Cadillac Mountain - September sunset

from Taisy

Cape Cod Canal | Issuma

Safe return from the arctic!  Back to Buzzards Bay for which my Buzzards Bay 14 - North River 2  - was designed.  Well done, Richard and crew.
 Cape Cod Canal | Issuma

Indian Harbor Classic Yacht Race - Greenwich

Rosie - a Rosinante

Pre-start

Dave Seroy and I  took North River 2 to Greenwich to the annual Indian Harbor Yacht Club Classic Yacht Regatta. The boats were beautiful and our hosts were gracious.  No one pointed out that mine was the only boat with a thick band of sea grass at the water line.   I had attempted a half-assed belated scrubbing last week but there's no hiding my lack of diligence.  Next year I'll have to hire the Barnacle Buster to scrub the waterline.  Or do it myself.   (click on thumbnails to enlarge)

The highlights for me were, of course, the L. Francis Herreshoff designs.  In addition to my Buzzards Bay 14 - a Sensible Cruising Designs selection - there was the flagship Ticonderoga and the Rosinante's Rosie and Cadenza.  And as part-time residents of Friendship, Maine, the Friendship Sloop Natanya must be mentioned. (full slideshow HERE)

Indian Harbor Yacht Club - house and dock, Greenwich

Ticonderoga

Natanya - Friendship sloop

North River 2

Natanya - bow

Peter & Margaret Quigley's John Dory crossing our bow

Sonny -stern

Poetry: Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon - Two new collections

I've loved Seamus Heaney's poetry since the late 70's when I read Digging - the first poem in the first collection - 1966.

"Between my finger and my thumb the squat pen rests; snug as a gun", it begins.  He tells of his father digging potatoes "stooping in rhythm through potato drills...the coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft/against the inside knee was levered firmly./  He rooted out the tall tops, buried the bright edge deep/ to scatter new potatoes that we picked/loving their cool hardness in our hands./By God, the old man could handle a spade./Just like his old man."

Seamus Heaney

After he won the Nobel Prize fifteen years ago I asked him at a reading if between his finger and thumb the squat pen still rested.  "Yes", he said, "but I wrote the Nobel Lecture on my new Mac".

This week he and fellow Northern Ireland poet Paul Muldoon released new collections. 

Dwight Garner reviewed the two poets in the Times today:

Reading Mr. Heaney’s restrained, earthy poems, you can almost smell the bits of straw and dried sheep dung woven into their woolen fabrics. His work has as much compression, cogency and unhurried rural gravitas as that of any poet alive.

Mr. Muldoon, after toddling briefly in Mr. Heaney’s footsteps, has emerged as a much wilder cat, an allusive and riddling poet, one whose Irish roots are tucked into the shadows cast by his cerebral lightning.

Muldoon's poetry is less accessible - unlike the fabulous lyrics of his three-car garage, all-PhD rock band Racket.  But click here to read the rest of the review.

Issuma: back to Nova Scotia

Issuma is back from Baffin island via Battle Harbor, Labrador, and has turned the corner at Cape St. Lawrence and is now at Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.

Another dream boat: Goat Island Skiff Yawl

I've always wanted a yawl.  This one offers the illusion of building it myself - by buying the kit and assembling the boat.  Built by Clint Chase of Portland, ME, the details are HERE

Sonny Rollins at 80 - a masterful performance by an Old Master

When he came on stage ambulating in an awkward,slow, wide gait we wondered.  Until the first powerful, perfect note.  And it lasted for two hours - with guest appearances by octoenarian drummer Roy haynes and the icon of the avant-garde - Ornette Coleman.  Oh, and Jim Hall and trumpeter Roy Hargrove.  Nate Chinen's review describes Rollins:

Pacing the stage in a tunic-like white shirt his head topped by a cumulonimbus of hair, he called to mind an old testament prophet, a figure of adamant authority."  Amen.

Music Review - Sonny Rollins Celebrates Birthday at Beacon Theater - NYTimes.com

Aerial views of Manhattan

This is the iconic shot, but there are many more and more dramatic Manhattan shots with great composition, all taken from the air HERE - gathered by the Denver Post.

The Front Yard

"Believe me my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

When we bought the house we saw the view, the river, and the dry full basement.  The lot looked interesting - 12 feet above sea level at the roadside, salt marsh at the wind in the willows riverbank.  What we did not realize (especially I did not) was how appealing the grounds could be and how interesting caring for and improving it could be.

After we cleared out the invasive jewelweed we turned our attention to the front yard.  We pulled out the scraggly 40 foot silver maple, which Peter Green climbed and cut down for us.  That opened the front yard.  Step one was the raised bed, which Susan planted.  The next was planting three evergreens - two Canaan firs and a balsam fir. (click images to enlarge)