After traveling a lot, it’s nice to settle in for a few days, and that’s what we did in Scituate. This is a great stop for us because my brother, Frannie, owns the launch service here, and got us a mooring. We stayed for a week and never had to use the dinghy.
Our first stop after exiting the Cape Cod Canal was Plymouth, where the Pilgrims also saw fit to put in after their long sail. Actually, we anchored in Duxbury, right next store, but why quibble over a half-mile. The fishing fleet is fully engaged here, and we threaded quite the maze of lobster pots and lobster boats (yummy crustaceans) when we entered the Plymouth Channel. The next morning we also saw these rather oddly shaped fishing boats. They say that people come to resemble their pets, and I guess that fishing boats come to resemble the their prey; the long bow sprits are used for harpooning swordfish (and also tuna, which don’t have long protuberances, but we’re quibbling again).
There's nothing like seeing familiar faces. That’s why it was so nice for my sister, Linda, and her children, Lauren, Hannah, and Matt, to see us through the
According to the guide books, Great Salt Pond on
If you want to know where the Manhattan rich have their country homes, look no further than Long Island, and we weren’t even near the Hamptons! The northern shore at the western end of 
hoisted the sails and kept going;
To get from New York Harbor to Long Island Sound, you traverse the East River. It’s rather like an amusement park ride. First, you have to time your travel so you’re going down the Hudson River on the ebb (outgoing) tide, then up the East River on the flood (incoming) tide. Check; tide and current tables work well here. Then you avoid playing bumper cars with the multitude of ferries plying the rivers, because the tides are of course timed to coincide with the weekday morning rush hour. Check; credit Chris’ avoidance skills here. Then up the East River. The water pushes through here quickly (see the eddies and roils in the water here), especially at the narrow portion named Hell Gate (not a name to inspire confidence in the neophyte river traveler), and we hit 10.1 knots briefly as we man-handled the boat through the eddies and rips that wanted to turn us every which way. All in all, it was pretty painless, although the East River isn’t nearly as picturesque as the Hudson.
Manhattan has an eclectic array of art work
tree roots at
the 15th century King of Poland in Central Park,
and of course, Hello Kitty near the
.
Central Park was terrific. It’s a beautiful park with a variety of ecosystems (ponds, forests, fields, and a reservoir) and intended uses (ball parks, open grassy areas, paved and unpaved paths, bridle trails), and sometimes on the little paths you don’t even know you’re in the middle of a huge city. It was designed by Fredrick Law Olmstead , who also designed some of the public parks in 
It’s curious that most practitioners of biology, the study of life (bio=life, logy=study), are fascinated by all things dead. In fact, in Biology 101, the first equipment you are required to purchase for lab class is a dissecting kit. Go figure. Anyway, for dead stuff, the American Museum of Natural History is great. They’ve got bones of dinosaurs (like this T. rex) and Ice Age mammals, stuffed modern mammals, ancient hominid artifacts, and more. We enjoyed the non-dead stuff, too.
We now know what it feels like to be a little, little fish in a big, big pond. Coming into New York Harbor was quite a rush, adrenaline-wise. There were ships, there were barges, there were ferries, ferries, ferries, all over the place, and all big enough to squash us handily. Needless to say, we kept well out of their way, even while being distracted by sites such as the 
sail by Lady Liberty in your own boat-we both had tears in our eyes. After running the gauntlet, we made our way up the 
There are certain things that instantly remind you of home. These are especially welcome when you’ve been away for a long time. So you can imagine Anne’s nostalgia when we came upon a display of Drakes snack foods in a market in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey (not yet New England, but we're getting there!). You don’t get Drakes in the south. Yodels, Ring Dings, Devil Dogs, Yankee Doodles, and Funny Bones. I love them all, but limited myself to a box of Funny Bones. I savored one with a cup of tea that evening. Chris just doesn’t appreciate them in the same way, but that just leaves more for me.
We arrived in
Cape May is a bay length and a world away from Salem, New Jersey. Cape May is one of the oldest beach resorts in this area, and it’s full of beautiful Victorian homes, many of which are available as vacation rentals or B&Bs. There are also old hotels and inns that are throwbacks to earlier times. We stayed here several days, exploring the town by foot, and the creeks behind the town by dinghy.
We treated ourselves to dinner at The Lobster House, near the commercial docks. Lots of large (~80’) fishing boats berth here, and we were told that this is a big scallop-harvesting area, so we had scallops at dinner—delicious. Also timely, because the day we left Cape May, we heard an announcement on the NOAA weather radio that the scallop season was to be closed, so we got them in the nick of time.
formal Victorian houses,
eclectic waterside houses,
close-to-nature marsh houses, and, of course,
roughing it on a pole.
