We had made plans, a few weeks ago, to meet with Hugh and his wife Arlene in Salem this evening. I served with Hugh in 1967 on the USS Hammerberg; he replaced me as her Anti Submarine Warfare Officer and he got us reconnected via Facebook maybe 10-15 years ago. When we are in the greater Boston area, which apparently includes Salem, we try to get together. I had wanted to moor in next door Marblehead, which we visited quite a few years ago, but last time and this time as well, there was no available mooring except way far out at the Bay’s mouth. The person who could have rented us that mooring there told us “but you will be uncomfortable there”. What I remember about Marblehead, in addition to the elegant Boston YC, on whose mooring we stayed, were 1) the still standing home of Congressman Eldridge Gerry, whose salamander shaped congressional district gave rise to the word Gerrymander and 2) the painting “Spirit of ‘76” which hangs in its town hall.
So if not Marblehead then Salem. This is our third visit and we have seen The House of the Seven Gables, and the Customs Court where Hawthorn worked (currently closed for renovation) and heard all we want to know about witches. But we almost had to cancel or adjourn due to forecast bad weather, I alerted Hugh to that possibility. But in the morning, while rain and fog remained in the forecast with scattered thunderstorms, the strong winds that had terrified Lene and the pussycats a few days ago were not in the forecast.
It was raining lightly when we got underway at 9:30, but the severe fog warning which was to last until 10:00 had lifted to a manageable level. The rain shortly developed into a downpour that lasted half an hour, but without wind driving it, my follies kept me dry. Then no rain until another such fifteen minute downpour near the end. The route took us around Cape Ann. Essentially a) north out of Rockport, b) east across the north coast of Cape Ann, c) south through the sound between the Cape and Thatcher Island off its tip and along Cape Ann’s east coast to Gloucester, and d) west southwest across the big rock strewn Salem Sound to it far end, where, west to east, are the huge mooring fields of Beverly, Salem and Marblehead.
The Safe Harbor (brand) Marina’s mooring field has 250 moorings plus a large docking area. One has to book a mooring through through Dockwa. It instructs you to call on Chanel 8 upon arrival, go to a particular day marker and wait for the launch to come out and lead you through the 249 other moorings to yours. Again we used the friendly launch service to go ashore where we did the laundry and wrote. The laundry room has seen a change for the worse in the name of technological progress since our last visit. It is not payment by credit card of which I complain; that is progress as compared to being required to carry around rolls if quarters. But for us transient cruisers to do a load of laundry, Lene had to figure out how to download and use an app! Some IT guy thought that this was a good idea but he was wrong.
We walked to Finz, a modern, stylish, Asian themed, fish based restaurant overlong the water on Pickering Wharf. It was first built in 1762 and expanded, near the Customs house and filled with warehouses for the loading and unloading of the clipper ships for trade with China. Now it is full of condos, shops and restaurants. A very pleasant reunion:
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