In response to Katie Theoharides article Everyone Should Have Access to Chappy Beaches, I am absolutely stunned by the Trustees lack of awareness and understanding of the island which is home to this fragile and increasingly threatened beach.

First of all to say that the attempt to limit access is driven by a small group of Cape Pogue residents, who want to have their own “private beach” is not only incorrect, it is also absurd and quite frankly very disrespectful. Cape Pogue residents are concerned because poor Trustees management of the area has resulted in cars driving willy nilly all over their properties. A legitimate gripe.

I am 73 years old and have been enjoying that beach as a seasonal resident and then a full-time resident for all of those years. I have probably been out to East East, Cape Pogue and/or Wasque literally hundreds of times. Never once did I come out with an OSV sticker attached to my car. Yes, you heard that correctly. Never.

I have always felt that driving on that beach was damaging to the beach, its vegetation and wildlife. There are perhaps a handful of times that I have come out with someone else in a car, once with Chris Kennedy to see the snowy owl and help pick up trash. For the most part, however, we have gone out in our little Boston whaler, as well as sailed, kayaked and walked.

As a younger person, I remember that passage on the bay side was rarely limited because of high tide. Today it is basically a given. There were, in addition to the bay side and ocean side routes, three interior routes. Now there is one with very little space for cars to pass one another. There simply isn’t room anymore for a major thoroughfare for cars.

To assume that limiting vehicle access excludes everyone from enjoying the beach is ridiculous. Might the Trustees consider bringing back their tour buggies, meeting people several times a day at the ferry and driving them out with various drop offs the length of the beach? It might not generate quite the revenue as the stickers, but they could still charge and reap the benefit.

That said, there is a critical piece of this equation which the Trustees seems to ignore completely. That is the impact of up to 300 cars per day on our Chappy Ferry. The ferry is our lifeline. People use it to get to work, to get groceries, to see doctors and other essential reasons. It is a three-car ferry and each trip takes between five and seven minutes. You can do the math, but an additional 300 cars, according to my calculations, would mean 8 to 11 hours of ferry time, hence ferry waiting time.

I’m wondering if Ms. Theoharides has tried sitting in the ferry line on a summer day. It’s not fun, especially when you have perishable food in your car.

Some people contend that the beach traffic doesn’t make that much difference. Anecdotally, I can share with you that a couple of summers ago on a very hot, over 90-degree Sunday, I came back from town on foot because I did not want to spend two hours in the ferry line. As it happened, the beach was closed due to the nesting birds, and the ferry line was exactly 0 cars. Admittedly, there were no landscapers on a Sunday so that could factor in somewhat.

In short, this is not just a normal beach in a normal community and the Trustees need to understand that in deliberating how much this beach should be opened up to vehicles. It is part of a community and they cannot ignore the ferry problem. Once they get over their “as many cars as we want or else” thinking, then perhaps we as a community can work together more smoothly and efficiently and come up with a creative, happier solution for everyone involved.

No one is trying to exclude anyone from accessing the beach. We just need to address the idea that access is entirely dependent on cars, and address that problem for the sake of the beach as well as the ferry, before the beach is gone entirely.

The Rev. Cynthia Hubbard.