Sports
At least 48 sailboats from all over Southeastern Massachusetts are expected to compete tomorrow in the 35th annual George Moffett Memorial Race just outside the Vineyard Haven harbor. The start of the race is shortly after 11 a.m.
For 35 years this race has been seen as a sailors’ salute to the end of summer.
The start of the race is just off East Chop. Sailboats ranging from 16 to 75 feet in length will move between West Chop and East Chop and then cross into Nantucket Sound. By tradition, the course will be decided on the day of the race.
This could be you: Owner of a majestic summer island home with a sweeping vista of Edgartown Harbor, Nantucket Sound and Cape Poge gut; Steward of 18 acres of marsh, cliffs and wooded hills on Chappaquiddick’s North Neck area; and, not least, head of the Royal & Ancient Chappaquiddick Links, a nine-hole golf course cut from the land more than 100 years ago.
Preseason practice awaits high school athletes regardless of what sport they play, but only the fall warrants its own moniker: Hell Week, which began this year on August 23. After the relatively lazy days of summer comes a fast-paced week of tryouts and tune-ups. Dawn workouts are considered the standard of Hell Week (some groups prefer the early practices because they allow players to continue their summer jobs a little longer), but on any given day in the week leading up to school you’ll find at least two teams on the fields in both the morning and the late afternoon.
As we paddle-boarded on the still waters of Menemsha Pond with Nicole Corbo, owner of Aloha Paddle MV, it was hard to imagine we had just mastered the strokes a few minutes earlier on shore. Standing on the water, one can see swans take flight. Crabs scuttle below. The repetitive paddling is relaxing, almost meditative.
Ms. Corbo founded her company this past May. Her goal is to bring “the aloha spirit to Martha’s Vineyard.”
Close to 5,000 tagged juvenile winter flounder will be released this week into Nashaquitsa Pond, following a two-year federally-funded study. Last week, crews involved in the project at the Wampanoag tribe’s hatchery overlooking Menemsha Pond spent two days tagging the fish they had raised in the hatchery since last spring. Each fish measured less than two inches in length.
