THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 7, 1996 TAG: 9607040311
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 48 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Ronald L. Speer
DATELINE: BAR HARBOR, MAINE LENGTH: 92 lines
Travel has always turned me on. Whenever I tour unfamiliar territory in this diverse nation, I fall in love.
It's happened once again.
This time I'm smitten by the rocky harbors of the coastal communities of New England. The villages are gorgeous: clean, busy and neat. The still-functioning relics of our colonial days are pages out of history for a Nebraska-farm visitor.
And for a man who loves to sail, they are especially alluring.
Hundreds of sailboats swing with fishing boats on moorings in hundreds of harbors, where renowned captains of clipper ships once plied the seven seas for tea and spices and whales.
Marblehead, Salem, Gloucester and Rockport - these Massachusetts communities are home to more sailboats than I've ever seen anywhere. I counted 200 in a Marblehead harbor - and quit when I'd scanned less than half the cove. And there are several harbors in Marblehead, as there are in most villages.
Mount Desert Island in Maine, where we spent three days, has about a dozen different harbors. Bar Harbor is the best known.
Long a mecca for summer visitors, Bar Harbor is home to half a dozen whale-watching boats. Northeast Harbor is most popular with sailors and is home to Hinckley Yachts, one of the world's best boat-builders. Southeast Harbor is where to go to see lobster boats returning with their catches.
The lobster fishermen are doing fine, unlike the watermen who fish for haddock, cod, flounder, yellowtail tuna and other ``groundfish.''
A watermen's group has challenged in court the legality of new rules designed to replenish the stocks. The rules will halve the days fishing boats can go to sea. And the fishermen who harvest sea urchins are fighting stringent new restrictions.
``There has been a lot of overfishing in the past. And now regulations are killing the industry,'' said Bill Grafta, who works 600 lobster pots in Rockport, Mass. ``But they started protecting the lobster a long time ago. And we made a decent living.''
The lobster, of course, IS New England. Every restaurant serves them. A Bar Harbor eatery offers them in at least a dozen different ways. Cost of a traditional lobster dinner runs from 10 to 15 bucks.
``There are plenty of lobster out there,'' said Bill O'Coin, who runs the marina in Southwest Harbor on Mount Desert Island, which is about 75 miles from Nova Scotia. ``The other fishermen are having a hard time, with all the new regulations.''
The towns on the coast are well-regulated, too. Rarely does a village boast a fast-food stop, or a chain outlet of any kind. Most proudly look like the olden days. And everybody walks because there is little parking in the shopping sections.
As I said, the harbors are delightful, and visitors - like us - probably think of settling in one of the villages on the coast, especially if they like to sail.
But we soon discovered drawbacks if you come from the Outer Banks. We were told to wear heavy coats and gloves to combat the cold on our whale-watching trip - which was canceled by fog which cut visibility at Bar Harbor to a few hundred feet. Boulders were strewn by glaciers 20,000 years ago throughout the offshore waters. Fog, granite bottoms and 11-foot tides make cruising exciting for a sailor accustomed to the soft-bottom, no-tide, no-fog waters of the Albemarle.
And while New Englanders wrote some inspirational pages of our history - such as the people who sheltered runaway slaves in a hideout in the famed House of the Seven Gables in Salem - they have written some dark pages, too.
A few blocks from the house made famous by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a replica of the ``Witches' Dungeon,'' There, Salem women accused of witchery by hysterical teenage girls were held for weeks in pitch-black cells the size of a phone booth, chained to walls so they had to stand. Then most were hanged by a jury's order.
And in that dungeon, a man who refused to sell his property to the sheriff was crushed to death over three days under an ever-growing stack of rocks piled on his chest to drive out the devil.
And many of those famous Yankee sea captains made their fortunes hauling slaves from Africa to the South.
Those reminders of what men and women can do - with the blessing of a community and its government - to fellow men and women will stay with me always.
Fortunately, so will the memories of the neighborliness of our Bar Harbor innkeepers, Ron and Mae Corrion of the Aurora Motel, and the flowery chains of the coastal communities of New England.
Business has been a little slow this summer because of cold weather left from 100 inches of snow that fell along the coast.
One hundred inches of snow!
We're heading HOME to the flowery charms of Manteo, via Vermont. After this visit, I will have been in all 48 continental states.
And it's time. I'm beginning to feel about being a tourist like Ogden Nash did about purple cows:
I'd rather see one, than be one. MEMO: Ronald L. Speer returns from his New England tour next week. by CNB