watched my heart rate on the way south and tried to keep it around 150 or so.  When I turned, I stopped and drank half a liter of water.  Then I headed home.  The tail wind was pleasant because it lightened up the load.  But I missed the cooling breeze.  The chop was pretty big, maybe 12″ and the boat wakes would interact with it in unpredictable ways.  I experimented with different stroke rates and focused on clean finishes and keeping my blades clear of the wave tops.  It’s a lot more press down than I am used to in my Fluid.  The waves were pushing me around a bit and I had to do a lot of steering to stay on track.  Now the goal was to head directly back to my launch point and not run into the rock.

Mission accomplished.  I spotted the rock off on my starboard bow, about 100m away.  I turned toward the island and back to the stairs.  I stopped a bit offshore, got my feet out of the straps, and undid the nuts on the oarlocks.  It can be a bit hectic with the waves bouncing the boat around at the bottom of the stairs.  I paddled in like that and made a clean landing.  I was just in time.  The rocks around the base of the stairs were almost exposed and would have made landing a lot harder if I had pushed the time much further.

Screen Shot 2018-07-02 at 10.51.43 PM.png

          Workout Summary - media/20180702-2150230o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|12609|78:13.0|03:06.1|000.0|22.1|147.9|162.0|07.3
W-|12169|69:46.0|02:52.0|000.0|21.0|149.9|162.0|08.3
R-|00442|08:28.0|09:34.7|000.0|31.6|131.8|162.0|00.9
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|02113|12:32.1|02:57.9|000.0|20.2|142.9|153.0|08.3 - into current
02|04542|26:16.9|02:53.6|000.0|20.6|149.4|154.0|08.4 - with current at first
03|05513|30:57.0|02:48.4|000.0|21.6|153.2|162.0|08.3 - tail wind

As usual, the hardest work of the outing was carrying the boat back up the stairs.

A great day!