Last day in Nantucket

Hard to believe we've been here 3 nights and spent a fair amount of time ashore. Nantucket is a wonderful places and really feels like an island. It has a touch of Key West to it. All the activity around the docks from the ferries coming in frequently during the day with cars, trucks and lots of passengers. Many of their passengers just come for the day.

It is of course very interesting and different traveling around to these places in our house. Because we're here to sight see but at the same time we have all of our regular chores to do along with maintenance and repairs. The last few times we ran the generator it didn't sound right. It seemed that not enough cooling water was coming out the exhaust. So common wisdom is to replace the impellor which is the wheel inside the pump that pushes the cooling water through the system. So yesterday I dug around and found one of my spare impellors and this morning I opened up everything to get in to do the work.But before I did I wanted to check the water flow into the pump.

I pulled the hose off the pump and no water came out when water should be running out. I had just cleaned the strainer a week ago so I knew that was clean so I took off the hose going into the strainer and likewise only a trickle of water was coming through. I tried to blow air through it to unblock it but after a half-hour of trying gave up. I would have to go under the keel and see if the intake as blocked. But it was early and cold with lots of current flowing so we decided to  go to town and go diving later. This evening I dove on the boat and found a huge clump of seagrass forced into the intake and on two dives was able to pull it all out and the generator runs fine.

We went to town this morning and visited the oldest house on the island the Jethro Coffin House which was originally built in 1686. We toured the house and had a lovely conversation with our guide who now lives here having moved here from North Carolina.

We had lunch at a very well reviewed place called Something Natural and it was packed. We even bought a loaf of their bread that is just like home made but from their bakery.

We walked around through the historic district an stopped and visited the Wind Mill that was first built in 1746 to grind corn. Had an excellent discussion with the tour guide who was also the speaker at the Whaling Museum yesterday on the Sinking of the Essex. The Essex was a Nantucket whaler that got attacked and sunk by a whale that was the inspiration for the classic Moby Dick. But we got a thorough explanation of how the mill ran.

Tonight we are getting ready to sail out in the morning early for our long trip back to Block Island.Wind forecast is for dead on the nose so we'll see. Would like to sail but it's a long trip. About the same as Rockland to Harpswell a couple weeks ago in Maine. The Newport after BI.

 Sunset and full moon rising.