The Cape Coddah
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☀️ The Great Mashpee Pickleball Battle

☀️ The Great Mashpee Pickleball Battle

Plus: Life gave her lemons, she made granola

Cape Coddah
August 14, 2026

Good morning Cape Cod and happy Friday. It’s mid-August, second Friday of the month, and we're officially in that stretch of summer where every sunset feels a little more meaningful. Have the best weekend.

In this week’s Cape Coddah:

Will Orleans beat Laguna Beach?
Fight at the water park
Events and live music

Let’s get to it.

🏓 The Great Mashpee Pickleball Battle

The great Mashpee pickleball battle reached a new chapter Thursday, when the town's mandate for quieter balls officially took effect. The change was hard to miss. Courts that usually overflow with players by 9 a.m. had just eight people on them.

The fight goes back to 2018, when the courts opened and neighbors started complaining about the relentless pop-pop-pop. The town's fix was to require quieter balls, but players pushed back hard, citing cost and poor playability. About 200 rallied in protest, and a petition has around 650 signatures.

The town isn't budging. The manager warned that lawsuits could shut the courts down for good, and even called some players' behavior childish. One neighbor says he can still hear the balls. One player predicts the courts will become a wasteland. Read more»

🫧 Woods Hole Maps Two Famous Wrecks

Scientists from Woods Hole just pulled off some of the most detailed surveys ever done on two famous Antarctic shipwrecks. The three-week trip took them from Falmouth to the Labrador Sea off Greenland.

The two ships carry serious history. Quest was Ernest Shackleton's final vessel, the one he died aboard in 1922. Terra Nova belonged to Robert Falcon Scott, who reached the South Pole in 1912 only to find a Norwegian rival had beaten him there by 34 days. Scott and his crew died soon after.

Using the submersible Alvin, the same one that surveyed the Titanic, researchers captured detailed 3-D images of both wrecks. One was so decayed a colleague compared it to a cracked coconut.

The models will be public, and could shed light on how wrecks decay. Read more»

This newsletter is free to read, always will be, and it's just me behind the scenes. Reading every local story, writing every summary, hitting send every Friday.

If this newsletter is part of your week, your support keeps it alive. A few bucks a month from readers who can chip in makes a real difference.

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Thank you for your support!
~Kari

🌊 Orleans vs. Laguna Beach

Orleans could become the first town in America to earn an Ocean Friendly Community designation from the Surfrider Foundation. The town applied for it, and right now it's neck and neck with Laguna Beach, California for the honor.

Surfrider has long recognized individual restaurants, hotels, and gardens for sustainable practices, like ditching single-use plastics. This would take that town-wide. Orleans actually approached the foundation, which fits its track record on things like curbing pesticides and expanding town sewer.

The plan is phased over three years, aiming for 75 percent of local restaurants and hotels to meet ocean friendly standards by fall 2029. Other goals include New England's first ocean friendly garden.

Beyond bragging rights, the designation could unlock grants and give tourism a nice boost. Read more»

📸 @poetry_with_a_camera |📍Sesuit Harbor

Tag @thecapecoddah to get your photos in the Coddah!

🎸 Neighbors Sound Off on Foley's

A packed Dennis Select Board meeting on August 11 turned into an earful, as more than 50 residents blasted The Backyard by Foley's, an outdoor pub they say has made their lives miserable since it opened in July.

Neighbors described rattling walls and windows, stuff falling off shelves, and lost peace and quiet, some from as far as a half-mile away. They also complained about traffic, drunk patrons, and illegal parking. Fourteen people said the noise violates the town bylaw.

Foley's says it's taken steps, adding sound blankets and monitoring decibel levels, and plans to build a sound-controlling band shell for next season. But no changes came out of the meeting, leaving residents frustrated. Foley's heads back before the Planning Board in October with an acoustic report. Read more»

SPONSORED BY:
CAPE PINES PHOTOGRAPHY

Stillness has a Place

Discover the quieter side of Cape Cod. Cape Pines is a collection of fine art photography inspired by the Cape’s enchanted landscapes. Created through observation, stillness, time and reflection. Photography designed to slow the eye and bring a sense of calm and mindfulness into your home.

“It is nature at its own pace and you get to observe it… Gary’s photography of the sea and cloud keeps it all close by, even thenough we are 1000s of miles away.”
-R. Lewis, Texas.

A former Hyannis Wendy's manager, 23-year-old Thalles De Souza, is headed to Yale this fall thanks in part to his franchise bosses, who saw his potential and started a scholarship fund to put him through community college.

The Harwich Mariners captured the 2026 Cape Cod Baseball League Championship with a 4-2 win over the Bourne Braves in Game 3, a Cinderella run from a third-place finish to the seventh title in franchise history, led by playoff MVP JP Peltier.

Friends of the Cape Cod National Seashore gathered at the Salt Pond Visitor Center in Eastham to mark 65 years since President Kennedy signed the bill creating the Seashore in 1961.

👩🏼‍🍳 Life Gave Her Lemons, She Made Granola

Dee Mozdean has always made granola, but it took a hard road to become Chatham Granola. She spent 16 years as a New York sales executive before her company got bought out, then went to pastry school and started baking.

Then her husband Bob was diagnosed with leukemia. Through the hospital stays and transplants, what he craved most was her granola, and she could control exactly what went into it, keeping it healthy, gluten-free, and packed with good stuff.

She brought batches to nurses and patients until a friend told her to start selling. Chatham Granola launched in May 2025, a one-woman operation from a Plymouth kitchen, with Chatham branding and a hydrangea-blue bag.

The best part? Bob's in remission now, and still eating granola every single day.
Read more»

The Nantucket Perfume Company, an all-oil fragrance shop founded by a saxophonist-turned-perfumer and now run by his daughter Caroline, can recreate discontinued or long-lost scents from just an old bottle or a list of notes.

A new Land Court ruling has thrown public oversand vehicle access to the tip of Cape Pogue into limbo, with the judge finding that the Trustees of Reservations overstepped an 1891 easement by selling permits that let the public drive the trails.

Nantucket's water use is down sharply this summer amid Level 2 drought conditions, with the water company pumping some 50 to 60 million gallons less than last year, a dip that'll dent revenue but won't push the budget into a deficit.

⚖️ Chaos at the Water Park

Yarmouth police were called to Wicked Waves Water Park on Wednesday afternoon after a fight broke out in the pool area, with one patron reportedly punching others.

Security broke it up, but as they escorted the person out, another patron reignited the whole thing, spilling into the parking lot. At one point, someone spit blood into a security supervisor's face. When officers arrived to sort it out, one of the people involved turned aggressive and assaulted an officer.

Two Falmouth women were arrested. Megan Medeiros, 33, was charged with disorderly conduct and assault and battery on a police officer. Sara Medeiros, 38, faces two counts of assault and battery plus assault and battery on an officer. Both were set to be arraigned Thursday at Barnstable District Court. Read more»

👋 Meet: Zilo
🐾 German Shepard
🎂 2 years old
♀︎ Female
Available to adopt at MSCPA-Cape Cod

Plover Not a Fighter

SUNDAY - AUGUST 16

Late Bloomers @ CC Winery | 12 PM
Jazz Jam @ Cult. Cent. CC | 12 PM
Andrew DiMarzo @ Flying Bridge | 1 PM
Dave Alves @ Love Farms | 1 PM
Silver Beach @ CC Coffee | 3 PM
Dub Apocalypse @ Naukabout | 3 PM
Greg Loftus @ The Woodshed | 4 PM
Half a Mind @ Chapin’s Bayside | 4 PM
Jeff Rosen @ Hooked Bar & Grille | 4 PM
Jenifer Jackson @ CC MOA | 4 PM
Adam Hanna @ Pilot House | 5 PM
Nate Ramos & Maddi Ryan @ Neptune’s CC | 5
Eric Short @ Oliver’s & Planck’s | 5 PM
Fran Fenton @ Torino | 5 PM
John Ruzicka @ Love Farms | 6 PM
Sean Brennan @ Margaritaville | 7 PM
Face 2 Face Tribute @ Cape Melody Tent | 8 PM
Chris Richardson @ The Woodshed | 9:30 PM

_{Nothing in this section is sponsored. We'll let you know when something's sponsored.}

Friday

79 🌡️ 63 | 🌤️ | 💧 25% | 💨 WNW 9 mph

Saturday

77 🌡️ 60 | ☀️ | 💧 0% | 💨 N 9 mph

Sunday

79 🌡️ 69 | 🌤️ | 💧 21% | 💨 SE 9 mph

💧🌡️ Water temperature = 72ºF

7 Blent Buff Lane, Yarmouth
Asking $729,000
3 🛏️
2 🛁
1,256 sqft
0.43 acre lot

_{Nothing in this section is sponsored. We'll always let you know when something's sponsored.}

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