In a dramatic, all-hands-on-deck effort, the wooden schooner Tangier was hauled off a sandbar in Vineyard Haven harbor Tuesday morning after she went aground in gale-force winds during the weekend blizzard that lashed the Island.
On the Vineyard Haven waterfront you can see, smell and hear the bustle of activity. The town's boatyards are all party to boat building and launching. Anyone who walks the shores of the town will discover a wide variety of vessels undergoing extensive work. It was a busy winter and there is evidence everywhere.
Maciel Marine, Martha's Vineyard Shipyard and Gannon and Benjamin boatyards are witness to a resurgence in interest in Island built and restored vessels.
A request from Tisbury harbor master John Crocker to increase mooring permit fees three times over the coming five years led to a lively discussion Tuesday.
Carmel Gamble glared at the chain-link fence surrounding the beachfront lot next door to her Vineyard Haven cottage. “This is not the Vineyard Haven I knew,” said Miss Gamble, a veterinary technician and self-described “clown on sabbatical” who returned to Martha’s Vineyard two years ago after five years in Hawaii. “But this ugly steel chain-link fence, I mean, what we love about the Vineyard is that it’s beautiful. That’s why people come here,” she said.
The Tisbury board of selectmen took the first step this week toward regulating activity in Vineyard Haven harbor by placing a proposal on the table to nominate the waterway as a District of Critical Planning Concern (DCPC).
If the plan moves forward, much of the harbor could be designated by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission as a resource to be protected, beginning a process of establishing development guidelines for the area.
