Martha's Vineyard

 

Edgartown is another town packed with great restaurants, galleries and ice-cream shops on every corner, albeit with a distinctly high-end flavor. If it wasn't for the fact that even at 4:30pm every other person on the crowded street was busy shoveling ice cream down their throats, we'd wonder how all the shops managed to stay in business.  Tempted by the ice cream, but refusing to give in, Matt went into a bakery and was standing in line to buy something unhealthy and yummy for dessert. The woman in front of him tried to order a salad and the twenty-something behind the counter said, "I'm sorry, we stopped serving lunch at 4:00" It was 4:08 and all the salad and other lunch items were still sitting out. Matt thought, "Really?" to himself and walked out. He didn't feel like patronizing the shop after that nonsense.  At least he didn't pull out an M-16 like Michael Douglas.

 

This morning, Matt took some sausage out of the freezer to have with our chocolate chip pancakes. He laid it on the counter and left the galley to do something else. Not two minutes later Conrad suddenly looked up from a book he was reading and looked down into the galley. When he saw the sausage on the counter, he excitedly launched into a happy dance. I swear he has a sixth sense. He is also really excited to go to New York because of the fabled gigantic pizza-by-the slice he knows he can get there (we mentioned it once, in passing). You'd think we never feed the kid. Either that, or eating is the most exciting thing about living on a boat for these children.

 

 

After breakfast, we wanted to get some work done, so Matt decided to let Conrad fish off the back of the boat, thinking that he would be occupied for at least 20 minutes. As Matt was showing Conrad how to jig the line, he immediately caught a good sized black sea bass. Then literally about every two minutes, Conrad caught fish after fish. After he had caught about five keepers, I took over letting the various bass, porgies, and other fish go so Matt could put the last coat of teak protectant on the table in the cockpit. Mark even joined in the fun, though he has to work on his technique because a good percentage of his fish kept getting away. After we ran out of bait, Conrad put the empty hook in the water and managed to snag a sea robin. The fish worked its way off the hook, leaving a piece of its gut on the hook. With that piece of new bait, Conrad proceeded to catch a dogfish and bass. C'mon, kids, these fish aren't going to catch themselves. Oh wait, apparently they are.  Now if only they'd fillet and cook themselves into fish sandwiches.