Cape Cod Canal

In our continuing mission to broaden our readers' knowledge of geography, we bring you the Cape Cod Canal.

Opened in 1914, it runs between Buzzards Bay and Cape Cod Bay, and cuts off 65 sea miles from New York to Boston. You probably don't know about it because another canal that opened in 1914 got all the glory that year.

We carefully checked the current to make sure we could ride it eastward all the way through the canal. Our start time of 7:30am worked out well for us and we picked up the current as we entered the breakwaters at 9:00am.

The yellow line on the map above shows our track from Mattapoisett, through the 7 mile long canal, and across Cape Cod Bay towards Provincetown.

There are three bridges across the canal. This beautiful railroad bridge was the longest lift bridge in America when it was first built, but now there's a longer one near New York.

The bridges all have little blue signs on them with a posted speed limit of 10 miles per hour, or 8.7 kts. Hmmmmm..

At two locations on the canal there are these towers with CCTV cameras, radar, and microwave antennas. I'm thinking someone was watching us as we passed by, and I'm wondering if they can calculate our speed, because we were definitely speeding!

Our speed over the ground here at the railroad bridge was 11 kts, and it got up to 11.7 kts for a bit. I guess we timed the current just right, because we were flying. I wonder if they'll send us a ticket.