Fortunately, Hurricane Lee had much less impact on the island than anticipated. Consider the planning and preparing for the worst as a valuable practice run. Some day we will have to deal with much more than just a brush with the fringes of a tropical storm.

The highest wind gust recorded at the Chappy Ferry was 55 mph at 12:30 a.m. on Saturday. By then the wind was coming out of the northwest, which put the ferry run in the lee of the town.

During the storm, we pulled a couple of loads of seaweed out of the Chappy slip into a pickup truck to keep the ferry propellers from being disabled. Heidi the scuba diver came down twice on Saturday to clear the stringy seaweed out the propellers and shafts so that the boats could operate uninterrupted.

The forecast for coastal flooding of one to two feet didn’t occur. Probably because the breach at Wasque allowed the storm-driven water to escape instead of piling up in the harbor.

Along with our good luck regarding the far-off passage of Lee was the spectacular surf on the south shorelines. Unfortunately, that caused flattening of the dunes that protect the barrier beach.

Tons of new scallop seed was washed ashore by the north winds. The Edgartown shellfish department spent Sunday scooping up the one-inch shellfish and putting them back into deeper water. Hopefully that effort will be rewarded with an ample harvest in a couple of years.

The autumnal equinox is this Saturday, marking the first day of fall. The foreign exchange student taking orders at the Quarterdeck on Dock street was disappointed that there was such a huge drop in business. I told her that when I was a kid, the summertime shops and restaurants closed up on Labor Day. If you wanted an ice cream cone, you had to go to Mercier’s Market, buy a tub of ice cream and a box of cones and put them together yourself. If you wanted a sweatshirt with the words Chappy or Martha’s Vineyard emblazoned on it, you could go to Alfred Hall’s clothing store for the garment. But then you would need to go to Edgartown Hardware to buy a marking pen so that you could write the name of your favorite island on it yourself.