We would have had so much FUN this weekend. And I think it would have been a magnificent memory for you. We started out with a drive up to Rockland, not terribly exciting but still, some sights to see. And if you had come maybe I would have gotten everything together early, or maybe I would have chosen to take Route 17 from Augusta rather than going up Route 1 and getting stuck in Wiscasset, so we might have actually caught the ferry. But even if we had missed it my father would probably have come across the bay to get us in the fast little 19' motorboat and we would have gone zipping across a bay as smooth as glass.
North Haven and Vinalhaven are two big islands an hour's ferry ride from Rockland, and the two islands face each other across the Fox Island Thoroughfare, a relatively narrow passageway. In the center of the thoroughfare is the town of North Haven, and an anchorage full of boats and boatyard and a dock with dozens of dinghies tied up at it. The major town in Vinalhaven is on the other side of the island, where I've never been, so my vision is of the two islands as neighborhoods separated by a bustling community street. Probably people who live on Vinalhaven think of it very differently. You would have had lots to look at -- the lobster boats working, plus several small sailboats with couples sailing along slowly down the thoroughfare, and some folks crossing the thoroughfare in little skiffs or whalers. A major buoy marking the passage was dented and deformed, evidencing a very major collision that the summer kid I questioned said happened this spring, although he wouldn't say who had done it. We had a skipper's meeting at the casino, which is really a shed at the end of a dock, and if you had been there I would have pointed out some of the folks and the boats they are affiliated with, and told you whatever entertaining tales I could remember about mishaps the various boats had suffered while racing in past years.
Then we had a wonderful dinner at a fancy house way up high overlooking the thoroughfare, where a politician whose name you would recognize regaled us with the stories he tells his grandchildren, wonderful entertaining tales about monsters who like to steal mothers and wrap them in bacon and roast them over a spit unless enterprising children stop them. His grown children added details, from a lifetime of hearing these stories. I think you would have liked the food (fresh mussels, and sweet corn, and tender steak, and a fresh peach-blueberry tart with vanilla ice cream, the perfect summer meal) and the company, perhaps depending slightly on where at the long table you were placed. And the view, the view was delightful, with boats arriving and leaving and the sky making lovely colors and patterns with the clouds and the setting sun.
And after dinner I think you would have enjoyed the motorboat ride across the thoroughfare in the darkness, with stars visible overhead and anchor lights on masts and a blinking red light on a mid-channel buoy. You would have helped tie up the boat and then climbed with my father and I up to the place we were staying, with a distant relative of my grandmother's, in bedrooms with windows opening up to the water. The sound of the water lapping the shore, and the buzz of small engines and, sometimes, the voices of people on boats, would have been the last sound you heard as you fell asleep on Friday night, and the first sound you heard on Saturday morning.
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