Edgartown Harbor freezes up surprisingly quickly. This past Saturday evening, there was a skim of saltwater slush around the calmer edges of the waterfront. At dawn Sunday morning, there was a loose pack of slush and pancake ice completely filling the area that the Chappy Ferry operates within. We waited until the sun rose so that we could see clearly what was out there. A slow trip over to Chappy presented no difficulties. But I had the feeling that this was just the beginning of harbor ice. We switched ferryboats since the On Time 2 has a more protected propeller and I didn’t want the new coat of bottom paint on the On Time 3 to get scraped off by the ice.
On the first trips, the On Time 2 left behind streaks of blue bottom paint on the edge of the ice sheet. Over the last year, a fringe of sea weed had grown thick at the ferry boat’s water line. After an hour of pushing aside thickening slush and small floes, the blue paint looks shiny and new. All went well running back and forth through the loose pack ice until suddenly the current began gushing in, bringing lots more and bigger ice floes from the outer harbor, packing them in tightly. Halfway back to town, the ferry was unable to make any progress through the now very dense pack. Along with that, the current was carrying the ferryboat sideways into the harbor at about the speed that it usual travels through the water.
Capt. Becca Lamarche determined that her only choice was to head back to Chappy. After nearly half an hour of pushing, shoving, backing down and rushing ahead, she finally was able to arrive at the corner of the ferry parked in the spare slip. Getting into the Chappy slip was not possible. The drivers of the two pickup trucks now stranded on the ferry opted to go home to wait until the ice opened back up. A couple of hours later when the current began flowing out it did just that. The ferry resumed its voyage to town and the abandoned vehicles were put in the Wharf parking lot.
During the time that the ferry was stuck in the ice, plan B was put into effect by the fire chief. The Edgartown Fire Department rescue boat, tied up at North Wharf, had a clear path of open water all of the way over to the first piers on the Chappy side. Fire and EMT personnel had access by foot to the apparatus on Chappy.
It is not possible to predict when the pack ice will return in enough concentration to stop the ferry. The breach has complicated the direction of current flow relative to the tides. Recently, the current has continued to flow into the harbor for a couple of hours after high tide when it should have begun flowing out.
Potential trouble lies ahead for us when the ice in Katama Bay, Caleb’s Pond and Cape Pogue Bay thaws and flushes out. Back in 2015, that was the ice that packed so tightly into the ferry run that we used an excavator on board the ferry to clear a path. The ice bergs were a foot thick and the size of a pool table. Keep your fingers crossed that the warm weather comes with a southerly breeze.
This article appears in February 6, 2026.