From the Beach to D.C.

It was Sunday afternoon.  Dina, Jake, and I had just two days left on Martha’s Vineyard before we were shipped back off to the sweaty politics of a D.C. summer.  We had just returned from a smooth sail on Edgartown’s inner harbor.  Now it was time for our second trip to the beach.  This time we set our sights farther afield than the rocky lighthouse beach that was just fifteen minutes walking from our house in Edgartown.  We hopped on our bikes (some with more enthusiasm than others) for a three mile jaunt over to Herring Creek South Beach.  The trail took us out of Edgartown, past Ernie Boch and his front yard full of llamas, down Herring Creek Lane, and past the small airport, where small prop planes and gliders swooped around on grass runways.

South Beach was packed with day trippers as usual.  And today it was choppy, which made it eminently more exciting than it would have been otherwise.  We lay on the beach, jumped in the waves, and Jake and I played catch in the water with a tennis ball. (We developed a game of trying to lead the other with a pass into a wave just as it was curling over.  It’s thrilling to have to dive into a wave as it is crashing, trying to catch a small green-yellow ball—like Quidditch, just without that idiot Draco Malfoy.)

That evening, after wearing ourselves out at the beach and dining at the Porthunter in downtown Edgartown, we went for an amble. Jake, Dina and I stopped at Mad Martha’s for some ice cream and then we all strode down to the wharf to see the sun set over the harbor.  The dipping globe lit up the clouds of Chappaquidick an exquisite pink and purple, and there was a brief rainbow out over Nantucket sound that framed the lighthouse.

Monday morning was a sad day.  Dad left, and he took the puppy with him. That evening the kids were on cooking duty.  We decided on a tapas oriented dinner.  Dina made an excellent gazpacho, oversaw the creation of backed portobella mushrooms, and architected an excellent caprese salad.  Jake did much of the manual labor and made a last minute dash through hazardous traffic to the supermarket.  I made a chorizo and red pepper tapa on baguettes.  Sadly the only chorizo was Portuguese “chorico,” the flavor was a little too intense and the sausage a little too dry.  I also made a red-potato and butter dish, which didn’t fit at all with the tapas, but provided a little American flavor, some starch, and lots of fat.

Tuesday morning—our last day on Martha’s Vineyard—Mom and I went for one more sail.  The breezes were light again, but there was enough wind to waft us out to the outer harbor, past the On-Time Ferries, (which considerately waited for our small craft to get through their ferry lane), and the lighthouse, and back in again.  Then Jake, Dina and I went back to South beach one more time.

Then it was time to pack up, eat and head over to the ferry.  The trip back to D.C. could not have been more different than the trip out.  Well-rested, and reasonably well fed, we were wide awake this time.  Dina finally got her clam chowder on the ferry back (we never did manage to get her chowder on the island), and despite the long anticipation wasn’t super impressed.  Then we hopped on the Peter Pan bus for the two-hour ride to Boston’s Logan Airport.  I started the trip with Good Will Hunting in honor of being in Boston, but eventually switched over to Aliens.  Jake and Dina took their turn to watch To Kill a Mockingbird, although Jake fell asleep about hallway between the Cape and Boston.

Woods Hole

When we arrived in the terminal, forty-five minutes before takeoff, there was no one but a couple of bored but friendly US Airways employees by the check-in.  Security didn’t take us more than thirty seconds, and then we were through and at our gate.  Dina had to call her mom once we were at the gate, and Jake had to call his job to rearrange his schedule.  I had to sit there in an impressive manner and guard the bags. Once official calls had been relayed, we finished off the chorizo tapas we had packed (they turned out better cold), and then it was time to get on board the plane.

I was in the exit row between two other guys.  The one in the window seat looked to be in his late twenties or thirties. He spent his entire trip reviewing information and working on a presentation for homeless youth, and spilling the ice cup a stewardess gave him all over his bag.  To my left was an older gentleman who sent emails on his smartphone right up until takeoff, then immediately conked out, only waking up to order a Spright zero, chug it, and go back to sleep.

I spent the flight relishing my extra exit aisle leg room and finishing my book, Updike’s On the Farm.  The main character gets pulled back on a Sunday evening from the idyllic (if emotionally hazardous) setting of his family farm, to the bustle of New York city.  Flying from Boston, away from Martha’s Vineyard, to Washington D.C. I felt I could relate.  Then I watched Aliens, and was just getting to the part where the shooting and aliens-eating-marines begins, when the instruction came to turn off all electronic devices.  And just like that we were back on the D.C. metro, running back over the Potomac into the heart of The District.

On a Boat

Sunday dawned clear and bright, and after nearly two full days on Martha’s Vineyard, I was ready for a sail.  My grandparents had a beautiful, smooth sailing little Bullseye, a sixteen foot-day tripper, that lay moored out in Edgartown’s inner Harbor.

First we had to take care of the dinghy.  It was the smallest, oldest inflatable dinghy tied up on the dingy dock, but still highly buoyant.  However, this summer it had been leaking, and Mom had had to bail it out almost nightly.  The shipyard guy had come by and tried to caulk the leak, apparently to no avail.  Because of this, a skirt of green seaweed was growing on the wood inside the dinghy below the engine, where the boat was most weighed down.  Sitting down to bail it out on Sunday I discovered the problem.  There was a small hole, around the water line, that had a thin plastic covering and a plug, so that if the dinghy was full of rain water, someone could just pull the dinghy out of the water and pull the plug, and not have to tip the dinghy over or bail with a cup.  Someone had taken the plug out so that seawater slowly crept into the dinghy.  Plug back in and our dinghy was seaworthy again.

View from the dinghy dock

We all climbed in.  I opened the gas nozzle on the engine, unscrewed the top, pulled out the clutch and yanked on the cord, our trusty two horsepower Honda engine spun to life, and off we went.

Our Bullseye is a simple enough boat to rig out.  We removed the triangle sail cover over the deck and took the boom off of the crutch.  The crutch has the dual job of raising the boom above the boat in a secure position, and locking the rudder in place. Then we hooked on the jib and the jib boom, a small curved piece of wood about three feet long, like a thick bow.  The jib is the small sail in front of the mainsail.  Our jib was a self-tacking jib, which meant that every time we tacked (turned up through the wind so that the wind was pushing the boat from a different side), the jib would swing first, pushing the boat faster through the wind eye of the wind.  After the jib swung, the boom swung and the boat would settle on a new course.

Casting off

Jib up, we were almost ready to go.  There was an outboard electric engine hanging of the stern. However, the connectors were highly susceptible to corrosion (you’d think that a company that makes electric engines specially for water use would have thought of the fact, that, you know, it might get wet), and like it had so often in the past, when I tried to start it up it gave me an error signal.  Rather than fool about with it, I just disassembled the motor, unplugging the battery and the arm, and pulled the whole damn-fool thing inboard.  The propeller, after sitting unused for two summer months, was thick with seaweed, barnacles, and small crustaceans.

Motor out of the way (we had come to sail after all), Dad pulled up the mainsail, Mom fed the sail into the slot in the mast , and Jake cast of us off.  It was a bright day, with a very light wind, so we weren’t going anywhere in a hurry.

The group consensus was to go check out “the breach”.  Edgartown’s inner harbor lies between the main land of the island, and Chappaquiddick island—an exclusive and isolated small island on the eastern edge of Martha’s Vineyard.  There used to be two ways to get on Chappaquiddick.  You could take the “On-Time Ferry”, two sets of barges that ferried cars and passengers about one hundred yards across the main opening between the inner harbor and the outer harbor.  You also used to be able to walk along South Beach, the twenty mile long beach that stretches along the southern belly of the island.  There was a narrow band of sand that connected the main island to Chappaquiddick, serving as a land bridge and also as the back wall of the inner harbor, sheltering the boats within.  But several years ago, a strong storm had opened a break in the sand. 

The same thing had happened a couple of decades ago and a private citizen had just taken a bulldozer and closed it up.  This time the government official in charge of overseeing the operation had dithered and delayed, and no private citizen stepped up, so the breach remained for a couple of days.  Because of a strong current, it widened, and before any action was taken it was quickly too wide to be easily sealed.

This breach let the seals and the current into the harbor from the Atlantic.  Now you could see seal heads popping up with varying frequency.  The seals also attracted more sharks.  And it also convinced my grandparents to purchase an engine.  Before the breach, the current running between the outer and inner harbor hadn’t been very strong, and it was always easy to sail in, dodging the On-Time ferries.  Now, with the current set against you, it became very difficult at times to get in, so the choice was to either monitor the tides carefully, or buy an engine.  Because that day we weren’t going to the outer harbor, we didn’t have to worry with the engine.

We sailed all the way down the inner harbor to the breach.  We passed Ernie Boch Jr.’s house, a gaudy construction with a massive lawn in front.  Ernie Bach is famous in Massachusetts for his annoyingly cheery used-car commercials (and sleazy car-sale techniques) and on Martha’s Vineyard for housing half a dozen llamas on his several acre front lawn.  Somewhere along the shore was the house of the founder of QVC.  I had once been in his house, which included, among other things, a bowling alley, a pool and a massive gatehouse.  We passed these houses and as we approached the breach the number of moored boats thinned out and the harbor opened up.

Ernic Boch’s house is the first in from the right

It was here that Jake decided he wanted a swim.  He was curious to find out if it was possible to get back on the boat while it was sailing.  It was a light breeze and the boat was moving sedately so I gave him the go ahead (and maybe a little shove) and into the water he went. After a couple hundred yards I tacked and we swung back to pick him up.  As we approached him bobbing in the salt water I angled the boat up into the wind so that as he grabbed on to the rail the sail started to luff and we nearly came to a stop, giving him time to pull himself up out of the water, rocking the boat.

Jake, Mom, and Dina all took turns for brief spells at the rudder, although they seemed a little bit nervous with the responsibility.  I took control back as we approached the breach.  We couldn’t get too close because of a number of lobster boats and their traps which had set up shop starting a few hundred yards before the breach.

Back to the mooring

The sail back down the inner harbor to pick up the mooring was smooth and fast.  We had to beat up tack upon tack to get to the breach, but going back we were going almost directly down wind.  At times we were sailing wing-in-wing (the jib out to one side, the mainsail all the way out to the other side).  I even risked a couple of jibes—turning with the wind behind you.  Jibing is often dangerous in stronger wind because as you turn the boom is usually way out to one side, and as you turn it swings almost 180s degrees to the other side, building up momentum, and if you’re not carefully, flipping the boat.  In that light wind we didn’t have much danger of that.  Jake, now dry, picked up the mooring, and Dad dropped the mainsail, and just like that we were back.