Wednesday & Thursday June 15-16: Martha’s Vineyard

     We left Block Island around seven am.  After three nights our anchor had dug itself in pretty good; it took several buckets of water to dislodge the mud we brought up.  Next stop: Martha’s Vineyard, close to forty nautical miles away.  The current was with us a good portion of the way and we did pretty well with just the jib up.  

Southeast Lighthouse on Block Island

    Last fall we had anchored one night in Menemsha Bight, on the very Western end of the island.  This time we headed for Vineyard Haven.  We don’t have a current guide for New England (ours is Duncan & Ware, vintage 1977) so we relied on the internet to tell us about anchorages there.  The harbor is long and deep; we read the anchorages were just outside the mooring field, which meant outside the breakwater, as the mooring field was so tightly packed it’s a wonder the boats don’t swing into each other.  The ferry channel runs right alongside both anchorage and moorings.  We opted to go into the Lagoon Pond (really, that’s the name of it) which parallels the harbor, which meant requesting an opening from the bascule bridge which separates the two.  There are construction barges and cranes obscuring the bridge opening - they’ve been working on this bridge for well over a year.  The bridge tender kindly opened for us when asked, and Dan navigated the narrow opening into a large pond also dotted with moorings and we found an anchorage among them just off the Western shore.  By the time we got all settled, we opted to just have supper and go ashore in the morning to make a day of it.  He fired up the grill for hamburgers which we enjoyed with homemade sweet potato fries. 

See the bridge?

 See our path?

See how narrow?  Isn't Dan a great captain!

    We decided to rent a moped and give ourselves a full tour of the island.  We’ve never done that before, but it seemed like more fun than renting bicycles and less expensive than renting a car.  We only had to walk a couple of blocks to find a rental company.

     $99 for the moped, they told us.  Our mouths dropped open.  “Really?”  Dan asked.  We turned to go see what rental cars cost and the owner, seeing he was losing us, offered us a slight discount.  Half-day price for a full day’s use, he said.  $79.  Full season rates start this weekend, so we figured this was the best we were going to get.  (We found out later rental cars’ off-season rates are $125/day.)  Dan got a brief lesson on how to operate the vehicle and we set off.  He drove, I clung to him and tried to keep my feet on the little passenger foot-bars.  

Moped selfie

     It wasn’t comfortable to drive or ride, but it got us around the whole island.  We first went West, to Menemsha.  This little town is where they filmed the movie “Jaws.”  The Western section of the island is comprised of tall, brightly colored clay cliffs.  The whole area is owned by natives of the Wampanoag tribe, which has lived on Martha’s Vineyard  for centuries, long before Europeans arrived in the early 1600s.  We had lunch on the top of the cliff where the lighthouse and small interpretive building is, along with the usual food stands and t-shirt boutiques.  

 Gay Head cliffs & light.

Clay cliffs.

     Back on the moped we rode along the Southern shore of the island all the way to Edgartown on the Eastern side, where Martha’s Vineyard faces the small island of Chappaquidick.  We found ourselves on Peases Point Way, one of the main roads in Edgartown, and we stopped at the cemetery there to look up some of Dan’s ancestors.

Peases Point Way.

     In the early 1630s, two Pease brothers emigrated from England, taking up residence first in Salem, MA.  One of them traveled up to Maine and established a family line in the Appleton area.  Dan’s ancestors descend from the other brother, some of whom went to settle on Martha’s Vineyard.  We found many Pease gravestones, some dating back to the 1700s.  A caretaker suggested we go down the road to another, older graveyard to see some of the oldest burial sites on the island.  We did, and enjoyed reading the old style script and seeing dates in the 1600s, but we found no Peases buried in that cemetery.

     Back in Edgartown, we parked the moped and walked to the harbor.  Almost all the houses are cedar shingled and have white picket fences around their yards.  The streets are very narrow and the commercial buildings open right onto the sidewalks.  We treated ourselves to some ice cream and watched the harbor and the people for a bit, then decided it was time to head back to Vineyard Haven.

Edgartown Harbor & Light.  Chappaquidick in the background.

    The moped had other plans.  We got a few blocks from our parking spot and it coughed, sputtered, and stopped running.   After several attempts to call the rental company we finally got through to someone who said she would try to find someone to bring us a new bike.  Dan requested a pickup instead.  “Just come get us.”  He said, and they agreed.  Not ten minutes later the owner himself drove up.  He was in the area with his other business - glass replacement - and seemed unsurprised that the moped wouldn’t run.  He left the moped there on the corner and took Dan and I back to Vineyard Haven.  It was around 5 pm now, and the roads were busy enough that we were grateful not to be navigating them on the scooter.  Mopeds don’t go much over 25mph; it was a bit nerve-wracking to have trucks and buses right on our tail.  Next time, Dan told me, we just get on a tour bus.