Nantucket Island and Cape Cod

Today dawned bright and sunny, so we extended our stay here for one more night, and headed off to catch a ferry to Nantucket Island.  Why?  Granddad's family settled in Nantucket from England in the 1600s.  Tristram Coffin and 3 others bought the island off the Native Americans who lived there at the time, and like many others who settled there, became whalers and sea farers. It was one such whaler who came to New Zealand and settled in O'Kains Bay.

The slow ferry, at $36 return per adult, would have meant we would have been on the island all day.  We paid the extra money ($77 return per adult) for the 1-hr high speed ferry.

Leaving Hyannis

Lighthouse leaving Hyannis

Got to Nantucket just after 10am, and headed off to the Oldest House, which just happens to be the home of Jethro Coffin and Mary Gardner, given to them as a wedding present.  It is also the oldest house on its original site on Nantucket, as a number of other places have been moved.  It is 2 level, with living and eating areas downstairs and bedrooms upstairs. There was a huge central fireplace, with openings into the parlour, the great hall and the lean-to kitchen.  The fireplace was so large that Mary could cook different dishes over several small fires.  It opens in May, but Pita had been in touch with a lady from the Whaling Museum, and the Nantucket Historical Association, so she met us and showed us through the house.  Members of the NHA maintain a vegetable / herb garden at the rear of the house.  One interesting thing to note is that the house has been open to the public since 1897!

New Zealand Coffin's outside the Oldest House

From there, we headed to the Whaling Museum, where we were shown around some of the key exhibits.  It opens in February, and exhibits are being updated, so, again, we were very lucky to be allowed through.  The Coffin family married into many of the other Nantucket families, like the Folgers, the Gardners, the Starbucks, the Macy's, so we spotted many artifacts from those families.

Mary Gardner Coffin (1670-1767) - earliest painting in the museum, painted about 1720

Charlotte Coffin Gardner received this table with whalebone inlay from her husband

Hezekiah Coffin had this chair on board the Beaver during the Boston Tea Party

Artist and Model in Studio, painted by Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin (1850-1930)

We had about an hour left before our ferry back to Hyannis, so we popped in to a shop on the Main Street for Pita to make a quick purchase, then it was off to Coffin Street for the obligatory photo.

Most of the houses in Nantucket are made with wooden shingles, a cedar, which ages to a grey colour in about a year. For those houses with colour or clapboard houses, there is a limited number of paints which have been approved for use on the island, including Tristram's Red, Nantucket Red, Folger Blue, Gardner Green, Quaker Grey and Main Street Yellow.  Everything we saw was very quaint and lovely.  Nantucket is a low lying island, and virtually all the building material has had to be shipped to the island.

Lots of houses in Boston and in Cape Cod and Nantucket have Christmas displays in windowboxes and in their windows

Once back in Hyannis, we looked around there for a bit, then drove around a wider part of Cape Cod.  We saw a memorial to John F Kennedy (Kennedy Compound is not far from Hyannis), went in to a quilt shop, and saw a couple of light houses (Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard have almost 2 dozen lighthouses around their coasts).  We saw the Coast Guard Station Chatham, which initially had two lighthouses, but now only has one, and is where the rescue for 32 sailors from the SS Pendleton which broke in half during a massive storm left from.  It is featured in the film, The Finest Hours.

The Lighthouse Inn, Bass River Light /West Dennis Light (sits atop the inn)

Chatham Lighthouse

Stage Harbor Lighthouse

Then, back to the hotel for dinner across the road then blogs and a swim.

Today's weather got to a high of about 5 degrees. My nose did get chilled, but it has been a lovely day!  At 5pm, it was less than 3 degrees, and I think is going below 0 tonight.  Thank goodness for heaters!