Just as we stumbled into the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, we changed courses after Block Island (RI) to spend more time with Godpoppy, Jamie, and his partner, Luiz Diniz (yes, it rhymes, making him all the more fabulous) in Provincetown for Carnival Week.  As usual, we planned only to spend a day or two and ended up there the whole week.  In fact, this morning we started off for Casco Bay in Maine (a 20-hour crossing) and got three hours away and had to turn back because we were going to continue to be beating into the wind all night.  Not fun when you are alone in the cockpit at night; not fun when you are trying to sleep during your offshift and you are bouncing off the bed.  Basically not fun for Amy or Matt but Graham can sleep through anything.  So we headed back to Ptown Harbor.

Jamie and Luiz with Graham in the background

We arrived in Ptown on Monday of Carnival Week and things were already in full swing.  Jamie thought it would be a good idea for us to come to Carnival

http://www.ptown.org/carnival.asp.

in order to expose Graham to different lifestyles.  I guess he thought that living on a boat, sailing from place to place and being boatschooled wasn’t different enough 😉

We anchored in Ptown Harbor near a beautiful houseboat which we passed twice daily on our way into shore.  We took the dinghy in daily to MacMillan Pier

Houseboat in Ptown

Fishing boats at the Ptown Pier

and each day promised ourselves that we would not come back at night and each night, once again, we’d be out there searching for Troubadour.  Fear not Aunt Betty and the like, Captain Matt always knew right where she was and  we always had two sets of dinghy lights, a flashlight to make sure we didn’t run over any mooring balls or lobster pots and 3 life jackets.  We would have loved to go whale watching but it cost an arm and a leg to do so.  One night there was a coastguard warning to all vessels in the area between Long Point and Provincetown Harbor that there was a right whale spotted in the vicinity right where we were anchored.  That was as close as we got to a whale sighting.  So far…

One night we had a big storm and Amy and Matt (mostly Matt ) had to be up in the middle of the night waiting out the storm.  Matt, dressed like the Gorton’s fisherman, stayed in the cockpit while sheets of rain blew sideways and thunder and lightning cracked all around.   On another night, we went to bed anchored in 46 feet of water and dragged in the middle of the night waking up in 9 feet of water.  We were right next to a shelf.  The anchor alarm was going off each evening when we arrived back at Troubadour – it got a good workout and we are glad to know it works.

The theme for Carnival 2012 was “PTOWN:  A SPACE ODYSSEY”.  Many people were painted silver, wore rockets, NASA or should I say, the NASAettes were there, and Amy even had her picture taken with Billy and Jean Klingon.

She also had her picture taken with the famed Hat Ladies of Carnival.  They wear different matching costumes and hats every day and then, of course, go all out for the Carnival Parade.  They actually look like what I picture Click and Clack, the Car Talk brothers to look like, though.

Internationally Famous Hat Ladies

Hat Ladies in the Parade

We were able to hook up with Amy’s friend Mark and his partner, Tom, on the day of the parade and we enjoyed a tour of their lovely home and shared a nice meal, including Jamie and Luiz, with them at the former Howard Johnson’s, now the HOT L, as in Hotel without the “e’ lit up.

Us with Mark

What is fun about Provincetown is that anyone can be anything and there is no judgment to be found.  You can wear anything (or nothing!), you can dance in the streets, talk to yourself, men hold hands with men, women kiss women, heterosexual families of four stroll down the street and everyone is just doing their own thing.