April 19, 2007
Breaking point
By DOUG FRASER
and HILARY RUSS
STAFF WRITERS
CHATHAM - By yesterday morning, Orleans Park Superintendent Paul Fulcher had found that the break in North Beach discovered on Tuesday was a channel 50 feet wide and 3 feet deep at low tide.
By the afternoon's high tide, it appeared to have widened to a half-mile, as seen from Scatteree Landing, across Pleasant Bay.
The spring northeaster caused beach erosion and crumbled foundations across the Cape and Islands. This home at 25 Sheep Pond Road on Nantucket fell off the side of an eroded embankment after the powerful storm.
(Staff photo by Ron Schloerb)
Against a chaotic backdrop of boiling whitewater and breaking waves, two clumps of lonely cottages squatted helplessly on the sandy barrier beach, looking perilously close to being overwhelmed.
A knot of onlookers gathered to shoot some videotape, or a quick photo, or simply stare at the awesome tableau. ''There was a dune there this morning,” Chatham resident and fisherman Alan Hastbacka shouted over the wind, pointing to the middle of the break. ''There's none there now.”
It seemed like geological history repeating itself.
''I was here for the other one (the Chatham Break in 1987) and this is a lot more,” said Chatham resident Craig Phillips, watching from the landing. ''That was just a little trickle we could walk across. Nothing like this.”
So it went for other majestic vistas on the Cape and Islands after the weekend northeaster.
Off the western edge of Nantucket, Esther Island is an island once again. Once part of Nantucket, it was sheared off by wind and waves after Hurricane Esther in 1961. In the ensuing years, it had filled in and rejoined the bigger island.
On Martha's Vineyard, a 200-yard gash broke the beach at Norton Point beach, a 2½ mile stretch that protects Katama Bay and connects Chappaquid#^&#^&#^&#^& by land to the Vineyard.
''The last time Katama Bay was open to the ocean was 1968,” said David Belcher, superintendent for 20 years of the Trustees of Reservation on Chappaquid#^&#^&#^&#^&, which manages Wasque Reservation for Dukes County. ''It's an act of mother nature. It's never been opened on purpose.
''There's nothing you can do about it. In some respects, it's good for the ecology of Katama Bay. It sort of flushes things out,” he said. ''Historically, these things usually will heal up by themselves.”
With eroding sand came crumbling foundations. One home at 25 Sheep Pond Road on Nantucket, just east of Esther Island, fell off the side of an eroded embankment, said Nantucket Fire Chief Mark McDougall.
Coastal geologist Jim O'Connell the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Sea Grant Program doubted the new break in Chatham would remain open once the storm waves subside, although he said he had not seen it. Sand scraped off the big coastal dunes by waves hitting the Eastham and Wellfleet beaches to the north is carried by currents to the south, he said.
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And, the big Chatham Break to the south draws out so much water that he believes there isn't enough flow to also flush out the new break.
Kevin Eldredge' family owns Backlash, one of the North Beach camps in what is known as First Village. His grandfather built the camp in the 1920's and five families, including grandchildren, share it. Waves towered higher than the roof lines yesterday and Eldredge worried that the break might be permanent and not allow those owning the camps to the south anything other than boat access.
He loves being there at New Year's. ''The sky is so big and beautiful in the winter. You feel like you're on another planet.”
Doug Fraser can be reached at
dfraser@capecodonline.com. Hilary Russ can be reached at
hruss@capecodonline.com. (Published: April 19, 2007)
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