Tidal Surfing

Recently I was digging through some of my archives and happened upon a copy of the Gloucester, Massachusetts “Summer Sun” from July, 1994, and it reminded me of a story that I had just recently told someone, and it’s just kooky enough to create a short(ish) blog post.

I had recently moved to the Boston area to take a job developing shoes for Saucony and didn’t know anyone and was trying hard to make my own fun in a pretty foreign environment (as green as the Pacific Northwest, but not much relief, very coastal, really hot and humid, and pretty heavily developed).

I realized pretty quickly that my new town was pronounced “Glaw-stah”which is odd because another notable Massachusetts town is called Worchester but is pronounced “”Woostah”, and made even stranger yet because another town south of Boston is Dorchester, which is is pronounced “Dorchestah” instead of “Doostah”” So it goes.

I was out for a bike ride one day around the Gloucester peninsula enjoying the coastal cruise and rode across a bridge that covered the inlet/outlet for the bay and was surprised to see that not only there was a bunch of current flowing under the bridge, but it also formed a pretty nice little standing wave. I was somewhat familiar with the concept of a tidal wave (not to be confused with a tsunami!) because I knew about the famous Skookumchuck wave in British Columbia (I still haven’t been there yet!) that is based on the same principle: tides create flows into and out of bays and inlets depending on the ebb (retreating to the ocean) and flow (coming up), and at constrictions they basically become rivers that behave like rivers and have standing waves when there’s the right amount of water moving at the right amount of speed over rocks that are the right depth (a complicated equation). Of course, what I was looking at under the bridge on my road ride was about a foot high; most definitely not the 20 foot monster that’s the Skookumchuck! But the prospect of a little wave to surf for a few hours a month (tide intensity varies with moon phases, and I correctly guessed that this one needed a “big” tide that in turn corresponded with a near-full moon).

Regardless of the size and relatively infrequent nature of this little find, I was pretty psyched for the opportunity, and figured that if I showed up there about the same time the next day I could watch it form and see how long it went. So one day hence I loaded my kayak, drove to the bridge, got out and saw….flatness. A leaf was floating on the surface and was moving ever so slightly into the bay….until it slowed, stopped, and started flowing the other direction, despite no breeze (it was oppressively hot and still). Patiently I waited and soon enough the leaf was gone and there was visible current that gradually picked up speed, and sure enough a teensy little wave started to form, so I pulled the boat off the car, wriggled into my gear, and by the time I was ready there was a surfable wave! Yep, it was small and didn’t have much in the way of dynamics, and on a real river I’d probably go for a coupla rounds and head downstream, but I was in my boat surfing away only ten minutes from my house, and I was pretty excited about it,

Along with the little wave was a little eddy, so I was able to surf it for a while and ‘rest” (it wasn’t very strenuous!) by sliding over into the eddy, and once when I did so I noticed a guy taking pictures of me from the bridge. He looked like a bit of a stereotypical reporter that you might see in a movie from the 50’s, with a rumpled hat with a pen stuck in it and equally rumpled coat despite the heat. At one point I slid back into the eddy and he came trundling down to me and said “hey, this is great! You been doing this long?” and he seemed to be pleased that I was new to town and had just discovered this little gem. He asked me my name and I told him, and asked his: “I’m Bot!” Huh? Bot? “Yeah, Bot! Bot! B-A-R-T. BOT!” Ah so. Welcome to New England, where Gloucester is Glawstah, Worchester is Wooster, and Dorchester is Dorchestah! Turns out that Bot was a photographer for the local paper, and much to my surprise the next day there was a full page color photo of me happily “Riding The Waves” by “oaring” my kayak:

Earlier that summer I had ventured up into southern New Hampshire by myself to catch a fun section of river that was going during a rain event and had the good fortune to bump into a great guy and solid paddler who’d been a fixture in the New England whitewater community for many years who happened to have the fun nickname of “Yuk Yuk.” He was a barrel-chested guy who had a quick and huge laugh that was reminiscent of another couple of Massachusetts legends, Click and Clack of NPR’s beloved “Car Talk” (here’s a clip of them laughing; you only need a few seconds to get it, but it’ll put a smile on your face), hence the fun nickname.

Soon after I got my several seconds of fame on the front page of the Gloucester Summer Fun, Yuk Yuk called and asked if I wanted to join him on a trip up to Maine to paddle the Kennebec (the link is a random clip poached from the interwebs) on one of their dam-release weekends. Wow, I actually had a new friend inviting me on a trip! Of course I agreed, and when I connected with Yuk Yuk he had a friend with him named John, who was an equally-seasoned New England kayaker and coincidentally was from….Gloucester! As we were chatting getting to know each other I asked “hey, have you ever paddled that little tidal wave thing under the bridge? It’s pretty fun!” He stared at me for a second, and then exclaimed “You’re the guy! I have been surfing that wave for 25 years and nobody has ever noticed, even though I literally have a sea kayak rental business on the Cape, and you show up and get on that wave one time and you end up on the front page of the paper!” Well, I guess I was lucky enough to have made an impression on Bot from Glawstah at the right time!

I had a great weekend paddling with those two old coots on the Kennebec and hung with them both a few more times before I left New England some months later, and subsequently lost contact with Yuk Yuk and heard that John died of cancer a coupla years later. I wasn’t sorry to leave New England but had a bit of a soft spot in my heart for those guys and “my” own little personal wave.