Cruising the Coast of Martha’s Vineyard–A Childhood Dream

I’m a little bit nervous as I wait for my friend Jack to arrive. We head down the Pike to Quonset Point Rhode Island and at 1 pm, we set sail on the Vineyard Fast Ferry bound for the honky tonk town of Oak Bluffs Mass. Nervous? Well, maybe a little, since I’m spending the next three days at sea.

The Vineyard is abuzz because Obama and family are planning a vacation there the last week of August, staying in a rented $20 million home in Chilmark. We will meet Denny and his wife Laraine in the harbor around 3, and board their boat for a few days of coastal cruising.

I’ve never been coastal cruising, despite spending more than 40 years on both Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. But all I’ve ever done is wistfully gaze out at the nautical merry makers, and dream that it could be me hoisting the sail and leaning back in the sun while the waves lap the sides of the boat. The slow putt putt of a boy piloting a Boston Whaler from the Chappaquiddick Beach Club is a perment etching in my mind. I wanted that bad.

I was going to bring this laptop—but then realized that there probably no plugs on the boat and it will make me a power hog if I’m always trying to plug this baby in. So it will be old school…just my composition book, my camera and the iphone (which I’m sure will be flashing red with low power very soon after we set sail.