Seal Watching out of Chatham, MA

Yesterday we had a window of good enough weather (no sun mind you) to get out on the water for an adventure with Beachcomber seal tours. The company is located in Chatham, at the elbow of Cape Cod.

As you can see, Cape Cod is shaped like a flexing arm, with Provincetown at the fist. We spend most of our time on the forearm between Eastham and Wellfleet, so it was a nice change to venture south to the more populated elbow. It was kind of a last minute decision and we felt fortunate to get a reservation on the 2 pm boat tour that leaves from an inland location at Chatham Boats.  

A trolley took us and about 12 other passengers to Ryder Cove where we boarded the boat.

After cruising slowly out of Ryder Cove, past Strong Island and many large, classic Cape waterfront homes...

we approached a sand bar where hundreds of grey seals rested.

We putted slowly up and down the sand bar several times, close enough to get some interesting shots.

Our captain/guide told us these were a mix of males and females...

the males being larger and solid dark brown and the females being smaller and speckled.

They made sounds that in chorus were kind of eerie, like a cross between singing and the wind blowing. Occasionally you'd hear a roaring single voice raised above the rest at a moment of some altercation.

There was lots of jockeying going on for space, our guide explained, because the males don't like to be touching one another. If they get too cozy they have to negotiate with their neighbors for territory on the small sandbar.

After viewing the seals for awhile, our captain showed us a few of the other local sights around the bay. On one of the larger sand bars there was some kind of an event (funeral, wedding, concert, party?) going on with boats parked nearby, lots of people gathered. You can just see one of two speakers they had mounted near the center of this picture among the standing people.

We motored by the Chatham Light as well, and popular Chatham Light Beach.

The day was overcast but not cold, thank goodness, because it was pretty windy out there. The rain held off until late at night, when we got some pretty heavy thunderstorms.  We joined our friends Beryl and Ray for BBQ at Marconi Beach Restaurant on Rt. 6 in Wellfleet. I think there are more restaurants, bakeries and delis here than anything else. You gotta eat, even when it rains, right?

Today it is cloudy again, with rain threatening - a perfect opportunity to work on the blog. We'll have our friends over for dinner tonight, for some more good times. Maybe a salad would be nice to balance out all this heavy restaurant food.