Hangin with Martha

 

We arrive with the wind behind us and are glad to chill in Edgartown for a few days. The weather clears and it is now sunny and warm.  Edgartown is a great place to walk round for a while.  There are more places to buy T-shirts, hats, jewlery and some posh beach wear than you can shake a stick at.This is definitely a haven for the well heeled preppy and their very well off elders.  

The houses and streets are groomed to within an inch of their lives by an army of groundsmen. It is like living in a film set  everything is just so neat. The gardens look they have been established for a long time with immaculately groomed lawns and shrubs in flower. We walk past a house where some work was taking place to lay a path only to pass it again the next day and you would think the path had always been there and the planting around it is immaculate. This is the garden of the main historic church being made ready for an outdoor wedding later today.  I have only seen this sort of thing in movies.

There are a few reminders of the whaling history of the town. The heyday for Atlantic whaling from MV was between 1820 and 1860 and after the discovery of oil and the decline of the Atlantic whale stocks, it faded quickly. The town seems pretty keen to show it’s historic sites. 

Mairead leaves us on Friday and then we are to fend for ourselves. She will fly back to JFK for $95! On this island, that’s a steal. We pay $5 per person to get a 200m launch service to and from shore several times per day.  It’s better than swimming I can assure you.  F continues to make a name for himself by resolutely rowing ashore. Apparently we are known as the ‘French boat. There are not many foreign boats around here…and certainly nobody else mad enough to be rowing around the harbour 😜

We take the opportunity to send F up the mast to fix our dodgy VHF antenna and a couple of other items that needed attention. I have been watching the antenna wobbling with the sway of the boat over the past few days and thought it was only a matter of time before that scene from the exorcist movie where the priest is speared by a falling flagpole is reenacted. The errant nut is tightened and the antenna pole is secured….for now. We are briefly the entertainment for passing traffic in the harbour as we are the only boat to fly a live Frenchman instead of the ubiquitous Stars and Stripes.

The weather is not playing ball for our departure from Martha’s to Halifax. It will blow in the right direction all right but unfortunately gust a bit too high for safety with a peak of 40kn.  I am not comfortable having my first night sail with a 22 gusting 40 up my jacksie so my vote is to hold off for a couple of days. F agrees and we are hoping for a change of forecast.  The downside of all this is that when the wind does drop, it will die completely and come round into the nose. This will make for very slow going and threaten the schedule.

Today, I push the boat out further than I ever have and paid $12 for a jam jar of beer at a local brewery.  No dancing girls, no nibbles… just a beer in a jar. It’s a nice beer for sure but a reminder the Martha’s is for the affluent. In a shop in town, I seek some shampoo and was on the way to pay till I saw the $13.99 price sticker. I hightail it out and walked a kilometre from the centre and find an own brand alternative for $3.50 but am also astonished to pay $2.79 for a single red pepper. It’s a whole different world here. 

Off to do my laundry shortly. There are no services in town so I will resort to wearing them in the shower.