Day 80 - a Year by the Sea

The rushing tide. This gives you a good idea how fast the tide fills the marsh. It was about 20 minutes before official high tide and the water was moving very quickly. This was no idle freshet but a force to push you off balance if you were wading out in this ditch. Close by on Chelsea Creek there is a building, Slade’s Mill and a dam which harnessed this same tidal force for spice grinding. The building is still there and so is the dam.  The dam gates were open until high tide and then closed. After enough height grew between the departing tide and the reservoir backed up behind the dam, then the water was released through sluiceway gates to drive the mill. Powerful stuff and very ecofriendly.

Ciao!

-Jorge

This entry was posted on March 21, 2007 at 5:14 pm and is filed under Daily - another one of 365. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.