Surf Check: Ian Remnants, Duxbury and Marshfield

 

Hurricane Ian did most of his work in the Confederacy, but he left a little bit of soup for Massachusetts. We got up on the South Shore last Sunday to see what was what.

Marshfield, long ago, made the unfortunate decision to build a business district on the low ground in a Splashover Zone. Marshfield doesn't get chopped off the mainland like Duxbury does, and they don't get on TV like Scituate does, but they lead the South Shore in Splashover Flooding. There's really not a second place.

We would greatly appreciate any comments to the effect of which local iconic restaurant floods the worst, as well as which local restaurant is the best to safely watch a storm from.

For most of my life, the flooding one was a two horse race between Arthur & Pat's in Brant Rock and Bert's in Plymouth. Offhand, I'd list Bert's, the Gurnet Inn or the Fairview as the best place to watch a storm, but I don't drink much and any good boozer could probably increase my list tenfold. Cape Cod, by my own conservative estimate, has 3 zillion such places.

Bert's was famous for rebuilding around a giant boulder which was thrown through the wall during the Blizzard of '78. Arthur and Pat's was famous, to me, because when my parents died, the waitress there heard about it somehow and would overrule my future breakfast orders if they weren't healthy enough. Me having breakfast there was very much like a more motherly version of that Hell Or High Water diner scene where they Texas Rangers meet a colorful waitress who asks them "What don't you want?"  Bert's and A&P are both closed now.

Stats wise, none too impressive. Ian spent himself elsewhere. Winds were 20-30 mph with higher gusts, the surf was around that big (points at above picture). The rain was done by morning. 

Marshfield has a lot of good places to watch storms from. I tend to use this one, because I'm not parking on someone's side street, the Equalizer tower looks really cool in the background and you can see houses getting sprayed.

Another place I like to watch storms from is Duxbury Beach. The iconic Public Stairs were rebuilt (after a 2018 seawall snafu) so that you can hide behind a north wall and shoot south as waves break around you. It rules, right up until 100 gallons of splashover comes over the top onto your favorite wave-watcher.

I spent an hour waiting for this dude's stairs to wash away. My man, however, had the last laugh on ol' Bo. They were still up when I left for Marsh Vegas. The ocean generally has the final say in these scenarios, however.

A bad storm will rip stairs down and wash them south on the beach past the end of the seawall. A really bad storm will put them way down the beach, past the Powder Point Bridge. Sometimes, the stairs are never seen again.

Someone must have removed it by now, but there was once a washed-away beach volleyball post sticking up out of the water off Ocean Road South. It was past the low tide mark, and looked destined to cripple a water-skier or sink a Chris Craft. I don't see it these days, so it was either removed, cut down... or it washed out a little deeper.

I read a science paper which I foolishly failed to bookmark, but it says that Duxbury Beach's coastline is designed in a manner which means that they never really get waves bigger than 6 feet. That is true, although it is false during major events with a lot of storm surge. I'd assume that the scientists are aware of this, and view waves washing over water piled up at the seawall as "cheating."

Duxbury Beach in the 70s and 80s had a unique sport... Death Runs. I could probably do a whole article on it, but only like a dozen people would be interested.

What we call a Death Run involves a storm worse than this, waiting for a good cycle of waves, picking your spot and then breaking from one set of stairs to the next one down the beach between waves. Note that the sand level on the seawall on this beach is generally lower than it is in these shots. Physically, a successful Death Run was very much like how one steals a base in baseball.

If you did it well, you went down one set of stairs as a wave hit the wall and washed back, and would be up the next set of stairs before the following wave, uhm, followed. If you did it poorly, you got caught between the stairways as a wave hit.

This left you with two options. One involved grabbing the top of the wall and trying to pull yourself up. Playing off the base-stealing theme we explored earlier, a bad Death Run involved elements one would see when a soldier or an American Ninja Warrior tries to get over an obstacle course wall.

The other option was to cower, cover your head and take your medicine. This involved having a huge ocean wave smash you off the seawall. 

It's funny. I was a pretty happy kid. I was raised well, I had good friends and lots of toys. I also needlessly risked my life for fun. I wouldn't dream of doing it now, even though "now" I am older, nihilistic, frequently depressed and chock full o' drugs.

That's not really true, though. I thought about it yesterday, for a moment. The storm wasn't so bad and the seawall would be an easy climb, even with my rhino-like vertical leap. If the storm was worse, I would have done it. Set the camera up, roll the dice, see how the old man fares as he snatches one last fistful of childhood... I can think of worse deaths. The camera, if recovered, would provide me with a cool Blair Witch found-footage legacy.

I'm not sure if Death Runs are unique to Duxbury Beach, but the odds favor it. Green Harbor's seawall is too high to grab the top of from the beach. Brant Rock and Ocean Bluff's beaches are too rocky. Rexhame and Fieldston, it can be done. Scituate and Plymouth (which have a lot of sand cliffs) have lower seawalls to some degree, I think Cohasset has the wrong sort of seawall and Nantasket is too rocky. 

My niece told me that the sport was still practiced there until the 2010s.

Probably would have got soaked on that Death Run, even if I could jump like Dominique Wilkins.

I grew up on Ocean Road North, and my world view had a sort of ORN tinge. This leads me, as a journalist, to favor ORN over Ocean Road South when I storm-chase.

However, ORN now has a much higher seawall, and the Public Stairs have a wall that shields a photographer from wind/rain/spray from the North.

Therefore, we shall be shooting to the south a lot, and ORS gets some love.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday will continue to have E/NE winds, large surf and roving photographers. We may go to the Cape today, I sort of go wherever the wind pushes me.