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Pleasant Bay (or Monomoyik as the natives named it), has shorelines in Orleans, Brewster, Harwich and Chatham. It is one of the largest embayments on the Cape. The main body is more than two miles wide and a mile north to south, while the whole embayment is nearly seven miles north to south. Pleasant Bay's combination of flats, channels, islands and the barrier beach, along with its location directly off the Atlantic Ocean, make its protected waters a premier fishing and waterfowling locale.
Seen on the map (chart 13248), Pleasant Bay has more the shape of a flooded river system than a bay-like hollow in the Atlantic shore. Were it not for the long shore currents that have shaped and reshaped North Beach over the millennia, Pleasant Bay might well appear a more conventional estuary. However, it is because* of the barrier beach, creating Pleasant Bay's elongated north-south shape, that the bay has such diversity. And diversity is good.
Because the Bay has different environments, it can support the wide range of life necessary for a strong and resilient eco-system. This diversity makes the Bay the extraordinarily rich opportunity it is.
The Bay is no simple body of water to navigate. The same shifting channels, flats and tide shaped shorelines that provide optimal cover, forage and propagation areas for fish also create hazards to navigation.
From Meeting House Pond in Orleans to the break at Chatham light, tidal channels appear and disappear, boulders exist without pattern, and miles of open water at high tide become damp sand at low.
The prudent boater will follow some cautious guidelines whenever navigating Pleasant Bay.
$Never outrun your personal knowledge.$ If you haven't been safely over a course at a similar tide recently, be cautious. Don't run so fast that you can't stop for a sudden bar or rock. And I mean sudden.
There are places and times that shallow bars and rocks occur at the ends of 10' deep channels in only a boat length or two. Or the channel may make a 90 degree turn. Same difference.
A few places that come to mind are (see chart): the end of North Beach (I), Minister's Point (II), all four corners of Strong Island (III-VI), both ends of Crooked Channel (VII, VIII), the Narrows (XI, X), Namequoit Point (XI). You get the idea.
The "personal" part of "personal knowledge" above means don't follow some other high speed bloke into trouble. He may not care about his prop or impellor but you do.

$Plan ahead on the tide and the weather.$ Wind plays a big role in Bay tides. The usual breeze is about 14 knots out of the southwest. That same force from the SE can advance the tide an hour or from the north retard the tide by an hour. You might experience changing weather to cause the tide to be identical for three days or always early or late, by hours.
So too, the time of tide is delayed as one motors north from the break. Little Bay is almost three hours behind the break, the main embayment along Rte. 28, about two hours. It is also important to note that Pleasant Bay is aproximately a five hour flood and a seven hour ebb. Shape is everything.

Danger. The set (direction) of the tide at the break can be deceiving to the fisherman afoot in fog. The surface flow of an ebb tide continues to set (east) toward the ocean for much of the first hour of the (inflowing) flood. Imagine standing on a sandbar along the break in thick fog (out of sight of the shore but casting to the fish). The tide slacks, you look down and see the water rising on your waders for flood tide. $The surface current, set, will still be flowing toward the ocean, not inland$! If you were to follow the set "inland" with the tide you would be walking instead toward the ocean! Take a compass to be sure of your return to a shore.

As expected, $moon tides make navigating the Bay more hazardous$ for even the "experienced" visitor. Some channels, such as: Hog Island Creek(A), Crooked(B), the Strong Island run to the camps(C) and inside Minister's Point(D) to the Cow Yard, can become inaccessible on the ebb tide.
This means that if you are in one of these places at ebb, you may not get out for an hour or two. Its best to consult your chart and watch out for water shallower than 4'. Chart datum indicates "extreme low tide(s)" at -2.5'.

The Coast Guard and the towns place the Aids to Navigation (ATN) in the Bay. These are removed each fall and replaced each spring.
Let me tell you about a fellow who appeared out of the thick fog near me a couple of years ago. The only thing in sight was a green can and he called out to me, "Are the buoys in the same place as last year?" Realizing that he was trying to navigate blind by last year's LORAN settings and buoy numbers, I answered, "No." Three hours later when I returned past that can, he was still (wisely) tied up to it in the fog. (The fishing three buoys away had been good.)
It is absolutely necessary to reset the LORAN points for ATNs each year. Channels shift and there is just too much sand moving around to navigate safely without accurate bearings. Since Chatham is about the foggiest (and now, most shoaling) place on the Cape, just getting through the Bay to the Atlantic and back again can be dangerous or impossible without LORAN or GPS.
Don't think that just because someone ahead of you is fast or big that they know where they are going! I've abandoned many a "leader" just before they grounded because my LORAN log indicated a safer course.
When logging your LORAN/GPS points, give some thought to the logic of your numbering scheme. Quickly understanding what your electronics indicate is invaluable in low visability.
Last year, there were five* sets of buoys from the radar ATNs in the break to the town buoys in Little Bay. All of these sets started with the number 1, some numbers in a course were missing and some numbers were duplicated with the letter "A" added (where channels divided).
Last year, I used: the 40's (41, 42, etc.) for the radar ATN's at the break, the 30's for the big commercial cans next inside the break, and the numbers 2 to 23 for the channel buoys from the camps to the golf course bluff. Do yourself a favor and add the compass course from buoy to buoy when you make your record. You can use it to double check your electronic readings and to keep from getting turned around.
Lets take a quick run up the Bay from the break, watching for hazards. Break out your chart and follow along.
If you've made it in through the break, you passed close by the ATN's and watched your depth sounder carefully. Shallow water and narrow channels here.
Inside, clear running with the cans along lighthouse beach until you approach the stone wall channel. Here, the set is strong (scouring a 30' bottom) and there are shoreline eddies and rocks . Give way to the commercial traffic through this narrow channel. East side is safest.
Turn east to the end of North Beach unless you are going into the fish pier. Then north to the camps. On a falling tide the current will try to pull you out around the end of North Beach to the Atlantic. Leave plenty of leeway to the south.
Shoals are to port on the north run until you reach the buoys marking the "channel" turning west opposite Minister's Point. This "channel" has been a shallow bar crossing for years. On moon tides, it may be nearly impassable (1' depth). There is another channel (not buoyed) that offers an east side navigation around the shoal southeast of Strong Island. Look for it at on calm days but use it with caution.
There are rocks/shoals west of the channel to the south and north of Minister's Point. Turning north at Cotchpinicut, the next shoal divides courses to Ryder's cove to the northwest or Strong Island's west shore ahead north. Once beyond this dividing buoy, it is not wise to try to cross the shoal to port other than at full tide.
Northwest of Strong Island, the marked channel turns sharply west while a narrow channel turns east across the top of Strong Island. Dogfish bar lies immediately along the north side of the west channel and is impassible on less than a half tide. Better to not try at all. The east channel above Strong Is. is very narrow and best located and logged at lower tides.
There are a few near shore rocks (by the golf course, also north shore) in the Bay but the open Bay is without hazard. The narrows to Little Bay, however has many big rocks along Sipson Island and the narrowest part has shoals to starboard and rocks to port.
Turning back to Strong Island, the northeast corner of the island has one marked rock but many more extending twice that distance from shore. The channel runs (about) east from near the north east tip of these rocks and then north toward Hog Island.
The course to find Crooked channel from this direction is best found on a calm day and well logged. There is a false north/south channel to port paralleling the northerly course and even the best approach is often too shallow on the ebb. Crooked channel itself deepens from a few feet southeast to 11' by "Foote's Island" (a mid-channel eastside bar) and back to a 1' at its northwest head at the bottom of Little Bay's grassy flats.
Little Bay is mostly grass flats with the channel circling the western shore. At the northerly head of Little Bay, Namequoit Point bar extends far to the east. Follow the Buoys around the bar here and you won't run into trouble.
North of Namequoit, there are ever smaller "rivers" connecting to saltwater ponds. Caution should be taken not to discover the rocks lining the edges of these rivers. Keep to the channel center.
Throughout the Pleasant Bay system, there are flats and shoals. By motoring slowly, watching carefully, using trim and tilt and not going just a little further or a little faster, the boater can safely find all the fish and wildlife they could want in Pleasant Bay.
By all means, use any calm day to explore the Bay's backwaters to your advantage. This is the best time to observe and learn the Bay's intricacies.
Remember, if you do get stuck, its only time. Get out and wade. Cast or do some shellfishing. Catch a nap. Who wants to be in a hurry anyway in such a Pleasant Bay?

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Author's Note: since writing this story, the bouyage has changed yet again and is now considerably more logical from the break to Orleans in the upper bay. Please take notice. mge

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First published in On The Water Magazine in 1998, this article names names and places. I took a lot of heat for all I gave away in this piece but good sense and good management should protect it for all of us. mge

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