This is a big week for sailing on Martha’s Vineyard.

It begins with the 87th annual Edgartown Yacht Club Regatta, which starts on Thursday and continues through Saturday.

And this weekend the Vineyard Cup, the popular annual regatta sponsored by Sail Martha’s Vineyard, gets under way in Vineyard Haven with racing on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Ed Cisek, longtime company member of WIMP and IMP Improv, received the news this week that every improviser dreams of: he is now a performer on a Harold Team at the iO Theater (formally ImprovOlympic) in Chicago.

He was chosen as one of 15 performers from a group of 80 who completed the iO training program. At the end of his summer teaching at IMP Camp, Ed will join an impressive list of actors such as Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, Neil Flynn, Rachel Dratch, Chris Farley, Tim Meadows, Adam McKay and Amy Poehler, to perform at iO.

Landscape painter Curtis Hanson will be in the Christina Gallery in Edgartown on Thursday, July 15, for a reception from 6 until 8 p.m. alongside an exhibition of his recent oil paintings of New England and Thailand.

By MARK ALAN LOVEWELL

The 90-foot schooner Alabama is back in Vineyard waters after having run aground in the Mystic River last Wednesday night.

“There was no visible damage,” said Morgan Douglas of Coastwise Packet yesterday, after divers went below to check the vessel.

Motorist Injured

An Island woman was seriously injured during a single-vehicle accident early Monday morning at the intersection of Old County and State Roads in West Tisbury.

Correction

A story in Friday’s Gazette about dredging in Sengekontacket Pond reported inaccurately on the possible sale price for 30,000 cubic yards of sand expected to be dredged by the town of Oak Bluffs. The cost of the sand has not been decided. The Gazette regrets the error.

Gone are the grownup gatekeepers of movie merit — kids are the audience for the weekly Cinema Circus films. So the Gazette and the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival bring you the big view from the smaller viewers, with our weekly kid critics.

By BETTYE FOSTER BAKER

The Cottagers, Inc. 28th Annual House Tour, titled Architectural Treasures, Past and Present will be held on Thursday, July 15, rain or shine. In the fine tradition of distinctive homes associated with the tour, five residences will be featured.

A grand puppet parade down Main street, Vineyard Haven on Saturday will be a highlight of the fourth annual weekend-long Martha’s Vineyard Puppet Festival. The parade will begin at 5 p.m., but anyone who would like to join the parade can bring a puppet friend and meet at Katharine Cornell Theatre at 4:30, or come at 3 p.m. to a free puppet-making event and make a parade puppet to follow the giant puppets — Mother Earth, Mother Ocean and Father Sky.

Law professor Ray Madoff will discuss her new book, Immortality and the Law: The Rising Power of the American Dead, on Thursday, July 15, 8 p.m. at the Chilmark Community Center. Described by the Financial Times as a “stunning polemic,” Ms. Madoff examines the distinctly American approach taken to the law of the dead; when it comes to property in America, the dead have greater control than anywhere else in the world.