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EDGARTOWN TO NANTUCKET
We dropped our mooring and headed out Kalamet Bay in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard. We will return in a week or so, but it was nearing Fourth of July, and we were headed where all boats want to be on the 4th, Nantucket. It’s expensive and the most coveted place to be if you’ve got a yacht in New England. Larry made reservations at the earliest opportunity which was January 2nd. That’s when they start taking reservations for the upcoming season. You are required to put down a hefty deposit by credit card to secure this coveted position even though it’s 7 months away. After making our reservations, we thought maybe we should extend it an extra day to give us more time. Larry called back the next day, January 3rd, but to our amazement they were already completely booked. It’s an amazing place. We knew it was going to be a crazy week there and we were looking forward to every minute of it. Our last time here was 10 years ago in our old boat and Ziggy was only 7 weeks old. We just got him and it was his first experience on the “high seas”. He was a hard core matey from that day forward. We left Edgartown in bright sun and blue skies. The mooring field was filling up quickly as it’s equally as popular as Nantucket. The holiday was a few days away and excitement was in the air. This was actually the first time since we’d been cruising this year that it for the first time the season really seemed to be starting. Things had been quiet and the weather iffy but now things seemed to be coming into full bloom. On our way out we passed Walter
Cronkite’s house, and then the flamboyant house owned by “come on down” fame,
with their ridiculous gold lamp posts stationed every few feet along the
waterfront dock of their property. At night they light the otherwise quiet
harbor up like a casino. It’s so out of character for this place. We passed
the Edgartown Yacht Club, a small but prestigious club. They accept reciprocal
privileges so the day before we made dinner reservations for the week that we
return with our friends. We passed the Chappaquiddick ferry and managed to get
by just as the little ferry was docking on the Edgartown side. We passed the
lighthouse on the sandy beach an image so well known from the movie, JAWS. We
headed out the channel and passed a ferry coming in from Hyannis port. It was
filled to the brim with vacationers getting ready for the big holiday season.
It was exciting. We could hear a lot of chatter on the radio. These New Englanders love to chatter on the radio. The chatter soon turned to the topic of fog and from the sounds of it we were headed straight into a fog bank. According to the talk on the radio, it was thick pea soup from the sounds of it. As far as we were concerned it didn’t look like a bad day. So far it was clear, sunny and beautiful. Besides, if we run into it, we’ve got two radars and our waypoints in and it should be no problem. It was about a three to four hour trip for us to Nantucket. You are out of site of land much of the time as Nantucket is a ways off the mainland. The name “Nantucket” is a Native American name meaning “land far at sea”, and that it is. Well, it was too good to be true, for soon we are in the midst of the fog that we had heard them chattering about and it suddenly had become very thick. We couldn’t see much of anything. We began watching the radar and checked our charted course and all was going well. I was sitting in the settee in the pilot house reading and Larry was at the helm. I would glance up occasionally at the radar screen. A few blobs would show up on the screen. Then a few more showed up. Within an hour, the screen was getting quite littered with blobs. It was time to pay attention to the screen and we both started identifying the targets or blobs as I refer to them. We checked the charts to match them to the radar screen. We could identify a few buoys on the screen and then the other targets were boats, some big and some little, some moving and some stationary, some coming towards us and others coming up behind us. Suddenly the screen became crazy with activity. We had both radars on, one
tracking objects to ¼ mile and the other set at 3 miles so we could keep an eye
out for oncoming obstacles at a distance. When traveling from Edgartown and
well Martha’s Vineyard and well, the Cape in general, heading towards Nantucket,
there is one course that all cruisers take. It follows the buoys and is well
traveled much like the Interstate. These waters have some treacherous shoals,
Horseneck Shoals, Cross Rip Shoals, and Tuckernuck Shoals, and others, that have
haunted ancient mariners for hundreds of years, so boaters stick close to the
road well traveled to avoid the obstacles. What we didn’t even think about was
that there was going to be a tremendous amount of traffic on our journey today.
It was like the start of the season and everyone was heading to the islands. We
didn’t just have to watch out for the shoals, buoys, ferries and a few pleasure
boaters, but had to watch out for the mass of migrating boats of all sizes
racing to Nantucket….and they were racing. We couldn’t believe our eyes. Even
though it was thick pea soup out there, some of these boats were running like
bats out of hell in the fog! We could hear some pretty angry chatter back and
forth on the radio now. One guy said “learn to read your radar idiot… you
missed me by 20 feet!”, and stuff like that. We laughed. It was crazy out
here. We started tracking objects on the radar screen with the marpa tracker. This gave us the direction the tracked object was going, the speed, their course and time of impact if they were heading towards us. Some objects didn’t move and those we could ID to navigational buoys or maybe a stationary fishing boat, but others were moving and moving fast. We had at one time as many as 9-10 marpas going at once! It was so stressful. Some of the targets were coming up behind us at 14-20 knots heading straight for us. On a few occasions, Larry hailed them on the radio, giving our position and their position and his concern that the direction they were heading was dangerously close. A few times I became so concerned that I went out to the back cockpit straining to hear or see them. Only one person answered back and said he had our location. Others just didn’t answer. Either they didn’t have their radio on or didn’t know their position or just didn’t plain answer back. Several times speed boats, usually smaller ones, maybe not more than 25 feet in length, would speed by in the fog at 14-20 knots and miss us by 30-50 feet! We just couldn’t believe it. They obviously couldn’t see us and were going at such a speed that it would be difficult to stop in time to avoid impact. We think that some didn’t have radar or didn’t know how to use it. We suddenly had one target that was directly behind us. He just stuck there. We could barely see him and wondered why he was riding so close. We then heard someone on the radio hailing his friend saying he was OK now as he was following another boat in and would be fine. We think it was the small boat behind us as he stuck to us like a baby duck. An hour later when we reached the long marked entrance channel to Nantucket he took off and raced passed us leaving a huge wake. As we were nearing the approach to Nantucket channel, we heard a boat on the radio announcing that he was coming out the Nantucket channel. He gave his direction and position and said all concerned vessels should call him on 16. We heard him again a few minutes later as he slowly progressed out the channel again giving his location and course, and location near so and so point, and again that all concerned vessels in the area to hail him on 16. We heard him specifically hail a few vessels that he was concerned about to make sure they knew he was coming in their direction. No one answered him back. We knew he had maybe ten targets all speeding helter skelter his way as we just experienced them racing carelessly by us. Larry hailed him on the radio to let him know he had them heading his way. He answered back that he had them on his screen and thanked us. We then realized he was one of the ferries coming out of Nantucket. A few minutes later, he warned us that we had a target heading straight towards us. We acknowledged back we saw it and thanked him. All this was done visually by watching the radar screen. It was amazing to me. This was the way it was going to Nantucket today, almost the whole way in this fog. We never saw anything like it. Fortunately, we heard one person on the radio who was hailing his buddy and said that once inside and at the end of the channel, the fog lifts and there’s some visibility. We entered the channel and that’s when our little duckling that had followed us for an hour and a half, gunned it and sped past us and down the channel, waving as they went by. We came to the end of the channel and near the basin; we could barely see the boats docked at Nantucket boat basin. It was packed with huge mega yachts and the mooring field was filled too. We hailed the harbor master on the radio and they asked us to hang out in the harbor for several minutes while they were helped dock several boats a head of us. It wasn’t long before we got directions to come in and Larry maneuvered her into what would be our slip for the next week. We had plenty of dock hands to help tie is to the dock and welcome us. We were given a canvas bag of goodies and information and a special dock mat to wipe our shoes on. It had the logo of Nantucket boat basin on it in full three colors. click
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NANTUCKET BOAT BASIN We had a good slip location, far enough from all of the town noise and parades of people walking by. We had good visibility though to see what was going on in the basin, watching boats come and go and the boaters around us at the docks were a friendly nice group of people. We also were not docked directly in front of the bathrooms or a laundry room which was a good thing as some boats were. We were thinking this was pretty perfect until the girl from the dock office came around to give us our “official” welcome packet which really should have been called the “rules packet”. I was inside the boat when she arrived and didn’t hear the welcome spiel, but the look on Larry’s face when he came in pretty much told the story. He had a bunch of papers in one hand, (the rules) and a long flimsy clear plastic trash bag in the other. Here’s the jist of it: We were required: (1) NOT to discharge sewage in the harbor (which is a no brainer as we would never even think of doing that.) (2) NOT to discharge any grey water in the harbor. (3) NOT to run your dishwasher. (4) NOT to run your washer. (5) You are REQUIRED to recycle but in this manner: a. Household waste should go in one clear plastic bag, the kind which is sold at the dock office (which means nothing goes down the garbage disposal), I guess. b. Aluminum, tin cans, and plastic containers MUST be separated and stored in the clear plastic bags, sold at the dock office, and deposited in specific trash bins. c. Glass bottles and light bulbs MUST be separated and stored in the clear plastic bags sold at the dock office, and deposited in specific trash bins. d. Paper, magazines and newspapers MUST be tied in bundles, put in the clear plastic bags sold at the dock office and deposited in specific trash bins. e. Cardboard MUST be broken down and flatten in nothing bigger than 3’ x 3’ squares. (6) You are urged to use all dock facilities for showering. (7) You are urged to use all dock facilities for toilets. (8) You are urged to use only the products on their list for washing the boat and other necessary uses on the boat.
We understand the need for these rules but until boats are required to have grey water holding tanks, this is extreme. It’s really quite a shock if you aren’t prepared when you arrive here. No wonder they bring the rules by after you receive your first “welcome bag”. We do agree with the philosophy in the ideal world. How can anyone complain as we know it’s the right thing to do? We’ve seen too many harbors and waters that have been polluted and the clean up process needs to start. I guess this how it begins. After all we understand that this is an island and trash and the disposal of it is a big problem. Many places in the Pacific Northwest you don’t have the privilege to leave it as “you bring it in and pack it out”. We could ask ourselves “why should they take all our trash that we bring? And why should they have to sort it for recycling?” It’s the least that we can do (recycle) since they are disposing of it. I guess all we have to do is just separate it, so what’s the big deal? Since Nantucket and Nantucket Boat Basin have gone the first step, as a courtesy they it would be nice to have known the rules clearly before arrival so one can prepare. They certainly have enough time to send out the information ahead of time since you have to make reservations as early as the first of January. Or at least, while making your reservation, they should tell you to review their rules on their website. They also really should be consistent in their actions. By this, I mean, when requiring their guests to be conscientious about trash and recycling, they contradict themselves by handing over to every boater a welcome bag that is filled with a tremendous amount of costly paper products and brochures advertising every commercial enterprise on the island. None of us need another canvas bag with their logo emblazoned on it. We don’t need a custom designed rubber door mat with their logo on it, which is given to each boat. How do these items figure into the land fill philosophy? We love getting all the "stuff" and it is fun to look at but not needed especially when it all ends up in the recycle bins. That’s not being consistent. If they want to save the environment and impose their rules on the boaters, eliminate those items that don’t send the right message and maybe instead knock off a few dollars on their stiff dockage fees. They aren’t sending a consistent message. They’ve put a good foot forward but a bit drastic for a beginning. I guess they can do it their way because THEY CAN as I certainly didn’t see one disgruntled boater, nor did I see everyone following the rules either.
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NANTUCKET 4TH OF
JULY WEEK Wow, is this place crowded! It was bursting at the seams. We had one day to wash the boat with our “environmentally friendly” boat soap before our guests arrived. Everyone else was sunning themselves on their boats and walking the docks with drinks in hand, partying. The town was full of people, eating drinking, shopping. We figured we’d have plenty of time for that when our friends arrived. Once the boat was clean and wiped down, we decorated the boat with the boat flags that Bev and Bernie had given us a few years ago. Last time we decorated was last year, 4th of July, in Beaufort, SC. Others on the docks were doing the same and it was fun to see all the boats decorated and flags flying in the wind. The harbor was filled with some big yachts. There was a mix of huge yachts many with crew to wait on the lucky owners. We admired a few old traditional wooden boats in the harbor too. They had such beautiful lines and their teak was polished and shining. There were lots of boats, all sizes, styles and shapes, some flashy, and some not, and a mix of some beautiful sailboats. There was plenty to look at. I especially wanted our friends to join us in Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Their new house was designed with my memories of this area and its architecture. It was a look and feel of Nantucket and what better way to see where the inspiration came from than to come to the place. And the architecture here is amazing. The streets are lined with ship captain’s houses beautifully crafted and well cared for. The entire island has been declared a historic district and over 800 buildings predate the civil war. I always get excited coming here just thinking of the history and being able to see the lovely cobble stone streets and houses, just as it might have been during the old whaling days. They were a hardy bunch those Quakers who had the fortitude to settle and succeed in such a harsh occupation and climate.
Today our friends arrive. We got a call that they had arrived at the airport and we were watching for them from the boat. We soon spotted them from the pilot house walking down the docks. Ziggy also caught a glimpse of them and gave out a crying yelp. He was uncontrollably happy and managed to jump off the boat, and ran like a bullet down the docks to give them a greeting that almost knocked them over. It’s so exciting when friends come to join you on your adventures, especially when they come a long way and we appreciate that. Bev and Bernie just got back from touring Paris and taking a cruise through the Baltic. They had just flown home from that trip to La Jolla, CA then had to repack and turn around and fly back to the East Coast to join us. We couldn’t even imagine the jet lag they were going to suffer but we were happy that they went to so much effort to join us. That must have been a grueling travel schedule. They looked happy and refreshed though and we were glad they were here.
4th of JULY The day following their arrival was the 4th of July. We had all decided before, that we would spend it on the boat, not wanting to fight the crowds at restaurants and bars. So, I went to the local fish market on the main street dock and ordered up 4 plump 1½ pound lobsters to be steamed and ready for pick up about 6:00 PM the day of the 4th. It’s a great little fish market with lots of fresh live lobster, mussels, clams, oysters and other fresh fish. We weren’t the only ones with the same idea as they were taking orders right and left. We paid in full for them and no receipt was given. I asked for a receipt and they said “no need, we’ll remember”. The day of the 4th,
the town was hopping with activity. Main Street was full of people watching.
People were participating in many old fashioned festivities like pie eating
contests, three legged races and such. We walked the town, or should I say
hobbled through town, over the uneven cobblestones, peeking into interesting
shops and restaurants. We wandered over to the White Elephant Inn, and mad
reservations for dinner the following night at the Brant Point Grill. That
done, it was about time to get those lobsters and cocktails going. The guys
picked up the lobsters and Bev and I went to the nearby grocery store to get a
few last minute items. Corn on the cob was a needed commodity today as nothing
goes better with lobster than corn on the cob. For the last day and a half, not
an ear of corn could be found on the island as it was totally sold out. We were
persistent though and managed to find out when the next corn delivery would
arrive and it was supposed to be on the afternoon ferry. So we planned
strategically and were there at the appropriate time to snatch up a few ears
just in time.
That night after knocking down a few cocktails, four lobsters, and four ears of corn, we settled in to wait for the fireworks display. As the evening progressed and darkness grew closer, the fog started to roll in and envelope the harbor. There was a chill and dampness in the air from the fog but we were warm in the boat and waited for the exciting moment when the fireworks display would go off. 9:00 rolled around, then 9:30. We could see others in their boats doing the same, waiting for the display. The fog grew thicker and thicker and soon we really couldn’t see farther than the dock across the way. There was a definite possibility that they would postpone the fireworks until another night if the fog was too thick. It was kind of hilarious in a way, all of us waiting on our boats, in this thick fog. There was no chance in Haiti that we would be able to see a thing but we all sat and waited. It must have been about 10:00, we thought we could hear what sounded like fireworks or a couple home grown firecrackers, firing off some boats on the docks? Nothing could be seen in the way of a display but the boaters finally made up for the lack of a show and started honking their horns. It was a huge cacophony of noise. We joined in and it was fun. That was the 4th. click
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THE ISLAND and SIASCONSET We decided to rent a car and see the island in its entirety. We got what we could and that was an open air jeep with the possibility of rain. It was like a tin can, and once you managed to get yourself in the back seat, you may never be able to get yourself out as it was very cramped. It was fun though. We drove the bumpy streets and meandered through the crowded streets of town and then headed out to Siasconset to see how the other half live. It was a beautiful day mixed with rain showers. We drove to the far end of the island, to Siasconset which is a small cluster of house that actually got its start in the early days as an escape from the smell of whale oil and other such enterprising activities in Nantucket proper. It started as a village of halibut fishermen mainly and then the summer vacationers to notice and that’s when it became a popular place to be. It still looks much like it looked in the late 1890’s and each little rose covered cottage seems to have it’s own name on a wooden plaque by each door. It’s a small village with nothing much more than a small grocery store, post office and a couple restaurants. The streets and walkways are filled with white shells and many of the bigger homes are perimetered by trimmed hedges. Roses are everywhere, climbing over roofs and picket fences. It’s truly a unique place.
LAST NIGHT Our last evening, was dinner at Brant Point Grill, located in the wonderful White Elephant Inn overlooking the harbor. We made reservations for dinner on the patio so we could take advantage of the view and nice weather. We were soon glad we did because right after we sat down, the fire alarm went off in the main dining room and everyone inside had to evacuate to the outer lawn. So as we were nicely seated on the patio enjoying our drinks the other poor people who has reservations inside were walking the grounds with no where to sit. It must have been a false alarm as it was short lived though and everything back to normal soon. Well, our dinner at Brant Point Grill, though the atmosphere was grand, was a bit of a disappointment. The food was a true example of how to gouge the tourist. The prices were way over the top for the food that was served and the wine prices were astonishing. We commented to the wine steward that the prices were extreme and wondering why and we were snobbily answered that everything is expensive here because we are on “an island”. Bernie quickly answered back that he’s well aware of living on an island as they have a home on an island, but that these prices are really more than you would expect anywhere. Well, Nantucket can be a bit snobby, high priced for what you get, and very overcrowded and I guess we got the ultimate taste of it that night. Tomorrow’s another day as we were off to Martha’s Vineyard and Edgartown in particular. The weather prediction was a little iffy but nothing to keep us at port and of course, reservations are reservations in Nantucket, you must go when the time is up.
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I
was blown away! I read the instructions several times to figure out all the
recycling requirements and how they wanted it done. How could anyone possibly
maintain all those bags, storing all those different items, and where on a
boat? We do recycle on the boat by using our trash compactor for paper, cans,
and recyclables, etc. We usually bag food garbage anyway but all this
separating and flattening and bagging was beyond the call of duty. So instead,
we just took the trash out several times a day, just to get it in the right bin
and not have to maintain all these recycling bags with no place to store them.
We try to recycle as much as possible wherever we go but THIS was going to be
difficult and beyond the call of duty. 
FRIENDS
ARRIVE
