The polar temperatures felt across the Vineyard on Sunday, Jan. 7, iced over Edgartown Harbor, creating headaches for Chappy ferry captains avoiding ice floes, and ferry owner Peter Wells hoping to avoid damage. Mr. Wells told The Times that even before the deep freeze, the winter storm threw chunks of ice all over the ferry lot on the Chappaquiddick side. It took a lot of tractor work to clean it all up, he said. And though a lone ferry nosed back and forth through mats of ice and slush that Sunday, Mr. Wells said what he was most concerned about was the eventual melting and breakup of the inner harbor. He anticipated huge plates of ice would drift through the ferry lanes, and threaten to mar the hulls and bend the screws of his vessels.
On Jan. 10, after temperatures rose, a ferry could be seen plowing through pieces of ice 8 to 10 feet long. Harbormaster Charlie Blair said that wasn’t the worst of it. On Jan. 13, he said, a floe of dirty ice “half a football field wide — almost shore to shore” sailed into the Chappy Ferry lanes. It was littered with dead ducks and gulls and pieces of dock, he said. The wind was pushing it out while the tide was driving it back toward the inner harbor, a dynamic that caused it to linger.
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Ultimately, Mr. Wells had to use one of his boats as an impromptu push tug to move the huge floe away, Mr. Blair said. Except for some isolated spots in Katama, the harbor is now ice-free, Mr. Blair said.