"The hike from Lobsterville to Menemsha and back on the gravel and sand beach has been called the ‘Death March’ by the few who have survived.”

Kib Bramhall

Oceans, islands, lost arts, and the man who fell in love with a canoe.

Alexandra Bullen Coutts

 

The movie looks like a mirage, the scenes shot in color during a black and white era. But you can tell the period is the 1930s because the men wear black tank tops and belted bathing suits in the Charles Atlas style, and the women bob their hair, decorating it in ribbons or covering it in large floppy hats.

Tom Dunlop

The long and winding voyage of the Concordia yawl Dolce.

Matthew Stackpole

Each spring Buddy Vanderhoop bites the head off the first herring he catches.

“It’s just traditional and it’s been done forever and it brings you luck,” he said late this winter, a few weeks before the earliest alewives and blueback herring – the scouts – began to fight their way up his herring run. “It’s like it’s between you and the fish, your blood mashing with the fish’s blood. You don’t just bite the herring head off and spit it out. You bite it off and eat it. So it’s a little crunchy.”

Tom Dunlop

Favorite part of the job? “The different kinds of people you can meet through the season. A lot of my customers have been with me twenty years now.”

It was late in the evening on June 4, 1955 and Kib Bramhall needed a Vineyard fix.

Kib Bramhall

Name: Savannah Hooe

Occupation: Seaman apprentice, Coast Guard Station Menemsha

A day on the Job: Boat checks and inspections, standing watch (manning theradios), training. “You see some pretty cool things literally every time you go out.You learn something new every time. You never know.”

Favorite part of the job? “Knowing people can depend on you to help themin need.”

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