Nantucket Adventures: Exploring Nantucket & Wheeler History

More about Nantucket.  In the photo below you see Guided Discovery next to two buildings on the docks. Those are cottages that can be rented by the day.  A two bedroom rents for $1,000 while a three bedroom rents for $1,200.

Explanatory Note: Knowledgeable boaters may notice the fender hanging forward of the dock and will be thinking (correctly) "not yacht."  Guilty: I was too lazy to put the fenders in the lazarette.  There are three more hidden by the pilings.  We threw them over the side to clear the walkways.

Rental cottages behind Guided Discovery 

More about Wheeler.  I have searched on line unsuccessfully for photos of a 1958 65 foot Wheeler Motor Yacht. I've also looked for photos of their 50 footer as that was the boat where I first worked as first mate. Again no success.   The photo below of the 1937 65 foot model is the closest I've come.

1937 Wheeler 65 Motoryacht (for sale in Spain0

In the previous article I spoke about meeting Jane, the former wife of a son of the Wheeler who owned the shipyard that built these magnificent boats.  Jane gave me the phone number of her former husband, Gene who I contacted today.  He was stuck in traffic on the Bourne Bridge that crosses the Cape Cod Canal at the south end (we were within 50 miles of each other)  We had a lovely conversation.  Turns out he was in college when the 65 foot Randy Boatshoe was built and worked on her construction during the summer.

From Gene I learned some Wheeler history.  Wheeler was founded in 1910 and build boats through the early 60s.  Wheeler is famous for building Ernest Hemingway's 38 foot yacht, Pilar, in 1938.  Hemingway paid $7,495 for her (value today would be approximately $1,000,000).

Ernest Hemingway aboard Pilar

Ernest Hemingway's yach Pilar built by Wheeler

During World War II the Wheeler Shipyard built 230 wooden hull subchasers to patrol US waters. Following the war they built wooden yachts, of which the Randy Boatshoe 50 and 65 and a 65 foot sister ship named Fram are three of the boats I knew. I first saw Fram on Nantucket during my 1959 visit.

In the early sixties Wheeler saw the then emerging movement to build boats in fiberglass and floated a
$500,000 stock offering ($20,000,000 today) to set up a facility.  Around that time, five New York firefighters were killed in a fire involving the polymer resin used in making fiberglass boats.  The City Council passed a law requiring manufacturing facilities working with polymer resins to be sprinklered.  The Wheelers, who were stretch financially, could not comply and that ended their business.

And more about Nantucket.  Sunday morning we awoke to partly cloudy skies and a forecast of rain for later in the day.  Today's adventure was a visit to Sconset (short for Sciasconset), a fishing village founded in 1670 on the eastern end of Nantucket. We used the NRTA's Wave bus service to get there ($1.00 per ride for seniors).

Siasconset Post Office

We walked the village until it started to rain.  I'll let the photos give you a feel for what we saw in this lovely setting.  Note: The value of the rather modest single family homes in this village are well over a $1,000,000.

The Summer House Inn and Restaurant pictured above is located on the ocean.  It charges $275 to $695 per person per night for a room and $495 to $2,000 per night for a cottage.  Our slip at just under $500 a night almost seems like a bargain.

Gastronomical adventures.  Dinner tonight was at the Straight Wharf Restaurant, which turned out to be 100 yards from the boat on the opposite side of the fairway.  However, at 5:30 PM we were unsure of the restaurant's location and it was raining.  So we went to their website and clicked on directions to determine if we could walk there.  The link took us to the Ipad's mapping software where we learned that that the address, 6 Harbor Square, was 1 mile east.  Umbrella's in hand we walked to the cabstand, got into a cab and gave the driver the restaurant's name.  He replied it right behind us.  Google's mapping software got it wrong.

Our dinners were spectacular as was the white burgundy wine.  By the time we departed at 8:15 the rain had stopped.  This prompted us to take an early evening dock walk.

Walking the Nantucket Boat Basin docks is like being at a smaller version of the Miami Boat Show.  We saw no less than a dozen spectacular mega yachts (120 to 150 feet) med moored on the north side of the marina.  Even the smaller boats (50 to 100) were mostly late models in pristine condition.

Tomorrow we retrace our steps and cruise back to Hingham.  The weather looks OK enough with diminishing winds and waves on Nantucket Sound at 2 to 3 feet.  With a 7:00 AM departure we will cover the first 44 nautical miles in about six hours and arrive at the Cape Cod Canal at 1:00 PM as the flood tide begins giving us, at worst, a neutral current through the canal. Then 7 NM through the canal and then 44 more NM to Hingham. We should be pulling into our slip at 7:00 PM.

Bottom line: We all (including Kodi) loved Nantucket.

Written by Les.