August 27 -- Gloucester to Marblehead and Lay Day There

What a difference a day and twelve miles makes! Gloucester is a commercial fishing city while Marblehead is crammed with moorings mostly with sailboats of pleasure; there is a forest of masts here.

We motored in light wind, supplementing with the genoa for about 40 of the 120 minutes, which gave us a knot.






Along the way we saw some rather large houses,

a lobsterman with hungry avian friends,










 Bakers Island Light,

and Marblehead Light.

We took a mooring at the Boston YC here. It is a bit more posh than the Harlem but the food is not as good. 500 members!

After lunch aboard we took the sleek Hinckley launch to go ashore and explore, as is our habit. But when Lene learned that they have a movie theater that was showing Blue Jasmine, we had separate afternoons.
The houses here have the names and professions of their builders and the year of construction as is true of many New England towns.

I visited Abbot Hall, which is the City Hall but also has a history museum in it.

Here is its tower, visible from the sea. From a distance, I had thought it was a church steeple. 

It features famous native sons of Marblehead: Four seamen who fought bravely for our nation and were honored by a series of warships being named after them, the most famous being John Glover, who ferried General Washington's troops from Brooklyn to Manhattan, thereby saving the Continental Army, and who later ferried General Washington and a few troops across the Delaware for that surprise raid on the Hessian troops there.

His boyhood home still stands.

Because the first four ships of General Washington's Navy were captained by Marblehead men, the town claims to be the "birthplace of the navy".They also featured the three cruisers that bore the name USS Marblehead. Mr. Justice Story, appointed to the Supreme Court at age 32 and who served for more than 30 years in the court's early days was a Marblehead man as was Governor, Vice President and Declaration of Independence signer Elbridge Gerry, who is more famous, or should I say infamous, for inventing "Gerry-mandered" congressional districts.Here is Gerry's warehouse

and his home.

I also visited the Marblehead Museum and Historical Society, which had an exhibition on the town's contribution in the Civil War.

After, I bought a clevis pin at Westmarine, to replace the one that went overboard (which held one end of the aft lifeline) we reconnected and visited Crocker Park, next to the YC, with its magnificent views of the harbor, left, center and right. ILENE is toward the left photo, with the lighthouse, but I cannot pick her out. We caught this at tide change because the left photo shows the boats pointing one way and the other photos show them facing the other way.

Before our planned departure for Cohasset we explored again in the morning. It was foggy but we hoped the fog would burn off.

It got worse, though you can still see neighboring boats, though just barely, if you look closely at the photo below. We took off but after a few minutes the Admiral prevailed upon me to return to an empty mooring, this one of the Eastern YC. We called them after we got moored and told them that we had taken one of their moorings.

So this has been an unplanned lay day.

Here is the Old Town House, a public meeting hall since 1727.

Fort Sewall, now a park, was built of earth at the entrance to the harbor in 1742 as protection against the French, but used to protect Old Ironsides which took shelter under her guns in 1814.

We have reconfigured our remaining itinerary AGAIN!  Previously we had nixed going to Nantucket via the outside route, in the Atlantic, from Provincetown around Cape Cod. Seventy plus miles was too long a trip for one day, decided my previously fearless admiral.  Today she decided we would forego the four Nantucket days entirely: it is one day east from Martha’s Vineyard, two days on the island and one day back. I think it was the one day east, away from home, at this stage of the summer, that did it for Ilene. We visited there back in the late 90’s and will visit Nantucket again, but not in 2013. This gives us more time to explore new places on the western side of Cape Cod Bay (currently Cohasset and Plymouth are planned) and in the Martha’s Vineyard region as well. We learned that Bennett and his wife Harriett are planning to visit Cape Cod so I have been figuring when and where we could meet them and this fog delay has removed some options.