Mass Maritime where the Charles W Morgan hung out for a few days before heading home

Nearly 300 years in the making and celebrating its 100^th birthday this year (bet you figured that out), the canal is not as intimidating as you might think. The first idea of a canal is credited to Pilgrim Myles Standish in 1623 but as often happens, bureaucracy kept butting out common sense and thus the canal remained a wishful thought until July 29, 1914. Now that’s a darn long time to wait. August Perry Belmont finally made it happen through foresight and monetary fortitude, not to mention much red tape and the inevitable delays. But how much money can one man have? Even with partners perhaps, he could spend only so much and the resulting canal was a bit narrow. Accidents, strong current and low bridges caused some mariners to opt for the round-about route.

The railroad bridge closed on our tail. Equipment was being removed related to the prior night’s fireworks.

In 1928, the US government bought the canal from Belmont and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers realigned it, built the Bourne and Sagamore bridges to make for an easier transit. Today, it is the world’s widest sea-level canal (480 ft at a minimum) with a total dredged length of 17.4 miles. The section that cuts through the Cape is about 6.5 miles.

Canal Control HQ. Bet it’s not photographed too often

The rules are easy: complete your transit within 2.5 hours, consulting those tide/current tables to have a slack or favorable current. The current can run up to 6kts; that’s more than through Hell Gate in New York’s East River. But no speeding, mind you; 8.5 kts is the stated limit but we zoomed along at 10kts on one engine- maybe we didn’t need the engine after all.

No sailing allowed though, so motor or get yourself towed through. Larger vessels (65ft and over) must hail Canal Control and receive approval prior to entering the canal- one controller really read the riot act to those who messed up on that one!

Vessels going with the current have the right of way. And while you may see people fishing along the banks, fishing off your boat is a no-no.

Back in the Exumas, Farmer’s Cay celebrates their 5Fs (Farmers First Friday February Festival); this year the Cape Cod Canal celebrated its centennial, so 5Cs. The Morgan’s voyage coincided with this celebration. After bidding farewell to the Morgan, we headed up a few miles to anchor behind Mashnee Island in Phinney’s Harbor. The fireworks barges tied up at the west stakes which was near the canal opposite our location, on the west side of Mashnee. Any closer, we’d be on the barge!

Today was a very chatty day on the VHF since the canal was closing to big ship traffic (65ft plus) at noon and to all ships at 7pm. Even on a normal day canal control reprimands a handful of ships who do not know the rules about hailing canal control before entering the canal. With today’s early closure (due to the fireworks) more than one pissed off big boat had to cool their engines for hours until the canal opened again around 10pm. One guy calls around 6pm, gets the bad news, and ok he has an idea; can he tie up at the west stakes? Well no!

The fireworks were quite spectacular and I’d say five stars except, unlike the Sailfest fireworks off New London/Groton, they were not synchronized to music. The fancy railroad bridge that we could see from where we were and is the only one we need to “worry” about had a fireworks display that was somewhat coordinated with the big show.

Today was another cool-ish day (haven’t seen 80F in the past week) but by show time at 9pm the wind was way down and we sat in our chairs at the stern for the show. Lots of local boats came out but not a remarkable amount and we made sure to be well-lit up at departure time.