Travelogue 2

Tuesday morning began with a workshop but then all of us in the TUFW crew boarded a school bus for Gloucester and a “lighthouse-n-lobsters harbor cruise.” When I made plans originally to come to NACCAP, I was coming alone and decided I didn’t want to travel all the way to New England and not see any of the sights, so I booked myself onto this little 90 minute excursion. Later, when it became clear that [a] I was going to have an entirely new counseling staff at TUFW and [b] no one was going to be in the office to supervise them for their first few days of work, I decided to bring all of them to the conference and that it would be a nice team experience for us all to do the harbor cruise together.

It was a perfect day for a trip on the water. Temperatures in the upper 70s, blue skies and gentle breezes. About fifty NACCAPeans (okay, I just made that up) came on the cruise, while another forty went on a three-hour whale watching trip deeper out to sea. We were joined by a group of about forty kids who probably were on their high school senior trip or something. Anyway, we scouted out a spot near the bow (that’s the front) of the boat.

From L to R below, the back row is Roy Danielian (Programs Manager), Jeanne Crafton (Senior Admissions Counselor) and Angelo Mante (Admissions Counselor). The front row is Amanda Heinsch (Admissions Counselor), me and Kirsten Harrison (Communications Manager).

And you gotta love this photo of Roy. He looks like somebody's Uncle Vinnie. Fuhgidaboutit!

This picture is of the historic Gloucester marine paints factory, which painted the old wooden fishing boats with a copper-based paint that helped prevent damage to the boats. And then they discovered that the copper killed the marine life. You win some, you lose some.

They also showed us the Hammond Castles. This first one was built by someone named Hammond, naturally . . .

However, when his son wanted to marry, the parents did not approve of his fiancee, so Hammond Junior decided to build an even bigger castle just down the road, or shore, from his parents' shack. If I remember right, he incorporated three distinct eras in castle architecture into his new home, which are somewhat apparent as you look at the castle from left to right, with the most recent style (I think from the 18th century) at the left and the oldest at the right.

As this was a “lighthouse-n-lobsters cruise," they stopped along the way to pull up some lobster traps for us. I wondered if we would get a refund if the traps were empty but that was a moot point since they did pick up several critters. Everyone gathers on the port side of the boat to observe the drama, which caused us to list quite a bit. The captain did not appear to be alarmed, though.
Near the end of June each year, Gloucester celebrates St. Peter’s Festival. One of the highlights of the event is when they grease up this large horizontal pole in the middle of the harbor and then men from all over, many of who probably are drunk, I imagine, attempt to walk the full length of this round, slick, bouncy pole as crowds cheer from the shore.
As the cruise drew to a conclusion, they showed us this famous statue on the shoreline, dedicated to the thousands of fishermen who had lost their lives at sea over the years. I guess they thought it was best not to tell us about this part of sailing the ocean prior to departure.