PROVINCETOWN — Christine Barker’s proposed pier and floating marina, recently redesigned and enlarged to extend 1,270 feet into Provincetown Harbor from the site of the derelict Old Reliable Fish House, is drawing pushback from state agencies, the town conservation commission, and neighboring business owners.
Provincetown Harbor
Wellfleet Stage Companies Announce Summer Seasons
Wellfleet’s two major companies, the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater and the Harbor Stage Company, have announced their plans for the upcoming season. Tickets for WHAT go on sale June 1st at what.org. Harbor Stage is still working out details (see harborstage.org) and is looking for leads on housing.
From June 30th through July 25th, WHAT will present Shipwrecked! An Entertainment by Donald Margulies, directed by Daisy Walker. It’s a true-life tale (blurring fact and fiction) of high seas, exotic islanders, flying wombats, giant sea turtles, and man-eating octopi. See it Wednesday through Sunday at 7 p.m. on the company’s new outdoor Garden Stage.
Then, from August 11th through September 5th, WHAT is offering Nat Turner in Jerusalem, by Nathan Alan Davis, an account of the slave rebellion led by Turner in antebellum Virginia. It will run Wednesday through Sunday at 7 p.m. on the Garden Stage.
WHAT for Kids! will return July 5th through August 12th to the outdoor Larry Phillips Performance Pavilion with The Tale of Ibis by Jody O’Neil, the true story of an entangled whale in Provincetown Harbor. Two dollars from the sale of each ticket will go to the Center for Coastal Studies Entanglement Fund.
At the Harbor Stage, you’ll be able to catch Stand Up if You’re Here Tonight, a one-man play by John Kolvenbach, in July. The announcement calls it a “celebration of people, presence, and how far we’ve come together,” starring the actor-run company’s artistic director, Robert Kropf.
Then, in August, the company will present Dindin, “an intimate drama about class, civility, and the killer instinct,” by its own Brenda Withers. They’ll be shooting the film version of the play under the direction of Brendan Hughes in June.
Re-Rooting for 2021
The 38th annual Re-Rooters Day ceremony, presented by Jay Critchley, CEO of the International Re-Rooters Society, will be held on Provincetown Harbor, Thursday, January 7th, at 4 p.m. Those wishing to attend should email [email protected] with diatribes as well as items they would like to discard and burn. Masks and social distancing are required.
The event will be especially cathartic after such a trying year. “Fire belongs to all of us; it is a cleansing element,” says Critchley, who has built an extra-large boat, and plans on burning two trees, rather than the usual one, this year. Though he had not yet chosen a theme at press time (last year it was “extractive democracy”), he had already written his Ten Commandments. —Saskia Maxwell Keller
This Week in Provincetown
Meetings Ahead
Meetings are held remotely. Go to provincetown-ma.gov and click on the meeting you want to watch.
Thursday, Nov. 19
- Board of Health, 4 p.m.
- Licensing Board, 5:15 p.m.
- Zoning Board of Appeals, 6 p.m.
Monday, Nov. 23
- Select Board, 7 p.m.
Tuesday, Nov. 24
- Licensing Board, 5:15 p.m.
Conversation Starters
Covid-19 Update
As of Nov. 17, Provincetown had zero active cases of Covid-19, 37 cases considered recovered, and one death.
Harbor Regulations Include Insurance Requirement
The select board will hold a public hearing on Monday, Nov. 23 at 7 p.m. on new and amended harbor regulations.
These include an amendment to the mooring rules. As proposed by the Provincetown Harbor Committee, it would call for boats to be removed from moorings on Nov. 15 instead of on Dec. 31. The proposed rule states that no boat can over-winter on a mooring.
Another new rule would require that “the owner of any vessel entering or being used in the waters of Provincetown Harbor shall maintain liability insurance,” the rule states. Proof of liability insurance must be provided to the harbormaster upon the date of first entry into the harbor or with a completed mooring application renewal.
There are exemptions for transient vessels, boats under 20 feet that are not motorized or with an outboard motor of 30 horsepower or less.
Houseboats, however, are not exempt from the proposed insurance requirement.
Those without insurance “would be subject to removal by the harbormaster.” —K.C. Myers
THE SCUTTLEBUTT
What’s Here and What’s Not
Plenty of stripers, bluefish, and mung, but shark sightings are down
The fish seem to be settling into a fairly normal summer pattern lately, unlike most of their human counterparts.
Striped bass can be found in good numbers from the Cottages at Beach Point, at the Twin Hills behind Long Point, and from Wood End to Race Point and on towards the backside ocean beaches by the Ranger Station. These fish are still on the smaller side: 25 to 27 inches, and drifting cut bait is still the most effective method.
Bluefish, which have been mostly absent for a few years in our locale, have reappeared and seem to have settled in for now. They have been in the same areas as the striped bass, and they, too, are running small: three to five pounds. Top-water swimming plugs, such as the Bomber Long A and the SP Swimmer, are working very well. Don’t forget to use a steel leader, as these toothy critters can easily bite through monofilament and braided fishing line.
Mackerel have thinned out a little in the harbor but have been replaced with copious numbers of squid. Also, those huge schools of pogies have not been seen as much as they were in the preceding couple of weeks. So, we have a little shift in what’s here and what’s not as the temperature of our waters continues to climb.
One thing that is heavily here at the moment is mung. Mung (Pylaiella) is a type of seaweed (brown algae) that is known for its ability to coat everything in comes in contact with, such as people, ropes, and animals, when it blooms close to the shore in warm water. It fouls lures as they are retrieved and is particularly bad with umbrella rigs trolled through the water.
I am hearing of some fluke being caught in places they used to be caught when they were here years ago; we even caught a couple of small ones on the Cee-Jay last week. I am going to try to do an exploratory trip for them one of these days just to see what’s around and will report back as soon as I do. If fluke were back it would be exciting news for recreational fishermen.
This is a good time to remind boaters and beach walkers that the cages you see out in the West End flats in Provincetown Harbor are shellfish farms; please be mindful of that. These men and women work hard to cultivate shellfish to sell and about the last thing they need is to have them damaged by boats or people walking about. The yellow buoys you see mark the perimeter of the area, so at high tide, when the cages are submerged, you know where they are. Treat this area the way you would treat a farm on land. You wouldn’t go zooming around a farmer’s corn field or wheat field in your car; the same principle holds true here. Don’t zoom around a shellfish bed in your boat.
There are a half dozen so fin whales hanging around Race Point, feeding on the abundant herring, sand eels, and mackerel in that area. They can easily be seen from the beach. A pair of binoculars makes the sightings even better.
It has been strangely quiet on the white shark front, as sightings have been down significantly compared to last year. Is it because our beaches are so lightly populated this summer or is it something else? This bears watching for sure, to see what’s going on out there.
SEARCH
Kayaking Excursion Ends in Nurse’s Death
Search called off for second kayaker
PROVINCETOWN — Carole Madru of Hyannis, whose body was found on the beach in North Truro on Saturday, May 23, had parked her car at Elena Hall’s waterfront parking lot before heading out with her friend to kayak in Provincetown Harbor.
A wound care specialist with the Visiting Nurse Association, Madru, 50, had come to Hall’s home at 401 Commercial St. on Friday to treat Hall’s leg.
Madru asked if she could set off to kayak and leave her car in Hall’s parking area.
“And I said yes,” Hall told the Independent on Monday.
Madru and a friend visiting from France, 51-year-old Marc-Olivier Czarnecki, left in the afternoon. Hall said she believes they were both in the same kayak rather than separate boats.
Madru was reported missing at 11 p.m. by her husband, James, and the U.S. Coast Guard began a search in a 45-foot response boat and Jayhawk helicopter, Coast Guard officials said.
On Saturday at 6:30 a.m., Madru’s body washed up on the beach in front of a home at 542 Shore Road (Route 6A) in Truro. Her kayak landed about 40 feet north of her body, according to Marie Belding, who lives nearby. Madru was not wearing a life jacket when found, but there was one life jacket in the kayak and another near the kayak, Belding said.
A small cross made from twigs and a single red rose marked her landing spot on Monday.
As of Monday night, Czarnecki had not been found. The U.S. Coast Guard called off the search for him at 3:40 p.m. Saturday “pending new information,” according to an official announcement. They had searched for a total of 16 hours.
The U.S. Coast Guard tracked Madru’s cellphone, but it was found in a car in Provincetown, according to Petty Officer Briana Carter.
“I feel terrible,” Hall said. “I met her twice. She’s so sweet and so interesting…. That kind of thing never happens in my life, where you know someone and they are so vibrant, and then you hear they are dead the next day…. It makes me realize life is fragile. It teaches you don’t go out on the water at this time of the year.”
Madru’s friends and coworkers have established a GoFundMe campaign to help her family, which includes her husband, son Dylan, and daughter Cassandra.
As of Tuesday afternoon, 217 donors had contributed $17,630.
“I knew Carole as a VNA wound nurse that always brought her A-game,” wrote her coworker Karen Foss on the GoFundMe webpage. “She cared so much for her patients and unselfishly spent hours of her time educating her fellow nurses so we could provide the same care that she so competently did. She was held in very high regard by her nursing co-workers, who will miss her dearly.”
Anyone who has new information regarding this case should call Sector Southeastern New England at 508-457-3211.
REFLECTIONS
Launch Day
A sailor’s view of ‘the great rhythms of nature’
WELLFLEET — We built her in a garage in Syracuse, N.Y., a 23-foot cat ketch dory, small for a cruising boat. Ignoring Capt. Nat Herreshoff’s dictum that the only suitable color for a boat was white or black (and that only a fool would paint a boat black), we proceeded to paint the hull royal blue and, in a further affront to the good captain, outfitted her with red mainsail and yellow mizzen. We launched at Alexandria Bay, hoisted sail, and set off eastward down the St. Lawrence.
A few months later, we fetched up in Provincetown Harbor. Easy to find on a mild September night. We simply pointed the bow toward the monument, which was well lit in 1974.
We decided to winter over and continue south in the spring, but Provincetown worked its magic on us and for 22 years we lived in a small apartment in the far West End, just down the street from Manuel Furtado’s boatyard, now long gone. Instead of continuing south, we sold the dory and acquired a Beetle Cat, a fine, seaworthy little craft at 12 feet, 4 inches, and, at the time, the only one in town.
Launch day was not a fixed date. It coincided with what Henry Beston termed “the great rhythms of nature,” in our case, the flowering of the crab apple in our front yard. The mild weather would revive the tree and mark the uncovering of the Beetle, itself a transfigured cedar tree. As the blossoms unfolded and prepared to greet the spring, so did the boat until, on a particular day in mid-May, the tree stood forth in brilliant array and the boat returned to its mooring.
William Buckley once described big-boat ownership as akin to standing in a cold shower while tearing up $1,000 bills. Not so with the Beetle. Materials were few. The time-honored tasks of sanding, caulking, painting, varnishing, and checking the lines, sail, and standing rigging were satisfying. In fact, everything about sailing lends itself to learning new skills, from marlinspike work to weather awareness and a growing sense of self-reliance, which makes the Beetle an ideal boat for young sailors.
If help was needed, as when I was faced with replacing the deck canvas, advice was close at hand, freely and generously offered by Joe Andrews, Ray Merrill, and “Flyer” Santos, men whose knowledge of boats was encyclopedic.
For the sailor, Provincetown Harbor has hosted many interesting boats: Joe Andrews’s beautifully restored Ranger; Flyer Santos’s equally graceful Columbia; the leeboard Herreshoff Meadowlark; Ted Barker’s Tamerlane; schooners Hindu, Olad, and Bay Lady II; and Eskimos, Peapods, Dories, a Thistle, a Snipe, Lightnings, multihulls, twin keel boats, and a variety of larger cruising boats and visiting historical craft. Our modest little Beetle Cat was in good company.
I clearly remember the last time we launched the Beetle. It was a peaceful afternoon. The sky was full of portents. A half moon floated high in the east. Laughing gulls cruised over the beach, chortling. A kingfisher balanced patiently on a flagpole, scanning for shiners. A pair of orioles pillaged the cherry blossoms that drifted to the ground like early snow. The sky was cloudless, unwinking. We chose to interpret these as favorable signs. It would be a smooth launch.
Meanwhile, the crab apple blossoms were fully open, their color a deep rose. A robin patrolled the lawn and a house finch alighted in the tree near a cardinal. A breeze shuffled branches and birds as I brushed copper red bottom paint onto the hull, the last job before launching and my contribution to the yard’s burgeoning rubescence. All that remained was to send the Beetle down the ramp and walk her to the mooring.
A few days after launching the Beetle a stiff wind scattered the crab apple blossoms and heralded the start of a new sailing season and the unbounded sense of freedom that is the boat’s gift to those that sail them. As Joe Andrews put it, “Next to sailing is God.”
the year-rounder
Fishing Is Our Essence
Has Provincetown learned Mary Heaton Vorse’s lesson?
PROVINCETOWN — My late father-in-law was a wonderful man, with a simple palate, a real meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. Whenever any of his three daughters (each an accomplished and inventive cook) attempted to serve him something creative, something Asian-fusion or whatever, he would take a bite or two, look up quizzically, and ask, “What is the essence of this?” A fair question to ask about something you are about to ingest.
I have written about the pervasive air of happiness in Provincetown. But beyond that, what is its true essence? What is or was its real reason for being, and how does that feed into each of our connections to this town we love?
I will make a strong case for fishing.
Even the dimmest-witted or party-dulled tourist, walking out on the wharf, will spy a commercial fishing boat tied up alongside — maybe a bit rusty, piled with gear and tubs and equipment — and know that this is still a fishing town. Maybe he or she will see one or two real fishermen, mostly guys, in those tall rubber fishing boots, scruffy jeans — sometimes bloodstained or bearing a sheen of scales — and know that fishing happens here and lends its authenticity to the town.
The harbor is the center of our town and always has been. MacMillan Wharf is the epicenter now and was even more important in days gone by. What is difficult for us moderns to comprehend is that a hundred years ago Railroad Wharf was not an isolated structure projecting out beyond the neighboring shops, galleries, restaurants, and bars: it was a part of an uninterrupted mosaic of waterfront enterprises.
There were over 50 wharves at one time, from the East End to the West, some large and some small, lining the harbor. Each had sloops and ships, nets and gear, traps and other paraphernalia devoted to wresting a living from the sea back when Provincetown’s “one crop was fish,” to quote Mary Heaton Vorse’s Time and the Town, written in 1942.
Vorse wrote, “Provincetown is different from most resorts, which have been built for pleasure. Provincetown has become a resort through what it has to offer, and, underneath the summer rumpus, keeps its character, conditioned by the hard work of the sea which made it and sustains it.” She visited Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket and observed that “they ceased more and more to live a life of their own….” Nantucket, in particular, “does not earn her living any more, and summer people, off islanders, keep her alive.… A place, like a person, which does not earn its own living, lacks moral stamina….”
She saw these examples as a lesson to be learned by Provincetown. Was the lesson learned?
Yes and no.
I visited the harbormaster’s office recently and inquired about the state of commercial fishing in town. I was surprised to learn that roughly 55 vessels are registered as “tenants” (i.e., they pay a docking fee) at the wharf. These vessels are draggers, scallopers, charter boats, and those devoted to the pursuit of lobster, tuna, and shellfish. Other vessels may also come in to offload their catches as well. The place is busy, and relatively full.
It is more difficult to ascertain where the men who work these boats come from, but perhaps half are from Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, and Eastham. (Here again the housing crisis raises its hoary head: people can’t afford to live near their boats.) The Provincetown Public Pier Corp.’s mission is to keep the essence of fishing alive in Provincetown, and that is no easy task — to provide and maintain the infrastructure and yet keep it affordable. It makes the place real.
Still, this ain’t the old days.
In the mid-1960s there were at least 50 or 60 draggers docked at MacMillan Wharf, so many that they had to be “rafted,” sometimes up to 10 deep. Each boat had a crew of at least five (all men, I think), and these men were all local, most of them supporting families (and our local economy). Each wharf had a fish house into which they offloaded fish, and a caravan of trucks — up to a dozen a day — could be seen heading to and from these buildings; they transported the fish directly to New York’s Fulton Fish Market and also to Baltimore and other cities.
What we have now is a fraction of that, but it is still enough to retain a tenuous hold on that essence that Vorse talked about: we are still a fishing town. Those handful of boats allow us to keep our character.
Vorse ends her book with two statements. The first is in error; the second is prescient.
“But the fishermen will still be going out and the weirs will still be bringing in their millions of pounds of fish.”
“The one certainty is that Provincetown is in history’s path as it always has been.”
THE YEAR-ROUNDER
Sanctuary and Balance
Our hallmark should be respect for all, including ourselves
PROVINCETOWN — Sailing or motoring out of Cape Cod Bay, rounding Long Point and entering Provincetown Harbor, there is a sense of protected water. The harbor appears as a big round bowl, the rims running from the shores of Truro through the crowded town waterfront, backed by dunes, and out to the Point. Refuge.
Indeed, it was just about 400 years ago that the Mayflower made its weary way into these waters, and the Pilgrims thanked their God for this protection. And there were explorers before them who made the same discovery. Sanctuary.
And the town itself has also been seen in this same light: refuge for the outcast and beleaguered, what Melville termed “Isolatoes.” The mythology of the place refers to wayward pirates, smugglers, escaped slaves, surviving Native Americans, all mingling and coexisting. There was the appropriately named Hell Town, where all sorts of behavior was either sanctioned or overlooked. As the myth goes, the very genesis of Provincetown occurred when the good citizens of Truro petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to separate them from these rowdies. The year was 1727.
And so it has been ever since. While the early to mid-19th century witnessed a growing and prospering middle class of hard-working Yankee and Portuguese families getting their livelihood from the sea, there was always that aura of independent lives lived on the edge. Some have said that the very physical reality of the place, the outermost extremity of a peninsula, attracts a certain kind of person — someone drawn to the very end, to the place where there is nowhere else to go. Isolatoes.
Of course, there was also the beauty — stark and wondrous dunes, ocean, and bay — and the charm of the little winding streets and lanes, so like a European fishing village. These attributes were foremost in attracting the artists and writers, the freethinkers and free-livers and free-lovers. You all know the names, from Mary Heaton Vorse and Tennessee Williams and Harry Kemp to Norman Mailer and Mary Oliver.
There is one more theory for the independent life styles that have always been a hallmark of life in Provincetown: the open-minded Mediterranean perspective of the Portuguese (a quarter of the town by 1895) allowed for it. If you had a dollar for the room there was absolutely no consideration of what you were doing in it.
I am sure this was true to an extent, but I also have read of the police chief’s vow to “get rid of the Boys” in the 1950s and early 1960s, and I have heard firsthand accounts of older townspeople “beating up the queers” around that time.
Still, overall, Provincetown has been a refuge and sanctuary for people of all persuasions, for at least a century, and certainly in these last 50 years I can attest to a growing movement that goes beyond tolerance to absolute acceptance. I feel so proud to live in a town in which everyone can live freely, without fear of persecution.
A few years ago, when I drove for Art’s Dune Tours, I took six women from South Carolina out for a sunset trip. They had a good time and were a bit rowdy — even randy — and boisterous. One of them said to me on the way back, “You have to understand: we can’t do anything like this back home. We can’t even walk down the street holding hands.” I do understand.
I saw a T-shirt on a woman the other day that read: “Every Town Should Be Provincetown.” I agree.
I revel in the absolute freedom that emanates from the summer crowd thronging Commercial Street. There is a very positive energy in the air, much of it gay.
But now, on the eve of Carnival, I will strike a cautionary note: while in recent years the parade itself has been relatively wholesome and in the spirit of good fun (somewhat evolved from its early years of R- and X-rated floats), one does see examples of outré behavior on the street, especially this week. Some of the outfits worn on the street amount to little more than display cases for genitalia. Some of the slogans I have seen on T-shirts are juvenile, even offensive.
I would remind our revelers that there is a thin line between flaunting and flouting. One can celebrate liberation and still adhere to good taste. With freedom comes responsibility; with sanctuary there must be balance. Hedonism can be tiresome. Exhibitionism is a solitary, even selfish, joy.
The street should be safe and appropriate for all — for children and people who are not really interested in what your particular kink is. The hallmark of our lives should be respect for all, including respect for ourselves. We all, to paraphrase Whitman, contain multitudes: we are not strictly defined by our sexuality or sexual proclivities.
Let’s all celebrate these waning days of summer, when the sun is setting noticeably earlier; let’s welcome all our visitors and join in their celebration of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; let’s respect one another.