Boston to Provincetown, and Provincetown -- What You Remember

The way the day was in my imagination. I lead a rich fantasy life!

My Facebook post to my pirate community page referred to doing something that should be on every pirate's ultimate bucket list. "Today I took the helm of a Spanish galleon and at the captain's command pointed our bow toward the open Atlantic."  Considering that we're the only Spanish galleon sailing the seas today, it is quite an exclusive club. I know how very lucky I am!

Even though I was dressed more conventionally in an El Galeon uniform t-shirt and khaki pants, in my mind the moment was more like the dashing adventure above. Granted it was extremely benign conditions, sunny and flat, and we were pretty much away from the worst of the boat traffic departing Boston although there were some fishing vessels to avoid, but I loved steering! (This theme will come up often in the stories of our adventures this summer.) The irony is that I rarely take the helm of our own much smaller and easier boat except for docking, but with the Galeon I was happily engaged.

Pointing our bow toward the east!

It was a calm, mild easy day for our six-hour motor trip from Boston to Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod, and for us the beginning of getting into the El Galeon summer tour mode. Every week we'd be underway to someplace new, where we'd stay a few days before moving on. Most of our in-port days we'd work as tour guides but our informal contract guaranteed us at least one day off in each port for exploring (though never on a weekend, generally our busiest time). 

We were in Provincetown for the Portuguese Festival and Blessing of the Fleet. I remember the former from New Bedford last year, when we learned that many whalers came from Portuguese areas. And the latter, I'd always found it amusing that these blessings occur at the beginning of the season, which we have participated in anywhere from late March/early April in warm Florida, to now late June in the chillier north, as the seasons advance with the latitude. The festival had face painting and music and dancing and food and local history/heritage. Fun, and the dancing was colorful and the music very good, but somewhat expected. (Oh, look at what my life has become, how rich and amazing, that I can be blase about "just another summer festival" weekend!!)

When blogging, I usually contend that it's better to write while the memories are fairly fresh. Within reason, of course. During this year's Galeon tour I was too busy having adventures to spend time writing about them! With only one day off, one chance to explore, I sure didn't want to spend it in front of a computer screen.  I was keeping a pen-and-paper journal during passages though.  But I found an unexpected benefit to the forced delay to blogging. As the memories settled, I lost some of the details, but the experiences of more importance bubbled to the top. My most lasting impression of Provincetown was one of those, and had nothing to do with the Galeon.

Provincetown has a long long history of being gay-friendly. One gentleman we chatted with said their population was as much as 50% gay. I first noticed it in advertisements. I realized that I was used to seeing (for example) billboards advertising liquor including an elegantly-, and often scantily-clothed young woman along with the bottle. Here, those ads all featured buff young men. I saw it in the (gay) couples holding hands. There was lots of live entertainment and in the early evening before the shows, the performers would be out walking the streets interacting with the passers-by and encouraging them to see the performance. In one case, a campy overdone cross-dresser was wheeled around the street in a bathtub (!); for a later show two guys in red speedos.

We walked through the town to a small park by the seashore. There were benches to sit and contemplate and a bricked patio, the kind where you can support the park by buying a paver and having it inscribed with a celebratory or commemorative message. My most lasting memory of Provincetown was of these stones. this somber note: poignant memories of the times gays couldn't be together, and so many death dates that coincided with the AIDS epidemic.  "Patrick, I love you forever, wait for me in heaven, Christopher," was dated in the late 1980s. "Joe and Tony, together since 1992, married 2011..." bore witness to the nearly 20 years that these two waited for the legalization of gay marriage. 

I have no pictures of that park or its memorial pavers, I had no idea that it was going to become so important to me. In lieu of that, I offer you this view of a rainbow over the harbor, seen from the deck of the Galeon.  Because these tributes to lives and loves to me say it all.

And a few more pix from Provincetown, in no particular order:

"Black Sam" Bellamy, one of history's most successful pirates, now hawking t-shirts at the Whydah Museum. One story is that he turned to piracy when he didn't have the money to marry his sweetheart. 

Poster at the theater advertising the evening's lineup of shows.

Pavement art for the Portuguese Festival.

Free outdoor concerts included this extremely good Elvis impersonator.

Advertising the night's show. Notice that I'm wearing a fleece sweatshirt and long pants, and these guys are wearing ... well ... (can't blame it all on my thin Florida blood, either!)