Bathrooms, Ice, Laundry - New Bedford Harbor

You can re-arrange the order of these items, but bathrooms, ice and laundry are usually the first three concerns my crew has after a few days out.  Pope's Island Marina is probably the simplest solution to a visiting boat.  Pope's is run by the city of New Bedford and is located on Pope's Island, pretty much in the center of the harbor as you come in.  It is easy to access.  The marina and the staff associated with it and harbor management monitor Channel 9 and 74.  Once you get someone from the Harbormaster's crew, they are very welcoming.  They've usually got "harbor attendants" out and about in the harbor, welcoming visiting boats and trying to assist them with their needs.  Your needs might be met at Pope's Island, but the harbor staff will help you regardless of whether you are using Pope's or not.

 

Even if you are not staying at Pope's, you may use it for its pump out facility or for buying ice.  For either, you pull up to the floating dock they have on the face of the outermost dock.  You can get block or cube ice.  You can get a pump out.  There is a water hose.  The staff if efficient and courteous.  Always friendly, which is great.  Now, Pope's has showers and laundry facilities at the head of its dock system.  If your boat is a paid customer of the marina, you can use these facilities.  I don't know if there is a daily fee that a non-paying cruiser can pay to use these facilities.  I have been trying to find that out and will report when I know the answer.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, there is a new dinghy dock to the east of Pope's dock complex.  It is used by the rowing organizations and seasonal dinghy dock renters, but it is also available for transient use to access Pope's Island, its parking lot and businesses on the island.  The poor man's bathroom solution if using the dock would be to cross the road and go over to Dunkin Donuts for a coffee.

 

Pope's has space for transients in slips and the city has some moorings in the mooring field in front of the marina.  Again, I don't know if the mooring customers get use of the showers and laundry facilities, but the slip customers do.

I'll revisit the issue of bathrooms, ice and laundry in coming posts, but thought I'd feature the public facility first.  Pope's Island, itself, has three other marina type outfits with various levels of offerings.

Be careful approaching Pope's Island from the Southeast.  The area around Crow's Island gets very shallow (wading depth).  Better to approach in main channel and then turn east along the front of the docks or down one of the rows of the mooring field as you get abreast of it.