Harvey Gamage

We set sail from Buzzards Bay first thing on the Saturday morning and sailed for nearly 24 hours—completing our first over night passage to Mystic, Connecticut. It was exciting, tiresome, rolling, and awakening throughout the hours of darkness. Only the red glow of the compass and the distant lights of the shore lines to assure our existence in the civilized world. Bow watch was alert to any changes in the passing sounds and lights, boat checks were circulating the decks and down below, and the helm was true and bold on our course. We were alive with the sea—the excitement only able to be cloaked by the darkness around us.





We arrived in Mystic early Sunday Morning and felt that we had possibly been on a time machine that took us back to the turn of the 20^th century. People dressed in odd attire, steam powered vehicles, iron hulled square rigged ships, and the Harvey Gamage seemingly appropriate in this scene.

We set off in this new found living museum of the maritime past and went aboard enormous whaling ships from the late 1800's, saw the reproduction of the Amistad, and were boarded by a fellow dressed in slops named Josiah. He told us tales from his life about sailing the outer limits of the North Sea, running schooners aground in the Caribbean, and seeing the “capital of the world,” London England.

On our Second day in this place that time forgot we had history classes in the town square, darted the iron (threw whaling harpoons), learned sea shanties, sang our own songs on the dock, and were entertained by a private showing at the planetarium—our first exposure to celestreal navagation. There has been many other small adventures throughout our days, but for now we will say farewell to Mystic Seaport and head further South to the Chesapeake Bay to learn about estuarine ecology, oyster fishing, and many more lessons that only the open ocean can teach us.