When Charles McGrath wrote about the annual Island Cup game between the Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket football teams for the New Yorker in 1984, he likened it to a fierce sibling rivalry. What mainland team could hope to drum up a rivalry as poignant with either of the Island squads? For all that the Vineyarders can’t stand about the Whalers, they also know that the only football team in the entire country that could possibly understand what it means to be an Islander is that of their brother-in-isolation, Nantucket.

Fishermen who pursue a variety of important fish on Georges Bank and the Gulf of Maine face drastic cuts in catch limits next year because of dwindling groundfish stocks. Cod and yellowtail flounder are in such a dire state that fisheries managers advising the New England Fishery Management Council are calling for catch limit cuts of 70 per cent or higher beginning next May.

In the mid 1970s, shortly after the all-volunteer crew had begun work on the exterior walls encircling the patch of ice that would become the Martha’s Vineyard Arena, a gale swept through the Island and knocked down nearly all the cement blocks, destroying the steady progress.

A call went out. More volunteers rallied to the cause. The walls were restored and work continued.

Three beeps from the race committee horn and the group of windsurfers competing in the U.S. Junior Windsurfing Championship pull up their sails, get settled on their boards and glide to the starting line.

Two beeps and it’s two minutes to race time at the Vineyard Haven Yacht Club.

One beep and 13-year-old Geronimo Nores from Miami, FL,, along with the rest of the fleet, is at starting line.

The starting horn blows. The sailors head east towards the first marked buoy, pumping their legs up and down on their boards.