Boston 42:21N 71:03W
Millybrown
Mark Hillmann
Sat 18 Oct 2008 04:14
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It is not just Maine has lobster pot buoys,
but Massachusetts as well. We caught a second one just outside Boston,
motoring into the sun as the breeze faded. It stopped our engine with
a bang, so I felt no compunction in cutting the down rope.
Unfortunately I said that as long as we could find a mooring, we could sail on
to it and get the buoy off later.
So the breeze got up, we found a couple of moorings
in a tightly packed fleet, but took about seven tries to catch one. The
first mooring we got but the pick-up rope was broken and for the first few
attempts I could neither hold it nor thread another rope. The second was
difficult, but we got it, I announced it was no good but had put our own
rope on to it.
 It was worth it: Look at the position,
right in front of the city centre. We were on a sailing club
mooring. The next day Murrel and I walked round the older parts of Boston
and when I got back, the boat had been moved to another mooring. These
moorings had not been checked, but they had seen the pot and did not charge for
the first night. Thank you.
Round Boston we spent a little
while following a tour party and listening to their guide. Her
stories of the start of the American war of independence, the Boston tea
party, Lexington and Concord were not intended for the general public, but we
chatted with her Northern Irish tour party, so she could not easily tell us
to go away.
 After lunch we went to the Institute of
Contemporary Art, the elegant glass building on the left. On the right is
the old swing bridge, rusty and half derelict, with the little pitched roof
building on associated piling, more than half derelict. This is right in
the centre of Boston, with millionaire yachts parked 100 yards
away.
Colin Rowcroft, who came on the first leg of
this trip, is a Cumbrian bridge engineer. Many American
bridges are far below the standard he would approve. Private
affluence but public squalor.
 That evening after Murrel had gone for her
return flight I sailed round the airport. $60 seemed too much
for just a mooring, and there were spare ones over here, so here is the same
skyline at sunset.
It was a bit noisier as they divert the jets at
night to give Boston some peace, but I could not hear when I was
asleep.
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