Dinghy Removal Order Challenged

Life-long Resident Claims Easement On Private Beach

by Tim Wood

            CHATHAM --- For 35 years, Edward Eldridge has moored a boat in Stage Harbor, just east of the Battlefield town landing.  For just as long, he tied his dinghy to a pylon he sunk in the sand above high tide, at the base of a coastal bank near his mooring.  No one ever questioned him or asked him to move the dinghy.

            “In 35 years, I have not met or seen a person on this property,” Eldridge said last week.

Chatham native Edward Eldridge is challenging a property owner’s order that dinghies be removes from a private beach on Stage Harbor. He’s kept his dinghy there for 35 years, and claims an easement to continue doing so. TIM WOOD PHOTO

           He wasn’t aware that the owners of 275 Champlain Rd. had ordered dinghies removed from the private beach until a friend called and told him.  When the Feb. 22 deadline for removal passed, Eldridge found his dinghy moved to the town landing, probably by the harbormaster’s department.  He moved his dinghy back to the edge of the Champlain Road land. Beyond that point, where once dozens of dinghies were spread out along the beach, only driftwood and other debris now occupy the shore.

            The loss of his longtime dinghy storage spot irked Eldridge. He’d moved moorings twice before because of parking problems, and didn’t want to be run out of another location.  He contacted an attorney who agreed he had a case for making a claim to a prescriptive easement for storing his boat.

            In a Feb. 29 letter to the Boston attorney for property owners Christine and Laura Anne Spring of San Francisco, attorney Craig Nickerson of Orleans wrote that Eldridge has “openly and notoriously” kept a series of dinghies above mean high water at 275 Champlain Rd. for 35 years.  That continuous use has never been challenged by the owner, the letter states, and qualifies as a prescriptive easement under Massachusetts General Law.

            Eldridge said he’s prepared to let a judge decide if he’s within his rights.

            “All of sudden, this is hitting home,” said Eldridge, a ninth generation Chatham native.  “I don’t want to leave” Stage Harbor, he added. “There’s really no place to go.”

            The order caused a stir in town, to many highlighting a stark line of demarcation between wealthy shorefront property owners who occupy their homes a few weeks out of the year and working fishermen and longtime mooring holders who, by local tradition, have stored dinghies used to row to moorings above high tide.  The situation even got the attention of the Boston Globe, which ran a front page story Feb. 28 headlined “A Fishing Tradition Keelhauled In Chatham.”

            In his letter to the Springs’ attorney, Anatoly M. Darov, Nickerson said the owners’ actions, “clearly in pursuit of the almighty dollar, are insensitive and sad.”  While the law may grant the owners the right to a private beach, “the traditions have always looked out for the working class fisherman and boaters who weren’t so lucky to have seven acre waterfront parcels given to them.”

            Eldridge, a soft-spoken builder who works for the Snow Inn Corp., wasn’t looking for attention.  But he was upset by the order, which he felt not only went against tradition but violated his rights.

            “We’re being picked apart slowly,” he said, referring to fishermen and boaters being squeezed out of areas they’ve traditionally occupied.

            Eldridge said he chose that location to store his dinghy because it is directly up the beach from his mooring, where he keeps his 21-foot center console boat — and a number of other boats over the years — and it’s in a relatively sheltered area.  He should know. He grew up just down the road, and remembers playing in Alton Kenney’s boatyard as a child.  He rented a room from and worked for artist Alice Stallknecht. His grandfather ran the Chase Park grist mill. “I have fished every inch of this harbor,” he said.  “It’s kind of my playground.”

            He may have a case for a prescriptive easement, according to Edward Englander, a Newton attorney who has litigated beach rights cases, including a Wellfleet case that established the right to moor a boat between high and low water as part of the Colonial Ordinances allowing navigation, fishing and fowling in the intertidal zone.  There are prescriptive easement cases involving motor vehicles, he said, but he doesn’t know of any regarding boat storage.

            “I think it’s a difficult case for the property owner,” Englander said.  Whether the upland section of a beach could be covered by the Colonial Ordinance has also not been fully litigated, he added.

            In Massachusetts, many shorefront property owners own to low water.  Darov told The Chronicle last month that his client’s deed states covers down to the low tide line.

            Nickerson said he has not received a response to his letter to Darov.  He said he’d have to discuss with Eldridge how long to wait before filing a lawsuit.

            “We don’t want to litigate this thing, we just want to work it out,” he said.

            Eldridge knows of about 20 other mooring holders in the area who have stored their dinghies on the Spring property for decades.  He hopes his claim will forestall others from issuing similar orders to remove dinghies from the shore.  He sees the consequences of a suit, if it gets to that point, as far more dire for the property owners, who are reportedly selling the land.  The action could be tied up in court for years, and the possibility of an easement could impact a sale.

            “They opened up a can of worms,” he said.

3/13/08