One local favorite capsized twice in his kayak. Of the fifteen windsurfers who entered a race around the Island, two finished. Sailboats called for a minimum of three hands: one on the tiller, one on the main sheet and one on the bilge pump.

All in all, there probably were easier ways to raise money for Martha’s Vineyard Community Services.

FLAGRANT CODE VIOLATIONS

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

The county parking clerk is currently making the rounds among Island selectmen with a pitch to increase the fees for parking violations. Clerk Carol Grant’s reasoning goes something like this: the minimum fee for overtime parking of ten dollars is too low and hardly a deterrent for a summer person who has another ten bucks in her pocket to throw down — it’s just the cost of being on vacation.

It is almost the end of berry-hunting season, and that’s a pity. Berry picking offers an opportunity to enjoy songbirds, osprey and honking Canada geese overhead. Berry hunters out just before sundown may see deer leaping stone walls to spend the night in the depths of the woods.

There are the sounds of nature to enjoy, too — soughing pines and rustling leaves and sometimes the lapping of water on shore or the distant roar of the ocean.

Over the weekend a young girl, about middle school-aged, wandered into the community room at co-housing in West Tisbury just before a yoga class was set to begin. She knew the yoga instructor. “What’s new?” he asked her. “Back to school,” the affable child replied with a smile.

A proposal by the Chilmark planning board to require solar thermal heating for swimming pools is an example of a small but meaningful step to make the Vineyard more energy self-sufficient.

The idea also reflects a quiet yet crucial change in pursuing that worthy goal: shifting the self-sufficiency initiative from broad goals outlined by the Vineyard Energy Project to the nitty-gritty of adoption and enforcement of particular measures by individual Island towns.