After saying goodbye to Anne’s siblings, we set off for Martha’s Vineyard. Enroute we spent another night at Cuttyhunk Island. This time we asked the raw bar boat to come over to Tilia. We bought some oysters on the half shell and a shrimp cocktail from them. It’s always fun to have food delivered by boat.
After leaving Cuttyhunk, we had a downwind sail all the way down Vineyard Sound to Martha’s Vineyard. It was fabulous! We finally had the chance to fly our spinnaker, the light downwind sail that billows out in front of sailboats. When we prepared to fly it in the Chesapeake, we discovered the halyard was too thick to run easily. It would have been dangerous to raise, because we couldn’t have dropped it quickly. Jim replaced the halyard in Annapolis, so we finally got to use the spinnaker.
It was an absolute delight to sail the length of Martha’s Vineyard to the far eastern end. We caught a mooring ball in Edgartown, a picturesque, historic town from the 1600s. We then spent a day exploring on our own before our friends David and Julie joined us from Minneapolis. When we share our boat life with friends it helps us remember how remarkable this life is, even in the day-to-day details.
In addition to dinghy excursions into town or to beaches, we rented a car one day and explored most of the island: from the quieter, more remote Aquinnah Cliffs and Menemsha, a fishing village where we had delicious lobster rolls, to Oak Bluffs, where we had oysters on the half shell and peel and eat shrimp at a rowdy dockside bar. For our last evening together on the island, we enjoyed a delicious dinner at Alchemy and said goodbye to Julie and David the next morning. Anne dinghied them to shore, where they caught an Uber, to a ferry, to a bus, to the plane back to Minneapolis. We appreciate our friends’ efforts to make their way to Tilia!
