Bye-bye Block

Fisherman's pal waiting while a prize catch weighs in at 40 lbs.  Some in our crew thought she was visually more interesting than the fish.

Leaving Block Island in the A.M.

When the morning comes it'll be time to press on, hard as it is to leave. We've felt that way at every stop since Oyster Bay and yet each new port has been better than the last. That said, I think I'm an island person. There's just something about being on a tiny piece of land out in the middle of the ocean that feels wonderfully weird. The main industry on Block Island, Martha's Vinyard and Nantucket is tourism, hands down. Ferries come in two and three at a time, unloading armies of T-shirt buyers on a day trip. The Block Island Harbor has over 90 public mooring balls for visiting pleasure craft in addition to marinas for transients.  If, however,  you have a chance to get to Vinalhaven, Maine, an island about an hour and a half ferry ride from Rockport,  you'll experience a real, working island home of a thriving lobster industry. Yeah, you can get fudge and T-shirts, but there's only one motel and not much else. Maybe a couple of restaurants. About as un-Nantucket as an island in the U.S. can get, me thinks.  

Ah, but I digress from our trip.

We did a little touring today, enough for me to grab a couple blog photos. The rest of the time we hung out on the boat reading and in Skipper G's case, doing a couple projects. There is ALWAYS a boat project to be done. ALWAYS.  AlWAYS. ALWAYS.

Here's Richard in the Block Island hardware store:

Leo Oxburger said he and his wife, Mona, read a book "Sailing Down the Moonbeam" by Mary Gottschalk while they were cruising. Thanks to a good wi-fi connection, I downloaded it onto my Kindle app on the iPad and started reading. Whoa! The author acknowledged a couple of Des Moines friends for encouraging her writing, including Mary Kay Shanley and Diane Glass. I searched and found the author on Facebook and we have since struck up a 'conversation'.  I can't wait to finish her book, read her blog and get to know her in real time if possible. Any woman who writes in her  bio that she makes her living writing and speaking on topics such as career planning, adjusting to aging and 'the amazing things that can happen when you accept the fact that control is an illusion' has got to be a kindred spirit. Her first novel is due in 2013. I'm 30% into the Moonbeam book and right in the thick of their cruising angst. Hope it has a happy ending. 

It's great fun to hear from our readers. George Pattee says reading the blog reminds him of the Jimmy Buffet song, "Lovely Cruise." As it is. 

Here are some shots and videos of our last day on Block Island (for awhile):  Kid getting filthy in the sand, oars decorating a restaurant called (can you guess?) The Oars,  me after returning from a long kayak journey exploring places motor boats can't get into, and Richard featuring a pasta he made with basil, lobster, pine nuts, garlic etc. etc. 

This video drove Richard crazy when he realized I shot it while driving a moped. Click here:  Moped View

Many more sunsets.

This is no deserted island

Dinghy dock, New Harbor, Block Island

[Click inside the text to see the full blog post. Lots of pix today]

There are planners and there are the spontaneous. Try as we might, we are the latter.

Perhaps it comes from being sailors. At some point, you just have to give up planning anything because the winds are ultimately in control.

Cruisers are dependent on a dinghy to get to town and then dependent upon whatever mode of transportation is available once you arrive on land.  Often, one must rely on the compassion of fellow cruisers with a car, as was the case with Jack and June, the marina managers in Mystic.

In Block Island there are a number of transportation choices: bikes, mopeds, taxis and foot. Before starting our day inland we spent a good 15 minutes discussing how we would get the groceries, rent mopeds, where we'd have lunch etc. and we actually developed a plan.

View of New Harbor

It's a delightful stroll from New Harbor to the main activities along the Atlantic coast side of the island, and we were on course for a good 25 minutes.  Then - uh oh - we came upon a Farmers Market in a small park!

All plans were quickly changed.

Block Island Saturday Farmers Market in the park

 

Napkins and placemats

Just about everything was very expensive: $7 jam, $8 for napkins, $5 for a loaf of bread...

blockislandsweatersetc@gmail.com

Hand-knit sweater with form of Block Island

....and then I stumbled upon a woman hand-knitting sweaters for $55 (about what a sweatshirt sells for downtown). The image woven into the sweater is of the island. 

Next, mopeds and an exploration of this amazing island. Polly, our cab driver, said there were 211 bicycle  or moped accidents  on the island just last year.  We certainly understand why. She also says tourism is down considerably (could have fooled us!).  I asked another cab driver about real estate values. He said the $4 to $6 million dollar homes are selling quickly but not the $1 million.

Who would have thought we'd live to see the day when $1 million was considered an entry-level afixer-upper.

Varoom, varoom

Southeast Lighthouse

Finns Seafood Restaurant

Stairway to the top of Southeast Lighthouse

Spring Hill Inn

For more information about Block Island: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_Island

Block Island

Block Island, Rhode Island

This is where we are right this minute. We are  anchored in Salt Pond, the large bay area at the 'bone of the lamb chop,' as the land suggests.  In one of the last weekends of the season, boaters have come from all over to explore this amazing place.  We discovered a lovely old hotel, the Surf Inn, where we had mussels and clam strips overlooking east entrance to the island. This is such an amazing discovery we're staying an extra night (or more!).

First thing in the morning, a yell comes through the Block Island  anchorage: "Andiamo!" This means a boat with fresh baked goods, fruit and coffee is wending it's way through the mooring field. Very pricey,  but so is everything on an island

The Andiamo boat

Classic old hotel on the walk to town

Boat Names

Boat names are fun to observe.  Sailboats often have lyrical, soft, names like 'Windsong' 'Halcyon' 'Adagio' 'Anthem' 'Hymn' while power boats, especially the phallic designed monsters are named 'Bow Thruster,' 'Throbbin' Robbin,' 'Purely Pleasure', and my all-time least favorite, 'Wet Dream' ... then there are those for the white liars who can honestly say "I'm at 'The Office' or on a 'In a Meeting' when that's just what their boat is named. 

Here you see 'License to Chill.' 

Boat Name: License To  Chill

Boat Name: Private Reserve

Boat Name: Nauti Girl

Many more sunsets, please

View of the Atlantic from the porch of the Surf Inn 

This is the ocean side of Block Island (we are moored in the 'New Harbor' on the other side)

T-shirt culture on Block Island

Sadness in Paradise

Block Island, 8-23-2012

One electronic message can sure change a day.

Just 24-hours ago Richard and I were having breakfast in a small cafe on Main St. in downtown Mystic, Ct.

I was looking at Facebook on my iPhone and saw a note from Natasha Newcomb, whom I had met at Barbara Mack's house about four years ago at a woman's potluck in Des Moines. She wrote how sorry she was to learn of Barbara's death. 

'What?!!!" I responded. More Facebook updates confirmed the news. 

Richard and I both had histories with Barbara Mack. Mine tangential, Richard's directly when she was corporate counsel to The Register and Tribune Company at the time he was president. When the company properties were sold off and Gannett bought The Register, Barbara joined the faculty at Iowa State University.

Barbara Mack was two years younger than I am. Our first jobs at The Des Moines Register were as 'copy kids'.  As I drifted through my 20s and 30s, Barbara was focussed and driven in ways I better understand now that I read a feature story a former student wrote about her when she began working in the office of the president of Iowa State. An alcoholic and abusive father tried to thwart her college education, and as Barbara was quoted: "…Gave me the only broken bones I've ever had."

Phone calls started coming in from former Register staffers who knew Barbara. There's a primal need to connect when a member of 'the tribe' dies.  As the day unfolded, Barbara Mack's Facebook page was flooded with tributes from her former students, mostly, talking about how she had changed or shaped their lives. I learned more about Barbara Mack via this strange new medium than any obituary or sermon could ever capture. 

An unexpected and untimely death draws one inward and being on a seemingly limitless body of water, as we were traveling from Mystic to an island off of Rhode Island,  both of us were in a reflective, quiet mood. 

What kind of legacy are we leaving? What's left to do? Barbara apparently thought about her legacy a good deal. Without children of her own, she adopted those she taught and yesterday many of them wrote to say she was the best professor they ever had.  It's clear she had a direct impact on the betterment of these young lives. 

 This loss also underscores decisions such as buying and cruising Bel Sito. 

None of us know what tomorrow will bring let alone if there will be one. Apparently, there were shootings moments ago near the Empire State Building in downtown NY, not far from where we were just a few short days ago. News alerts are just starting to stream in. A Facebook post from a NY'er just says: It's mayhem in Mid-town.

Each day on this journey we marvel at the sunset and say to one another:

Many more sunsets. 

Mystic, Ct to Block Island, RI

Can't get a wireless signal for the computer so am just loading photos from our trek across the Long Island Sound today from my iPhone.

Block Island is one of the loveliest spots we have seen so far. Islands have a very special feel.

More to come.

The Un-Varnished Truth About Varnish

Bel Sito's varnish by craftswoman Melissa Meyers

Nothing on this wood

A boat with  Cetol covering wood trim

Be sure to click in the post to see the entire entry. 

Study these three pictures. Notice a difference? Of course you do!

What you see here is what we in our household believe is a significant differentiator when it comes to wood on a boat. 

Boat owners fall into three camps. There's the traditionalist who adhere to lots of wood, covered with varnish, which they call 'brightwork'. Then there's the Cetol camp, which cover wood with a fast-application varnish substitute called 'Cetol'. And then, there are those in the naturalist camp who subscribe to nothing at all generally because they just don't want to do any work. Or, they like the unfinished look. 

There's a fourth camp, which holds to the doctrine that no wood on a boat is best of all.

I grew up an Episcopalian where order of worship came in three forms:

High Church, complete with chanting and incense, Low Church, which was almost impossible to tell from any other Christian church and Middle Church, which drew on some of the rituals of a High Church service, but without most of the pomp.

We refer to low, middle and high church practices as lazy, hazy or crazy.

I have subsequently learned there is a fourth kind of Episcopalian who rarely sets foot in church at all.

Using that analogy in The Great Varnish Debate,  I would say that the varnish devotees are like High Church goers (crazy), the Cetol proponents are like Middle Church (hazy) and none-at-all, are of course, in the Low Church or 'lazy' camp.

Those pure fiberglass worshipers are sometimes looked upon as at least agnostic, as far as this tale goes. 

Richard falls squarely in the High Church/Crazy camp and worships a good varnish job with the same ardor that a High Church Episcopalian (which by the way he was) enjoys a great ecclesiastical chant. 

Seriously, there is true artistry to good varnish work and Melissa Meyers is a master at her craft. After stripping old varnish completely off with a heat gun, she sands the surface and gracefully applies a total of eight coats of high-gloss marine varnish. Sure it would be quicker and less costly to protect the wood with Cetol, but it wouldn't be true brightwork and as you can see from the contrasting photos above, there's a world of difference. No varnish or Cetol at all on teakwood will turn grey, which has it's own kind of beauty.

We've had close to 4,000 page views on the blog so far, so I expect this post might offend one of you. Although among our friends, the intended audience, there's probably more chance of offending the Cetol camp than any church-goers.  If so, sorry.  It's a 'lay' day here in Mystic and it's the best I can come up with when all we've done is do laundry, eat great food and generally kicked into full cruise mode.

The Mystic Downtown Marina is most pleasant, by the way. Jack and June couldn't be nicer. They've offered to drive us places and invited us to pick herbs planted outside their office window.  The herbs, as you note in the photo, are in dirt, which is part of land.  Land is good.  So good we may stay here another day.