We have hit a holiday destination, it’s just beautiful  18M by 8M with only one central harbour.  The Island of Nantucket is so pretty, all the house are made of Cedar Shingles they all have to look similar and all stick to Cedar for the outside, there are no chain of shops all are individual, you have cobbled street, Hydrangeas and climbing rose bushes adorning most houses and it’s all in flower.  You have artists on every corner set up with their easels, painting the scenery.  Mint chocolate ice cream which seems to be David’s favourite at the moment in every shop, so he’s happy.

 

The landscape is very like the UK on its best summer day, lots of flowers, trees, birds  The Gulf stream passing closely by influencing the weather temperature.  The only thing we have been surprised with is the amount of fog they get, thick fog too as you cannot see the end of your boat…

 

It actually feels like we are on holiday, everyone is in holiday mode, the schools have broken up and there are children everywhere.  Today, we took the bikes ashore and cycled toward the area of the Jetties which is the entrance to the harbour, people where swimming in the sea, it was around 33 deg’s  blue skies very hot and sunny, the spectacle on the beach was a boarder paddling with his dog perched happily on the front of his board going out to their RIB (see picture below) the dog was loving it!!

 

The island is surrounded by shoals with strong rip tides between them, very shallow with a very tricky entrance to the safe waters inside the harbour, we visited the museum in town and were shocked at the amount of whaling ships and cargo ships that have foundered in these waters, hundreds of them including lots of fishermen from Cape Verde and Portugal were lost at sea.  It was sad to see all these lives lost and it’s only in recent years and since the invention of the GPS for boats that boats are now much safer sailing in these waters.

 

Our future plans have changed a bit and as we have decided not to go north of Cape Cod, so we have time to explore and stay here for a bit longer as we are enjoying ourselves.  We will stay around this area, north of New York State until early August then make the journey down to Chesapeake for late September where we will leave the boat until November and come back to the UK.