Late September on Cape Ann: The Best Water Week
The crowds are gone and the ocean is still warm from August. This is the week we've been waiting for all summer.
By Dotti Maguire
There is a stretch of days in late September when Cape Ann feels like it belongs to the people who live here again, but the water hasn't figured that out yet. The Atlantic is a slow thermometer. It spent all of July and August absorbing heat, and now it holds onto it while the air cools around it. That gap is the whole point of this week.
If you booked a stay right now, you did something quietly smart.
The water is still swimmable
Ocean temperatures around Cape Ann tend to peak in early September and stay in the mid-60s well into the month. That is cold to a Floridian and perfect to a New Englander. Good Harbor at low tide this week is one of the great underrated experiences of the year: warm sand, warm shallows over the sandbar, and maybe twenty other people on the whole beach instead of a thousand. Wingaersheek is the same story with more room to spread out.
Bring a towel, not an umbrella. The sun is lower now and the wind picks up by four. But at one in the afternoon on a clear September Tuesday, it is genuinely summer.
A note on parking: the beach lots are back to shoulder-season pricing and rarely fill. You can decide at breakfast that today is a beach day and it will still work.
Whales are still here
Stellwagen Bank does not empty out on Labor Day. Humpbacks feed here through October, and the boats keep running into the first week of November. Late September trips are often the best of the year: fewer passengers, calmer decks, and the whales are fattening up before the migration south, which means active surface feeding. Cape Ann Whale Watch and 7 Seas Whale Watch are both running afternoon departures this week. Check the morning-of forecast, dress in one more layer than you think, and go.
If fishing is more your speed, Yankee Fleet's fall groundfish trips are hitting their stride. Cod, haddock, pollock. The boat leaves early and it is cold on the ride out. You will not regret the coffee.
Walking weather
This is the best hiking week on Cape Ann, full stop. The bugs are gone. The humidity is gone. The leaves haven't turned yet on the coast (that comes mid-October here, later than inland), so the woods are still green but crisp. Dogtown is quiet on weekdays. Halibut Point in Rockport is at its best in a light overcast, when the granite and the water go the same shade of gray and you can hear the swells hitting the old quarry walls.
Rafe's Chasm out in Magnolia is another one. Twenty minutes in from the road, and you come out onto ledges that drop straight into the Atlantic. Bring proper shoes. The rocks are honest.
What's open, what's closing
Most of the seasonal spots are still going but you can feel them winding down. The Lobster Pool up at Folly Cove is running through the end of October and sunset there this week is worth planning your day around. Little Sister on Bearskin Neck is on weekends-only hours now, Friday through Sunday. J.T. Farnham's out on the Essex causeway is still frying clams and the marsh view is at its September best, all gold grass and blue tidal channels.
Downtown Gloucester is fully year-round and it feels good this time of year. You can walk into Tonno or Short and Main on a Wednesday without a reservation, which was not true a month ago. Franklin Cape Ann is a solid rainy-evening move. For a quieter afternoon, Pleasant Street Tea Co. and Lone Gull are both doing what they do.
The Rockport Farmers Market is still running Saturdays 9am to 1pm at Harvey Park through October 11. Late-season tomatoes, the first hard squashes, apples starting to show up. Go early.
The evenings
Here is the thing nobody tells you about late September on the coast. Sunset is around 6:30 now, which means you can have a full beach day, go back and shower, and still make dinner while it's light out. The evening walk on Bearskin Neck after the day trippers have driven home is one of the small pleasures of living here. The shop windows are lit, the harbor is glassy, and you might see three other people.
Shalin Liu has its fall series underway if you want a proper night out. The Cut in Gloucester has shows most weekends. The Rhumb Line is doing what it always does.
We get maybe two more weeks of this before it tips into real fall. If you're here, use it.
