So tell me about Westwall....

[Patrick]

Saw the picture on the front page there and I gotta say it looks interesting.

About how long is West Wall? I can't see any ends to that thing.

Where is West Wall? Do you need an offroader to get to it?

And, how high does the water get? I can see the barnacle and water fauna only grows up to a certain point. Does the water come over it? Does it ever come up in certain points? I'm asking this because I don't want to go out and find that I'm trapped out there until the tide lowers.

How about wave action? Do the waves crash over it or what? I don't see too much waves there but I don't know if snapped the photo at a sedated time.

And finally, would it look silly if I wore a life preserver? I have some type III PFDs. This summer I plan on fishing some of the rock piles down in OC MD and the tip of their Inlet jetty. Drowning is perhaps the worst way to die and I'm not going out like that. I was thinking I could secure some light sticks to it and if I got washed off, I could snap them. and maybe put a whistle on a retracting lanyard. Can't be too careful.

[JohnR]

[img=http://www.striped-bass.com/Images/ww416b1a.jpg]

Patrick (04-17-2001 01:04):
Saw the picture on the front page there and I gotta say it looks interesting.

About how long is West Wall? I can't see any ends to that thing.

Where is West Wall? Do you need an offroader to get to it?

And, how high does the water get? I can see the barnacle and water fauna only grows up to a certain point. Does the water come over it? Does it ever come up in certain points? I'm asking this because I don't want to go out and find that I'm trapped out there until the tide lowers.

How about wave action? Do the waves crash over it or what? I don't see too much waves there but I don't know if snapped the photo at a sedated time.

And finally, would it look silly if I wore a life preserver? I have some type III PFDs. This summer I plan on fishing some of the rock piles down in OC MD and the tip of their Inlet jetty. Drowning is perhaps the worst way to die and I'm not going out like that. I was thinking I could secure some light sticks to it and if I got washed off, I could snap them. and maybe put a whistle on a retracting lanyard. Can't be too careful.

BTW - That is a real Jetty...

OK, the Wall is probably 1/4 mile long but only the first third is of interest at this time of year...

It's pretty dry and the water does not come across the top. If you have a good cranking SW wind for a few days the waves will make alot of high spray and you will get wet but you'll never be stranded. The photo was taken at a fairly mellow time and the water had just turned in from low tide about and hour or two before.

The only way you would drown is if you slipped, bashed your head on a rock unconcious, and nobody bothered to save you. The water is not too deep and yes you would look very silly in a Type II and marginally silly in a TypeIII Wski type vest. I would recommend another TypeIII to anyone for seriously nasty conditions of the inflatable variety. Some models, if unconcious, will automatically inflate. Wearing something like that is not a laughing matter. But if you were to show up in a bright orange with a throw cushion strapped to your butt, expect a chuckle or three... ;P

[Patrick]

You don't want the type that automatically inflates. What it is, is a tablet of minerals that dissolves in water so if you get caught out in the rain, get sprayed by wash or even if it is high humidity, expect that sucker to go off. That's why I prefer the old stand by Type III PFD. The thing about type III is if you get knocked out, it could put you face up. As opposed to Type II which probably will put you face up and Type I that will keep you face up. But Type IIIs are the least restrictive unless you count type V Hybrids. Or I might go with a jacket type. Looks like a normal jacket but has floats in it. Plus the ones made by Stearns are quite warm and feature a Neon Red flashing strip on top for easy locating. Best part is it looks like a normal jacket. I take safety pretty seriously as you can see. Especially because I fish alone.

[Fishpart]

If the link works right it should take you to the Harbor of Refuge. The Breakwater to the West is the West Wall on the right is what you will see refered to as Camp Cronin. It is almost under the Point Judith light and that wall takes a beating severe enough to smash part of the wall down.

http://ortho.edc.uri.edu/seamless6.cgi?zoom=32.8&units=feet&x0=321140&y0=10 9324&action=pan&pwidth=400&pheight=550&x=374&y=476

The prevailing breeze is right in your teeth when you fish at Camp Cronin, very often in the summer there is a large population out there with coolers and lanterns. If you ever run short of snelled hooks on wire leaders it is a sure place to get some without having to go to the store.

[JohnR]

The link worked fine - one of my new favorite links actually... MIT moved there similar Mass Ortho pages recently and I've been poking around for the new one...

That link has pretty stinking good resolution down to where I can pick out the tree covered lot that existed before my house was built. Eventually, there might be near real time sats for us regular folks so we can zoom down to our favorite rock 8)

I fished there once when it was pretty snotty out and I almost when in the drink... It's also not as negotiable as the West Wall. There are some significant sections near missing along the way out...

[Fishpart]

I always need to give my brother credit, he is pretty good building web pages and using GIS. He worked with someone from MIT to put it together. I use it quite often to look for ways to places, just wish I could overlay a 1:50000 mapsheet on it and print it out.

[JohnR]

Your brother worked on that site? Two thumbs up as it's pretty slick... I see that the MIT site is back up now for coastal Mass: http://coast.mit.edu/index.html