On Saturday afternoon a crowd gathered at the Gannon & Benjamin Marine Railway. They had come to witness the launching of a 28-foot replica whaleboat which had been built at the shipyard as part of the restoration of the Charles W. Morgan, the only remaining wooden whaling ship in the U.S. The crowd was not filled with mere bystanders, though. Muscle was needed.

“It takes a village to put one of these together,” said Nat Benjamin, one of the shipyard’s founders. “It looks like it’s going to take a whole city to launch it.”

Martha’s Vineyard Head Start will lose two slots in its home-based preschool program because of the federal budget cuts known as sequestration.

The cuts are not as severe as what some other programs are experiencing statewide, but Debbie Milne, director of the Martha’s Vineyard Community Services Early Childhood program which runs Head Start here, said they will be felt nonetheless.

“It’s a huge hit to our program,” Ms. Milne told the Gazette.

The annual Taste of the Vineyard dinner and auction Saturday night turned into a tribute to artist Ray Ellis, who has raised more than $1 million for Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust over more than two decades.

When people say that history repeats itself, they aren’t usually referring to high school tennis.

But in a match that lasted just under an hour and a half last Saturday afternoon, the Vineyard boys successfully defended their Massachusetts division three state championship title with a 4-1 win against Bromfield.

A cheering crowd of Island fans greeted the Vineyard boys tennis team when it returned home Saturday carrying a trophy for the second straight year.

The boys won the division three state tournament 4-1 Saturday in a match against Bromfield at Clark University in Worcester.

Kent Leonard clinched the match at singles, 6-3, 6-3, an hour and 15 minutes into play.

Play was under way early Saturday afternoon on the courts at Clark University in Worcester with the storied Vineyard boys tennis team, in the state championship finals for the second straight year. The team plays Bromfield for the state division three title. The Gazette will be posting live accounts of the match on twitter.

WOODS HOLE — Urging a group of Chatham middle schoolers to follow their dreams, filmmaker James Cameron handed the keys to the Deepsea Challenger, the only human-occupied vehicle able to reach the deepest parts of the sea, to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in a ceremony Friday morning.
“The things you get excited about today, those will be some of the most important driving forces for you in the future,” Mr. Cameron told the gathering of 12 and 13 year olds who formed a semicircle in front of him.

For many, it was the season opener, a chance to reconnect with friends and “taste” all the flavors of the Island. The Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust, an organization that cares for historic Island buildings, hosted 850 guests and 90 vendors Thursday night at the 28th annual Taste of Martha’s Vineyard gourmet stroll.

The moon dominates the early hours of evening in the southwestern sky.

On Sunday night the first quarter moon enters the zodiacal constellation Virgo. It takes three days for the moon to pass through this large and long constellation.

On Tuesday night the gibbous moon appears near Spica, the brightest star in the constellation and the principal star in Virgo. It has a blueish white tint. Spica is actually two stars or, in other words, a binary star. These two stars are too close together to be seen separately in a telescope. They orbit each other in four days.

The regional high school lunch program is projecting a year-end deficit of nearly $61,000, assistant principal Matthew Malowski told the high school committee Monday evening. Losses can tracked to lower reimbursement from the up-Island school district, which stopped using the high school for its lunch programs last year, as well as a decrease in daily revenues, which are down 14 per cent from fiscal year 2012.

“We are seeing a marked decrease in participation,” in the a la carte budget, Mr. Malowski said.