05/17/2008, Marblehead, MA
Photo: All dressed up and somewhere to go!
With the girls having dressed Semper V overall with flags to mark the Opening Ceremony and Commodore's Ball at BYC, we got ourselves gussied up for the event...first time I've worn a blazer and tie since we left home!
The Opening Ceremony just before lunch was short and sweet, with the National Anthem, cannon shot, Blessing of the Fleet, introductions and Commodore's remarks all dispensed with in less than a quarter-hour. New England clam chowder and apple crisp were served afterwards, and we had a great chat with the Commodore at his table. Judy and I found it noteworthy that in his opening ceremony comments, the Commodore made reference to the state of the economy and that BYC would have to pay particular attention to its finances. (We flipped through the Boston newspapers and found plenty of articles about the poor economic state of the US, with several prominent economists predicting worse to come. The listings of foreclosure sales were plentiful, reflecting the trend we have seen all along the coast.)
Later in the evening, Lisa and George and BYC friends Mike and Liz paid a social call to Semper V, after which we proceeded ashore to enjoy a fabulous dinner and then great dancing at the Commodore's Ball. The girls stayed on board and amused themselves with Mexican Train Dominoes and a movie, and they were both asleep by the time we repaired onboard just after midnight. It was a great comfort to know that with the boat alongside at the BYC dock and in plain view, they could come and get us if there were any problems, and vice versa. As for ourselves, we needed the exercise on the dance floor! The first two weeks back at the gym in Halifax are going to be brutal, methinks....
|
Comments [0]
05/16/2008, BYC, Marblehead, MA
Photo: Marblehead
After a three-hour motor in calm conditions across Massachusetts Bay yesterday, we arrived in Marblehead and the Boston Yacht Club (BYC), a home-away-from-home for Squadron sailors. We popped up to the bar and bumped into Lisa and George from the RNSYS, who came down to Marblehead to attend the Commodore's Ball: they also were the courier service delivering Judy's dress from home for the occasion as well, Judy and Lisa having worked out the logistics for the delivery last week by e-mail when Lisa first advised Judy that the Ball would be taking place during our port call!
Spring is coming in bits and pieces it seems along the coast in New England; Newport was in full bloom, it felt like fall in Connecticut, and the trees were just starting to bud along the Cape Cod Canal. Actually, it feels as though we have been sailing into Fall our whole way up the east coast. It's just one of those little mind tricks; having missed Winter and snow, and having had an extended Summer down south, it feels like we should be going into Fall rather than Spring, and the feeling is reinforced by the steadily declining temperatures as we head north. However, here in Marblehead, the air is perfumed with the scent of the lilac trees in full flower, cherry blossom petals are swirling everywhere, and there is plenty of gardening activity...it is definitely Spring! Perhaps our noses are keener for having spent so long in a salt air environment, but we can smell the flowers everywhere in town, and the girls are stopping at practically every lilac tree we encounter to inhale the fragrance.
Marblehead signifies to us that we are in the homestretch of our voyage. Through our previous visits here as participants in the Boston-Halifax Race, and with the fabulous hospitality of the BYC and its members, it is easy to feel very comfortable and close to home here. Still, when walking around town the maze of twisting, one-way and narrow streets can challenge even the navigationally-gifted; the town planner must have been narcotically-inspired when he laid out the roads. But it all adds to the charm of the place, and we have been enjoying leisurely strolls admiring the many preserved and restored old homes, and poking our noses into a few shops and, for the girls, bookstores. I finally broke down and bought them a copy of the Sailing Dictionary, a.k.a. "The Fine Art of Getting Wet and Becoming Ill While Slowly Going Nowhere at Great Expense" book. Our walks are now punctuated by giggles and snorts as the girls flip through the pages whenever we stop somewhere for more than fifteen seconds.
Back on the boat, we have dug out the charts for the Bay of Fundy and the Nova Scotia Coast which are once again seeing the light of day after their stowage deep in the recesses under the starboard aft bunk back in October....sigh. We are keenly watching the weather forecasts now, and evaluating our options as to whether we leave from Marblehead or head up the coast in short hops until the seas calm down and we get some south-westerly winds filling in to send us on our way across the Gulf of Maine and Bay of Fundy. We are expecting some strong westerlies, up to 25 knots, which we hope will serve to flatten the seas down from their current 9-11-foot wave heights. However, we all know that if you don't like the weather, wait a minute, and the forecasts have been changing from one broadcast to the next.
The girls are definitely excited that we are getting so close to home, and I predict they will have acute cases of "channel fever", particularly once land is sighted. Steph has already compiled a list of Things I Will Do When I Get Home and Things I Will Miss/Won't Miss. I'll post it along with everybody else's when we get home!
|
05/15/2008, Scituate, MA
Photo: Lawson Tower, Scituate
The Lawson Tower, pictured above, was a gift to the town of Scituate in 1902 from copper magnate Thomas Lawson. Described as the "most photographed and most expensive water tower in America", it is 153 feet high, and the interpretive sign at the tower's base says it has "...a clock room and a bell room complete with tuned bells upon which melodies are played on special town occasions," my visit apparently not being one of these.
The name "Scituate" comes from the indian word "satuit", meaning "cold brook". My reason for visiting the town was not to see its water tower; in fact I quite accidently stumbled upon it (if one can 'stumble' across a 153-foot Roman-inspired musical water tower...) on my way to the real purpose of my visit, the town library and its archives. My ancestors landed in Plymouth in the early 1600s and settled in Scituate, and I wanted to see if there were any local records about them that I had not been able to discover during previous internet searches at home. But first, we had to get into the port at Scituate, which was made more exciting that we thought necessary by some rather large rollers that seemed to come from nowhere, and so we partially surfed through the narrow channel into port before tying up at the Scituate Harbor (I keep wanting to type a "u" in that word) Yacht Club, where we bumped into one of the yacht brokers who took us around just over a year-and-a-half ago when we were boat-shopping.
My lineage is supposed to go back to one Ephraim Kempton, whom I thought had crossed the Atlantic with his brother Mannasseh in 1623 in the Anne. The records I found suggest that while Mannasseh was on the Anne which arrived in Plymouth in July 1623, Ephraim (the first of five generations of Ephraims, the baby-name book must have been small back then...)and his son Ephraim Jr. were not, but that they crossed over sometime between 1637 and 1640. In 1641, Ephraim and another settler who were appointed constables were summoned to the "General Courte" in Plymouth to explain why they apparently did not collect four pounds sterling and change in taxes. On 7 March 1642 Ephraim was fined twenty shillings for "unclean speeches and carriages" (I can just imagine what that meant...) toward one of the town's main administrators (at least he wasn't burned at the stake, or tarred and feathered), and he died owing his brother Mannasseh twenty-one pounds. So far, not exactly an auspicious start in the New World. However, subsequent generations must have made up for the shaky beginning, as several of the New England histories I read say that "...the Kempton family is among the oldest and best known families of the State (Massachuesetts)." See, you can fool some of the people....
Anyway, I left with some questions answered, and more questions in their place (and maybe I should just stop digging, perhaps I don't want to know why Ephraim and Jr. bugged out of Ye Olde Englande in ye firste place), but it was still a worthwhile expedition. Once back in Semper V, we made ready and headed north to Marblehead and the Boston Yacht Club, where Judy has managed to secure not only a couple of tickets to the Commodore's Ball on Saturday night (see, Judy's being a member of the RNSYS Board does pay off at times!), but also a berth alongside the Club so we won't have to worry about the girls being left out on a mooring, which also spares us having to row the dink in and out wearing our best bib and tucker...
|
