9/22/00 | Nantucket

there was once a man

We were stuck in Nantucket for almost a week, trapped by the remnants of Hurricane Gordon. Howling winds (we saw up to 28 knots, but mostly it blew around 20) kept our wind generator spinning air into amps, and whipped up the waters south of the islands into, NOAA weather radio assured us, ten foot seas. Inside the large harbor, the water was wind-streaked but the waves were tiny --we'd had much worse dinghy rides in Elizabeth Harbour near George Town in the Bahamas -- and our anchors held well. Nantucket's a nice place to be stuck in, anyway.

Nantucket was settled in the early 17th century by Quakers. In addition to their adherence to principles of simplicity and equality in religion, Quakers were also industrious workers and canny businessmen (and businesswomen, too -- that equality thing). Early attempts at sheep farming failed due to insufficient fresh water for wool processing, but whales were plentiful off the coast. The settlers rapidly turned the island into the whaling capital of the world, full of sail lofts and rigging shops, spermaceti candle makers and whale oil distributors.

Whaling from Nantucket stopped in the mid-19th century; the canny businessmen turned their attention to squeezing dollars from visitors instead of oil from blubber. (Who needs to raise sheep when you can fleece tourists?) The inarguably quaint downtown, cobblestone streets lined with brick walks, now sports fine arts galleries (Nantucket Lightship baskets, for $800), knicknack shops ("Nantucket Lightship style" baskets, made in China, for $45), antique shops (19th century scrimshaw for $350), and restaurants (hamburgers for $10). For some weird reason, lots of people were, apparently, shopping, although it baffles us why anyone would visit an island, where everything has to be shipped in and therefore costs more, for the purpose of shopping.

This has got to be the most expensive place we've ever been. The harbor's cluttered with moorings which go for $55 a night, which is more than we are usually willing to pay for a slip in a marina with power and water. Needless to say, we found a spot to anchor. Restaurant prices ranged from the merely high to the completely outrageous. We picked up a real estate brochure and couldn't find anything much under three quarters of a million dollars (other than a $390,000 2 bed 1 bath "cozy, needs TLC").

In the middle of all this conspicuous markuppery, we found the Nantucket Historical Association's museums to be an amazingly good deal. We each picked up a $10 "season pass", good for admission to each of about ten little museums as well as a guided walking tour of the town. We started out with the walking tour and a visit to one of the furnished historic houses, then after lunch went to the famous whaling museum.

The whaling museum was really cool. The building used to be a spermaceti candle factory (candles made from the head-goo-wax of sperm whales) and one of the original wax presses is on display there. The walls are lined with harpoons, lances, flensing knifes, and all sorts of other nasty-looking iron implements. One gallery is filled with portraits of Nantucket captains, another with scrimshaw and carved whalebone items. Another featured a display on the whaleship Essex, which left Nantucket on a whaling expedition only to be rammed by a pissed-off sperm whale. (The story was originally made famous by Melville's Moby Dick, and recently re-made famous by Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea).

The oldest house on the island was built in 1686, and has been carefully restored and furnished to its period by the historical society. Another house museum we visited was built sometime before 1745, but was lived in by a succession of families up until the property was given to the historical society. The last owners, who lived there from the 1930s through 1970s, decorated in "colonial revival" style -- what they thought it would have looked like when the house was originally occupied -- and as they donated the furnishings as well as the house, that's how it's decorated today. But the 1930 conception of 1745 isn't what 1745 really was (and we could tell, educated as we were by Strawbery Banke and other museums we've seen recently). Nantucket's strict house exterior code also codifies history as we imagine it -- everything's covered with weathered grey shingles, since when Nantucket was first developed as a resort, the abandoned buildings from the whaling days were all weathered grey, and the intent was to recreate the look of the "olden days". Well, of course the buildings were grey -- they'd been abandoned for years. Turns out that originally most of the buildings were painted red; with time, the red faded and wore off. But the "Nantucket look" has been established as weathered grey shingles, so that's how things are and will stay. History just ain't what it used to be.

One day we braved the constantly blowing wind and hauled the bikes out for a ride around the island. It's a good thing there are bike paths along the narrow island roads, because everybody drives huge sport-utility vehicles which take up all but about two inches of lane. I don't think they allow any other type of car over on the ferry from the mainland. We were walking around town one afternoon and I counted seven SUVs parked in a row along the side of the street, followed by a pickup truck and then two more SUVs. All the big whomper luxury models, too, leather-upholstered Range Rovers and Grand Cherokees and Eddie Bauer signature Explorers. No little bitty Suzuki Sidekicks here.

The wind was at our backs, fooling us into thinking we were in decent shape,as we rode out to the Life Saving Museum. This museum honors the Massachusetts Humane Society and the U.S. Life Saving Service, predecessors to the Coast Guard. Nantucket had a lot of Life Saving Stations, and for good reason. One of the items in the museum was a chart showing the shoals around the island, and next to each shoal was a list of names of the ships known to have wrecked on that shoal. The total came to about 200 shipwrecks, most of course from the days before GPS. The walls of the museum were lined with name boards from ships whose personnel were rescued near Nantucket.

As if the shoals weren't enough of a hazard, Nantucket tends to be foggy in the summer (although we've enjoyed perfectly clear skies during our visit, due to the ceaseless wind). In 1934, the Nantucket lightship (a ship anchored near shoals as a navigational aid, like a lighthouse) was rammed and sunk by the Olympia, sistership of the Titanic. The most famous fog-caused wreck near Nantucket was the sinking of the Andrea Doria in 1956. We promised the museum docent we'd be extra careful sailing out of the harbor, and continued on our ride.

In Sconset, at the southeast corner of the island, we bought overpriced sandwiches for lunch and then walked along the mostly empty beach. We could see breakers far out to sea, marking shoals which were no doubt represented on the shipwreck chart. We considered cheating and taking the bus back to town, but toughed it out, sweating into the wind. When we got back to Windom we sat in the cockpit and drank well-earned beers in the fading sun.