On Nantucket, $120 Will Pay for a Taxi to ‘Sconset

I like to keep up with the news on the island of Nantucket, so I visit ack.net to find out the latest. Two stories today caught my eye:

There’s been a deluge of complaints the police heard after taxi drivers refused to take fares to the far out towns of the small island like Sconset, Tom Nevers and Madaket. The logic is that the big money is on the small hops in and out of town, and drivers didn’t want to leave for a 25 minute trip and miss out on the action.

One woman was quoted in the Inquirer and Mirror newspaper saying she was trying to get a ride to Sconset after 11:30 pm, when the last public bus makes its run there. The driver told her she would need to pay him $120, so she ran to the ATM. Even after the giant fare, the driver grumbled about having to take her.

Boat Drifts to Spain

The Queen Bee, the Nantucket boat which was lost in 2008, spent three-plus years adrift in the ocean and was found in January floating off the coast of Spain, has been returned to the U.S., according to a report by WBAL-TV in Baltimore.

Following its discovery over 3,500 miles away from Nantucket, the 26-foot Regulator boat was loaded on a freighter and arrived at the Port of Baltimore this week.

The boat was last stateside in August 2008, when Scott Douglas and Rich St. Pierre were thrown off the vessel after being struck by a large wave off the western shores of Nantucket. http://www.ack.net/lostboatreturns072412.html

The men survived the ordeal and managed to swim to Esther’s Island where they were rescued by Nantucket marine authorities, but the Queen Bee drifted off into the open ocean, and wouldn’t be seen again for 3 1/2 years.