(This is an article written by Heidi for our LNVT group quarterly magazine.)
No cruise to Maine--restricted by their governor-- for the first time in many years. No visits with good friends on their boats, rafted up and enjoying cocktail hour together. No showing off VICTORIOUS to new acquaintances we meet at our vacation anchorage. It was a grim summer unfolding as we contemplated what we could do.
BRENDAN'S LUCK in the distance Close up of LUCY's cockpit and upper deck
LUCY passing by the bike trail in the Cape Cod Canal
So we stayed close to home, in our case Massachusetts waters and the nearby islands. Not so bad. Multiple short trips to some favorite places, and even returning to small harbors that we went to when we had young children aboard and hadn't visited recently. That was sort of fun. On our first day, as we arrived at our first stop at a small beachy island, there was one other boat already anchored there -- wait, it is a Lord Nelson Victory Tug. How likely is that? And one that we don't recognize. John and Susan rowed over in their dinghy to say "Hi" and it turns out they have recently bought BRENDAN'S LUCK (to be renamed EDWARD S. MARVIN) and are on their first cruise on it. They are from New Hampshire so it seems very coincidental that we would find them at this Cape Cod spot. They talked to us from their dinghy for 20 minutes, distancing nicely.
We repeated the dinghy-to-boat routine whenever we wanted to chat with other boaters. It usually made for a shorter conversation, but enjoyable. Later in the summer, on our 4th or 5th short cruise we picked Marblehead for a 3-day stay. We had lived in Marblehead back in the 70s and 80s and love stopping there. To be sure we had a mooring in this crowded harbor we rented one in advance from the harbormaster. We got advance notice from a friend we phoned that there was another LNVT visiting the harbor. Our lookout was posted and we were very pleased to see the larger 49' Tug LUCY, which we had recently read about in Tuggers (Summer issue #83). We also had spotted this Tug at it's New York City dock a few year's back as we transitted the East River. It was definitely on our bucket list to check out LUCY!
Our mooring was in the same vicinity as the harbormaster's dock that LUCY was at. Unfortunately we didn't meet the owners but they had hired crew members onboard that we did get to talk to and they answered quite a few of our questions. We took lots of pictures and we got to view LUCY from several public vantage points ashore as well as from the water.
As luck would have it, about 5 days after our return to Cohasset on VICTORIOUS, on a bike ride 40 miles south of our home port, LUCY was spotted once again. The bike trail alongside the Cape Cod Canal is great for boat watching, and LUCY was presumably headed back to New York via the Canal.
The cruising season extended until late September and included a week "marooned" in Marion --Sippican Harbor -- during a wild windy stretch of weather. But even that experience was interesting and most days the students from the town's Tabor Academy came out to their nearby schooner for activities, and we could make it to shore for a late day walk. Our wedding anniversary day wasn't good for dinghying ashore but 2 days later friends from a nearby boat encouraged us to eat outside with them at a favorite Marion restaurant. All-in-all the summer that wasn't meant to be fun turned out to be memorable after all.
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