Day 284, Year 7: Enjoying Nantucket
Date: Saturday, August 18, 2012
Weather: Overcast with Periods of Rain
Location: Nantucket, Massachusetts
Today was a bit of a lazy day, but quite enjoyable. We had heavy rain in
the very early morning. The rain then subsided, but it remained overcast
all day. We hung out on the boat all morning while Mark and Alan worked on
our GPS issue. They actually found the problem. The connector to the GPS
in the cockpit is so corroded that one of the pins is no longer connected
and on the inside of the boat, the USB to serial connector to the computer
is also faulty. The system now works with the help of a little aluminum
foil, but we will still need to buy a new GPS because our current back-up is
no longer functional. We will use our current one as the back-up and the
new one as our main unit. So progress was made and then we headed to town.
We had a lovely lunch and then went to the Nantucket Historical Association
Whaling Museum. Mark and I were there a few years ago but it is the kind of
place you can return to many times. We watched a new hour-long film by
documentary filmmaker Ric Burns. It was really worth the watch as it gave
us all a new appreciation for this “elbow of sand” as Herman Melville once
described Nantucket. Before he ever visited this island, he wrote about it
in Chapter Fourteen of Moby-Dick, written in 1851. “Nantucket! Take out
your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies;
how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone
lighthouse. Look at it-a mere hillock, an elbow of sand; all beach, without
a background.” An island that made its fame as the whaling capitol of the
world has now reinvented itself as a mecca for tourists. But hearing about
the tenacity of its early inhabitants made us all appreciate this special
little corner of the world just a little more. After leaving the museum,
the heavens decided to dump a little moisture upon us, so our tenacity was
challenged. We trod through the cobblestone streets of Nantucket as we made
our way back to the dinghy dock. The rain kept falling and we arrived back
at Windbird soaked to the bone, just in time to see a ray of sunshine. As
luck would have it, the rain ended as we boarded the boat. We then shed our
wet clothing and enjoyed a quiet evening aboard.
Tomorrow morning there will be a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the
War of 1812. Two tall ships, the Pride of Baltimore II and Lynx, a
reproduction of the original Privateer Lynx built in 1812 in Fells Point,
Maryland, will cross the starting line for the 40th Annual Opera House Cup
Regatta with cannons and artillery firing. We’ll try to position Windbird
to watch but not get fired upon!!! The Opera House Regatta is a race for
classic wooden boats and we’ll hope to get a glimpse of these beauties as
well before heading back to Woods Hole. We’re hoping for favorable winds
for a great sail home.
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| 120818 Day 284 Cape Cod, USA–Nantucket with Alan and Helaine |
