What was your most memorable skinny-dipping experience?
Ed Amaral
Reunion at Gay Head
Strictly speaking, this isn’t a skinny-dipping story, but it’s worthy nonetheless. Oak Bluffs resident and avid fisherman Ed Amaral had just released a fish when he noticed two women giggling. “We wanted to take a picture of the naked fisherman catching a fish,” one of the women said.
“Too bad I just released one,” replied Ed, who enjoys fishing au naturel on beaches that permit it.
Later that afternoon, Ed put down his fishing rod and took a stroll down the beach. He ran into the women again and they stopped to chat.
“Where are you from?” asked the naked Ed.
“I’m originally from Oak Bluffs,” said the older woman.
“Is that a fact. Well, so am I,” said Ed.
“Where in Oak Bluffs?” asked the woman.
“Vineyard Ave.,” replied Ed.
“Me too,” said the woman, a smile spreading across her face.
“Now I’m a little bit embarrassed,” said Ed. “When I said I was Ed Amaral, she fell apart.”
After proudly introducing her grown daughter to her former neighbor and schoolmate, mother and daughter proudly posed for pictures with the naked fisherman.
Sarah Vail
Sunset Story No. 1 (Lambert’s Cove)
Lambert’s Cove Beach is now a haven for sunset gazers, but in the 1980s, when Sarah Vail and her friends from college summered on the Vineyard, the magnificent crimson streak that slices across the water was an undiscovered treasure. “We didn’t have towels or bathing suits,” recalls the West Tisbury resident. The water beckoned and the group stripped down to answer the call. “It was very spontaneous,” says Sarah. After their swim, the towel-less troupe avoided the sand-in-wet-clothes conundrum by simply remaining bare. Recalls Sarah, “We drove down Main Street in Vineyard Haven, past the Capawock, and people would be waiting in line for the movie. And a bunch of us would be naked in the car driving really slowly past the movie theater.”
David Vigneault
Sunset Story No. 2 (Gay Head)
A week after moving to the Vineyard, David Vigneault and a friend drove to Aquinnah – then called Gay Head – and took a walk along the beach. Noticing that most of their fellow beachgoers had abandoned their bathing suits elsewhere, the two decided “When in Rome. . . .”
“As we went around the point, we found a lovely little cove and I started swimming out to a rock,” says David (who is now married to Sarah Vail, who drove naked past the Capawock Theater after the Lambert’s Cove swim). “I crawled up and watched the sun set into the ocean.” What David failed to realize was that the rock he found was under the overlook at the Gay Head Cliffs.
And so it was that on this lovely August evening, a large gathering of tourists taking in the Vineyard’s natural beauty were also treated to a statuesque naked man gazing into the sunset. “I stood up and turned around and there were tons of people – clapping.”
He was later approached by a woman who said, “Excuse me, sir, are you the person who was on the rock?
I got a lovely profile of you.”
Darren Lobdell
Boys Will Be Boys at East Chop
Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School graduate Darren Lobdell and his pals had a favorite spot that they frequented during high school summer nights. Darren says there wasn’t one night that stands out, but rather an entire summer of skinny-dipping. “We’d leave Oak Bluffs and on the way back to Vineyard Haven, we’d stop at the East Chop Beach Club, jump the fence, and go skinny-dipping off the slide there. That was our place. It worked great. We never got caught.”
Laurisa Owen
Snapping Turtle at Ice House Pond
Oak Bluffs resident and sixth-generation summer kid Laurisa Owen says that one August evening she had a run-in with a snapping turtle while skinny-dipping. “I was around fourteen, and I was skinny-dipping in Ice House Pond with my girlfriends. When I got out of the water, I went to pick up my shorts and there was something tugging at them,” recalls Laurisa. “I was playing tug-of-war with a snapping turtle. He didn’t want to give them back.”
Jonathan Averill
Scared Straight in Oak Bluffs
Cash and Carry’s Jonathan Averill has only one skinny-dipping story. “I was at a bar in Oak Bluffs with some friends, and after we left we went skinny-dipping at the Inkwell [Beach]. The police saw something going on down there, and they came down and collected everybody’s clothes. Luckily, I had put my clothes on the jetty and they didn’t see them, so I had to hide on the other end of the jetty – in the water with the crabs biting my toes. I remember just sitting there saying, ‘Oh, boy, I got myself into a jam here.’ ”