Our morning walks don’t always include time on the actual beach, but it did on Saturday. We have been visiting Sand Hills beach, which is on the ocean side of this cozy cottage now called Harbor Hideaway (HH). You all know our affinity for discovering treasures on the beach, particularly sea glass. That is not the only thing we look for – shells, pieces of pottery, and unique rocks often make it home. A particularly prized find for me is a washed up buoy from a boat. I do my best to recover them, though that is not always to be. As we know, time and tide wait for no one. The same can be said of ocean currents and waves pounding on the shore. Sometimes these buoys escape my grasp. Not this time!
As we walked along, we noticed a white buoy being thrown upon the rocks ahead of us by the surf. I handed Charlie’s leash to Stace and made my way onto those rocks in hopes of plucking this treasure from the sea. Sometimes a lost buoy still has some line attached, making it marginally easier to grab. This one didn’t, so I had to get down on my stomach to time the push of the waves and keep from falling. After a few misses, I managed to bring her home!
This turned out to be an excellent find, as it included the name of the boat it came from painted by hand on the top of the buoy, along with its registration number. I knew I now had a decent chance of learning more of the story behind this buoy. Where might her journey bobbing on the ocean have begun? The size of the Atlantic pales in comparison to the Pacific, but she is still pretty darned big! What story might this buoy reveal to me?
Written by hand on the top of the buoy was “f/v degelyse”. I knew this meant Fishing Vessel DEGELYSE, so I looked her up from the cozy confines of Harbor Hideaway. It turns out that she is a fairly well-known lobster boat homeported up on the North Shore of Boston, out of Gloucester. She is well-known as the subject of many posts and features on the blog Good Morning Gloucester years ago. I found this picture of her online, and you can see a row of buoys like the one we found on the right.
Stacey and Mimi headed out for some shopping, so Bapa and I set sail on STARA. We were out for nearly 3 hours. I had the helm the entire time for what was possibly our best sail ever. Stacey saw us from the shore when she returned to Lighthouse Beach, so we sailed closer to say hello.
While walking the beach earlier, we met a nice couple that mentioned they had a free library in their front yard and told us the street. Stacey loves a free library, so the next morning, we took a bike ride to find it. Success!
Eileen, Chris, and Valerie made the trip to Scituate to introduce Mabel to Charlie! They tuckered out quickly!
We all took a few walks after lunch to give Mabel her first taste of saltwater and look for more seaglass.
It was a wonderful day with family. Thank you Labaks for coming all this way. We loved having you here! 😍
Stacey captured the colors of another pretty sunset quite well in her CampSnap phone picture featured below!
