Sailing The Reach
The rushing ebb tide takes me out faster than the wind can take me in, so I come about and sail along the shoreline at a beam reach. Heading for the mile marker east of the tideway, I pass the spot where the Chatham Lightship once anchored. Not every lighthouse was land-based in the early to mid-1900s. The Boston shipping magnates, who controlled the lanes from New York to Bangor, grew tired of having their frigates and tankers wash up in pieces along the banks of the Outer Cape, so they thought it prudent to anchor a floating lightship to better warn away vessels from Chatham’s ever-shifting shoals.
I try imagining what it must have been like for a crew of three afloat on nothing more than a glorified tugboat held in stays by twin, four-ton mushroom anchors. It would h
