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It’s
about 22 miles around Cape Ann. The Blackburn
Challenge winners do it in just over 2 hours – if you’re doing it for the
first time, you might want to allow for a more leisurely pace of between 6
and 8 hours.
When planning your
trip, check the tide charts for
Rockport and Gloucester. If you can time the tide so that you
enter the Annisquam on an inbound tide, and exit on an outgoing tide,
you've done the best you can. The
mid-point of the river from a standpoint of "which way does the tide
flow?" seems to be between the railroad bridge and the 128 bridge, so
if you are going clockwise, you want to be there at exactly high-tide. The worst thing to do would be going on
the north stretch of the river against the tide – this is painfully slow.
People in the know say
that the direction (clockwise or counter) is not as big an issue as the
tide. The route shown below goes
counterclockwise, leaving from Rockport
Harbor.
Good luck - bring
plenty of fluids!
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