Boston tea party and an Aussie bar

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Wed 25 Jul 2012 03:26

Sat, Sun, Mon & Tues – 21st, 22nd, 23rd & 24th July

 

We thought the weekend would be very busy in town for any sightseeing so decided to spend the day doing things on the boat that require either running water or electricity, or both.   We have plugged in to the mains for a day to fully charge up the batteries, but because of the difference in our voltage from the US's we have to use the expensive system mainly reserved and very expensive, for boats running air-con constantly, so we tend to only do it to treat the batteries to a proper juice up.

 

So I washed down the hull, treated the reappearing tannin stains with lemon juice and started to polish the hull.   This is obviously done standing in Doris but as each wake goes past, I have to push the dinghy away from the hull to prevent splashes up the bit I am working on - so all very tedious and irritating, perhaps Saturday with all the extra boat traffic was a silly day to choose.

 

Rob did a lot of jobs around the boat and more work on Iain Simpson's rigging system website which Rob is running from inside our website.   You might like to look at http://www.rhbell.com/Simbo  to see Iain’s thoughts on it - it was information we took to heart and have based much of Serafina's systems on.

 

I rather ambitiously decided to complete the polishing job in one day - partly as I expected to be so seized up the next day, that it would be impossible to carry on!   We are definitely missing the regular swimming in the Caribbean.   We finally finished re-tying alongside the dock (we had edged Serafina further and further out to facilitate getting the dinghy between her and the dock) and had showers in time for a sojourn to the tiny Aussie bar and pie factory run within the boatyard site.

 

This boatyard is quite a find, not only is it considerably cheaper (about a quarter of prices across the river) but it is well run by the marvellous Pat and her staff.   A hippie who lived aboard here organised a sort of sculpture park on site, so all around the very much working warehouses and sheds there are extraordinary huge, mainly metal sculptures - spotting them is just half the fun.  And the Aussie bar, ‘G’Day’  is another great addition - their main business in yacht catering but as a side-line they now also have a bar and sell their KO pies plus a limited menu from a tiny bar and kitchen.

 

In no time we got chatting to Cathy and Bill.   Cathy had been brought up on the East side and both she and Bill were fascinating, telling us about their upbringings and family history (Cathy's grandfather came over from Ireland and was a fisherman, away at sea for months returning, usually with an itinerant fisherman in tow, to their two-roomed home.   She'd been brought up with 5 siblings in a flat locally.   Bill's grandfather had come from Germany just as the Depression was ending and made his way initially in New York.   It is so strange to hear such immediate history and realise just how new a country the US is.), and also pointed out lots of local eateries, mostly run it seems by members of cathy’s immediate family that we have to visit on this side of the river.   Around 2300 hours the bar closed and we were still finishing up our drinks when a skunk trotted towards us.   We of course wanted a good look, whereas Cathy and Bill leapt to their feet and charged off in the opposite direction, dragging us with them.   Their dog was recently sprayed by one and was blind for 13 weeks and NOTHING removes the smell.  Eventually two of their children returned with Uncle Joe from their trip to the Boston Red Soxs (baseball) and we showed them all around Serafina.   Apparently it was midnight. (You can read into this that Sarah had drunk sufficient to lose track of time and things….)

 

Next morning, despite feeling a little delicate, we set off to an arts and craft, plus farmers' market by City Hall.   The first setback was Rob's 7 day T pass refused to work and there are no staff around on a Sunday.   Eventually a platform cleaner let him through the barrier.     Then when we arrived at City Plaza, but there was no market and the only information we could glean was that it ran on Wednesdays, although the website did say this was a Sunday special.   Then we tried to visit the Aquarium but there were very long queues in the hot sun, and by this time my horrendous hangover was such that I only felt like a totter home to bed.   And Rob was a total star and did not demure, if the roles were reversed would I be so kind?!   We finally tracked down a T employee after 3 different stations who just told Rob to follow another passenger closely through the automated gates as after all his ticket is legal!   So this is what we will be doing.   The gates are unusual here as they open to allow passengers out of the station en masse, without counting you out by ticket and the same gates work in reverse to take your ticket, presumably the timing inwards is such to allow the larger American to waddle through, so there should be sufficient time for us both to scamper through.

 

On Monday I set off to visit the Museum of Fine Arts which is considerably bigger than the Washington Smithsonian Fine Arts museum.  I only managed to view about a quarter of the exhibits but thoroughly enjoyed it.   In fact you get the possibility of a second visit for the price of the entry ticket.   After a bit of shopping I met Rob at a cinema to watch the Dark Knight Rises - weirdly there was a crying baby in the cinema with us.   On our way home we found the famous pizza restaurant, Santarpios in Chelsea Street (I use the term loosely - great atmosphere with seating at the bar and one row of diner-type tables) near 'our' T station.   Cathy and Lonely Planet had recommended it, but Cathy had also said that the staff were downright rude - pretty much!   We stupidly each opted to have our own pizza which meant that a day later, despite taking a goodly amount home in a doggy bag, we are still groaning from the volume of pizza.   Cathy's other suggestion was Rino's in Saratoga Street for handmade lobster ravioli but we are not sure we can face it yet. We were a bit lost as we tried to locate Santarpios and about to set off down the wrong street when a friendly policeman who had spotted us looking lost from a distance, came up from some way behind us and very helpfully pointed us in the right direction. We are not sure if this was an enthusiastic police officer doing the right thing, or perhaps he just saw us as a mugger’s delight as we wandered through the Italian and Irish quarters!

 

Tuesday Rob had a brainwave about sourcing the equipment to re-gas our fridge ourselves, which turns out to be about $60 to buy the equipment and around $30 for the gas - which seems about what we would pay to have an engineer to do the job just once.   So that will be delivered to the yard tomorrow.   Then we set off to visit the USS Constitution.   This three-masted frigate is still the flagship of the US Navy and is beautifully maintained.   We opted to take the guided tour and it soon became apparent that it would have a British-bashing theme - which obviously Rob couldn't not possibly take lying down as the only Brits on the tour.   It was a relatively short and quite basic tour of the deck and lower gun deck given by serving Naval personnel.   Afterwards we spoke to our guide and on hearing that we had sailed here, Gilbert Caine (originally from Barbados where he was educated by English teachers) very kindly offered to take us on a private trip further into the ship showing us the officer’s quarters, the keel and rudder controls which was a huge treat and very interesting.   We felt very privileged.

 

We then visited the Aquarium, not necessarily my favourite activity but this one is very highly focused on conservation and education.   The main exhibit is a four storey aquarium with a circular stairway around it and when we visited, apart from some huge fish in it, it also had two very busy divers hand-feeding the various fish their particular diet!   The fishy highlights were a 560lb Green Turtle called Murtle, Leafy Seadragons (related to Seahorses), a wonderful Jellies (Jelly Fish to us) exhibition, 36' Anaconda (well it was astonishingly horrible), living corals and huge sea anemones.   Many of the exhibits have been rescued from the seas following injury.  Everything was beautifully maintained and clean - even the huge main tank's water is completely replenished every 90 minutes.   And while we had been inside the heavens had opened dramatically.   We managed to nip home before the next thunderstorm after a thoroughly entertaining day.