Harboring: Swansea

We head out to Swansea today as the Harboring series continues...

This harbor probably had the highest percentage of sailboats I have seen, and I've seen a bunch of harbors.

Swansea has a wild history for a town of 15,000 souls. They were named after a village in Wales, founded in 1662, burned to the ground in 1675, used to be part of Rehoboth, used to own part of Barrington, RI...

Yes, Swansea has a border with Rhode Island. They are the far western end of our current coverage area.

Swansea has some frontage on Mount Hope Bay, as well as the Taunton River and the Cole River. It's not a hot river, it's not a warm river... it's a Cole River.

Swansea also has a cute little marina that is almost as cute as this cute little bench.

Grey boats always have a PT-109 look to them.

All-black works, although I bet it is hard to see at night. Step off the dock into the water by accident, knowwhatimsayin?

I actually talked to this guy and managed to forget to ask why he didn't name his boat yet. It is being restored, so maybe he is saving the Naming stuff for the end-user consumer.

I assume that this one is also being restored, the gentleman who I spoke with is in the business. I suppose that one would call restoration/resale something along the lines of boat-flipping, although that sounds Accidentally Ominous.

I have limited camera skills, but sometimes the boats and the atmosphere handle 95% of the process.

Very photogenic harbor.

It was also very sailboat-heavy.

Cutest boat in the harbor, it looks like how Santa handles island deliveries.

If you look closely, you can see a very sneaky cormorant plotting against the sailboats. You don't eat much when you plot against small groups of sailboats... but when you do eat, you eat well.

Uh oh, he's on to me...

Let's wrap this up with some Boat Names:

Thanks for having us, Swansea!

Harboring: Hyannis Port

Hyannis Port gets the duke today in our Harboring series.

Hyannis Port has a big rep, but a small harbor. HP only has 115 residents, so Proportion enters the equation.

I was kind of hoping for more Sea Cadillac-type boats. 

Wealhy people tend to have more of a sailboat harbor than a Fairhaven-like working harbor. There weren't many tuna boats parked docked at the Hyannis Port Yacht Club.

I was expecting more than one pier. Subtlety is good, but I'm not expecting it from Hyannis Port. At least one Kennedy should own a Superyacht.

I was going to sneak over and get a pic of the Kennedy Compound, but I think I have a warrant and didn't need to bump heads with a very influential family over what would have been a pic as blurry as this one. On the other hand, if you are going to get busted for trespassing, you may as well do so at the infamous Kennedy Compound.

I refer to my cottage as a "Compound" at times. It is 484 square feet.

They probably pulled the boat this high up to keep it from the tide... but it is fun to imagine that some Kennedy whelp made a navigational error and just walked home after.

Thanks for having us, Hyannis Port!

Harboring: Hull

It's a Hull of a day for our Harboring series!

Hull, home to Nantasket Beach and the former Paragon Park, juts out into the sea. It's very much like Duxbury, geologically or whatever term I should use there.

Hull was named for Kingston-on-Hull, England. Captain Issac Hull, who would be a pretty cool guy to name a town after, came to be about 150 years after Hull was settled. Captain Hull had a set of balls just like these, and he is famed for leading the Constitution against the British ship Guerriere and taking home the W. Lots of towns are indeed named after him, but not this Hull.

"Nantasket" means either "low tide place" or "at the strait" in Native American. The "Hull" part of Kingston-upon-Hull refers to the River Hull back in the jolly old E.

Speaking of hulls, they need to get this one in the water. I was here in late July, for the love of Mary.

Several staff members have noted that the boat only has to be red to become one of my favorites and to get a place in our article.

This looks suspiciously like one of those Redneck Superman memes where some guy in Alabama turns a sofa into a boat.

Other than New Bedford and, amazingly Sandwich... it's a bit strange to see a building with more than two stories turn up in our Harboring series.

Amazingly, we found that the One Foot Of Water Dock was unoccupied.

Chains look artsy when better photographers are sizing up the shot, but I do what I can for you people.

That is "A Street," rather than a play on the "I'm not a fast Captain, I'm not a slow Captain, I'm a half-fast Captain" joke.

I turned up in Hull on a raw and windy day, hence the inactivity on the docks.

Cutest boat in the harbor.

We're twenty articles into our Harboring series, and I still go "Ooooh, boat stuff, let's get a pic!"

Hey! You were already in this article!

Hull's boatyards are sheltered by Hull itself, I didn't see one boat on the ocean side of town.

God tilted the Earth on me right when I was lining up my cute Harbormaster shack photo.

It's odd to take a picture of a harbor and have the wind-powered thing in it not be a sailboat.

A quick Nantasket shot... hey, we end up where we end up, folks.

Note the Fisherman's Cooler tied to the back of the boat.

I may be disoriented, but I think that's World's End in the background.

If they made that boat cover go all the way to the top in a point, this boat would look like a floating DUNCE cap or a drowning KKK guy.

The kayak rental business slows on cold, raw days.

Hull, which may have cleaned up since my late July arrival, had the red seaweed problem that other Irish Riviera beaches had.

Hull needs just a few more of these to make a Newton's cradle. Named after English 17th century scientist Isaac Newton, a Newton's Cradle is a device that demonstrates conservation of momentum and energy using a series of swinging spheres.

The downside of having children scrawl the magazine name into the sand is that sometimes they put an extra N in "Cranberry."