Over the weekend the 114-year-old, double ended, double-gaff ketch Violet returned to her devoted Island owners after 11 years in other harbors under others’ care.

On Saturday, Sept. 13, a day of light and variable winds, the 18-foot Marshall catboat Rosa Parks, driven by Jeffrey Craig, won the gaff class at the 37th Pat West Gaff Rig & Schooner Race in Vineyard Haven.

When Jim Boos, a retired yacht captain living on Bequia, took it upon himself to help the community rebuild a historic whaleboat called the Iron Duke, he hired Ross Gannon and Nat Benjamin to fly down this winter with their families and a few tools and help get the local boatbuilders started.

Antonio Salguero first visited Vineyard Haven as a child in the late 1970s. At the time, his uncle Ross Gannon was a young local carpenter.

During the great age of yachting, in the early part of the 20th century, the premier ocean race, where boats and their crews were tested on a stage that was covered on front pages of newspapers all over the country, was the Newport to Bermuda Race.

A few weeks ago, in the parking lot at the Tisbury Wharf Company on Beach Road in Vineyard Haven, Ishmael, the 41-foot schooner, rested out of the water on blocks.