“You all look amazing,” Principal Rosemary Bowman said tenderly to her Center School students on Friday, June 14, as the school and community members gathered outside beneath the flag pole to celebrate Flag Day. “I have a chill as I gaze out and see each and every one of you. I love the way people are holding the flag so reverently.”

            The students standing in front nicely holding their flags, she said to them, “What models you are right here in this row. What a beautiful sight.”

            She led the crowd in applauding then, “Because you are just wonderful.”

            Bowman has a gentle way of reaching her students, and many of us look forward to the annual Flag Day event simply to hear Bowman speak her nurturing words to the sea of faces that look up to her and know – feel – that she truly cares about them.

            This was the first Flag Day that ever fell on the last day of school, Bowman pointed out. Had there been one less snow day the event would not have taken place. “That would’ve been sad,” said Bowman, a huge fan of the American flag.

            Bowman read a poem about the flag, and as she began the clock tower struck 9:00 with a loud “dong!”

            “Right on cue, isn’t that something? I couldn’t have planned that better!” she said.

            Raymond Andrews of the American Legion Florence Eastman 280 led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by our national anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner, and another poem about the flag and a couple songs led by the children.

            Bowman then gave the children her special Flag Day message:

            “From preschool, kindergarten, first, second, and third grade – all the adults standing here are thinking the same thought: Our country is in good hands with you. You are our future, we celebrate you, we are so glad that you were born. What a wonderful job you did today.”

            Bowman initiated another round of applause for the students and asked them to join her in singing her “favorite song,” You’re a Grand Old Flag.

            “Look at the flag’s red, white, and blue,” Bowman said to the children. “Every time you see an American flag, please remember that it was created in freedom. The American flag made its first appearance in a battle for human liberty. All of you, take the time to pledge your honor to the American flag, the symbol of our country.

            “Today each one of you are leaders, and from this day forward you will be the person that brings crowds together in honor of the flag. Today we pass that baton to you as leaders of our country,” she continued.

            “So, as we celebrate this day, keep June 14 in your heart forever. Not everyone in the world has been given the gift you’ve been given. Think about how fortunate you are, and in your lifetime be that beacon of light, be the symbol of love, and remember that many generations of people have given up their lives, their families have made huge sacrifices for you to experience the freedoms that you have today.”

            She congratulated the second-graders as they look forward to advancing to third grade next year, and reassured the outgoing third-graders that she would be there at the start of the first day of school in September to greet them at the door at Old Hammondtown.

            “Mattapoisett is a glorious place to live,” said Bowman. “We are very fortunate. Happy Flag Day, happy summer, thank you all very much for being here today.”

            She encouraged further applause for the Florence Eastman Post 280 members present, saying, “Please join me in another round of applause for the wonderful human beings of the Florence Eastman Post for being here.”

            And, similarly, we applaud the wonderful human being Rosemary Bowman, simply for being here.

By Jean Perry

            Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club (RHADC) BERMUDA, June 18, 2019: Kiwi Spirit was the line honors leader from start to finish in the 2019 Marion Bermuda Race. The Farr 63 finished off St. David’s Lighthouse at 2:27:59 on Tuesday. Francis Seldorff’s Kinship, a Baltic 52, was second across the line at 5:01:02.

            Friends and families and volunteers have all commented on how straightforward this race has been, especially with so many boats finishing in such a condensed space of time. The Finish Line Report, accessed on the www.marionbermuda.com home page, lists boats that have finished and their elapsed times. Remember that an Anti-Bias adjustment to the ORR handicaps will be made and the adjustment will affect the corrected times.

            One of the Prizes of the Day has to go to Abigail, Robert Buck’s Aquidneck 52 from Marion, MA. She sits first in Class A based on preliminary corrected time results. This is a 52-foot yawl that was designed, built, and raced by the owner. The skipper of Kinship, which stands second in Class A, calls Abigail,a nice design with a cold molded wooden hull, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Mark Gabrielson, Abigail‘s navigator, said she is “just fast.”

            After sailing in second place overall for much of the race, Buck was asked how Kinship had passed them in the last 50 miles. They were both west of the rhumb line with a good angle on the wind coming through the Happy Valley.

            “We were working very hard to get the boat going, but it just didn’t feel right.” Buck said. “After we finished, we started the engine and backed her down. Huge clumps of weeds came up off the keel.” It’s not an excuse, but weeds on the keel do make for slower going.

            Like most of the rest of the fleet, Abigail sailed all the way from Sow & Pigs Reef, a mark of the course at the mouth of Buzzards Bay, on starboard tack. “We didn’t tack,” Gabrielson said, “but we sure did a lot of work making countless sail changes.”

            Kiwi Spirit has settled into ‘preliminary’ seventh place in Class A, but that hasn’t daunted Jo Riley’s enthusiasm (spirits?) for taking Line Honors. Riley is 18. This is his fourth Marion Bermuda Race. Of his four rides to Bermuda, three have been line honors winners.

            Asked how the trip was this time, he said, “Good. Good weather the whole way, no rain. We never stopped the whole way. … It was comfortable.”

            At one point in the race the wind dropped to about five knots and Kiwi Spirit hoisted their Code Zero. But they forgot to tape the shackle. The shackle came loose after the sail was hoisted and the spinnaker halyard ran up to the masthead.

            Riley explained, “After putting up the Code Zero, we lost the halyard. … Someone forgot to tape it. We had to send someone up. Since I’m the youngest and lightest one, I had to go up. We had to do it right away to get the Code Zero going. I was bumping all around … slamming back and forth on the mast.”

            Riley commented on beating out of Buzzards Bay in the solid 63-foot sloop. Winds were on the nose gusting to 30 and running against the tide flowing out. The chop was steep.

            “We were fairly comfortable looking at other boats. We weren’t moving very much [beating against the waves] while the other boats were hobby horsing through it. We were the first boat out, so it was fun.”

            Finishing first was fun, too. Riley said, “This was my third time to finish first in four races, so my race feels pretty good right now.”

            Kiwi Spirit was a family effort – father, son, and daughter plus three cousins and a brother-in-law make up the family part of the crew. Joining them was Chuck Fontaine, a lifelong friend who has run the Mass Maritime Sailing Program. Riley says Fontaine is now an adopted member of the Riley family.

            The two US Naval Academy teams hold preliminary one-two positions in Class B. Gallant, the Pearson Composite Navy 44 skippered by Christian Hoffman, sits in the lead and Defiance, the Navy 44 MK II co-skippered by Mark Navaro and George Hamilton, is runner up.

            In class C, Escapade II, a Morris 46 skippered by Tom Bowler of Marion, is the preliminary leader.

            In Class D, Concert, a Morris 40 skippered by Levin Campbell and Holly Ambler of North Haven, MN and David Caso’s Silhouette, a Cherubini 44, are the only boats that have finished. No call can be made at this time, not even a preliminary one.

            The remaining boats on the course are caught in a dying and shifting breeze North of Bermuda. Ron Wisner’s Hotspur II is still 114 miles from a Dark ‘n Stormy.

By Talbot Wilson

            The highlight of SCOPE week for seventh grade students of Old Rochester Regional is the annual cardboard boat race when groups of students have a blast designing and building their boats of cardboard and duct tape to race on the open waters off Mattapoisett Harbor. The week of activities include field trips and creative learning opportunities outside the classroom. 

            SCOPE stands for Student Centered Opportunity for Personal Enhancement and has taken place during the same week as Survival for over 40 years. It’s a junior high red team/blue team teacher collaboration to provide their students with outside-the-classroom learning opportunities – ones to help them learn about themselves and each other.

            Kathryn Gauvin, a grade 7 teacher at ORR Junior High, helped facilitate the boat race event on Wednesday, June 5, at the Mattapoisett YMCA shoreline.

            “It’s the highlight of SCOPE Week, definitely” she said. “The kids are creative. They do their own research, create their own design. … Some do focus on and get more involved in the creative side of the project instead of the design side,” she said moments after one of the more elaborately designed boats capsized immediately upon boarding.

            As the students line up their boats along the beach waiting for their boat to move up in the line, watercrafts are reinforced by duct tape and more duct tape – miles and miles of duct tape of all colors and textures. Lizzy Pinzino and Chase Jackson were busy reinforcing their boat, “The Real Mauna Loa,” built by Pinzino, Jackson, and Aspen Barratt.

            “Oh my God, the water’s cold! I don’t want to get wet!” shrieked Pinzino, her toes just slightly submerged in the water.

            “This is surely the coldest and the windiest [boat race] day we’ve ever had,” said Gauvin.

            Students struggled against the wind that sometimes sent them too far off from the floating marker where they are supposed to turn back. At one point the floating marker even floated away.

            One after the other, the boats sailed or sank. It was apparent that the more simple the engineering, the better it floats. But that didn’t stop some kids from riding the waves of creativity, like the creators of an elaborate pirate ship sailed by Simon DeRosa and Nicholas Miedema who ended up ‘shipwrecked’ on the shore. “Lack of being able to steer,” Miedema stated as his reason for coming up short in the race. The wind driven current just blew them off course.

            Other races turned into a couple rounds of “bumper boats” as grade 7 social science teacher Dan McEvoy described it. And seventh-grade social science teacher Justin Calderone who treaded water the entire time in his orange blaze shirt and endured the cold like a champion was there to keep the ships straight and above water as best he could. Some boats at first glance looked like they wouldn’t stand a chance of floating, at least for very long, but every now and then the students seemed to defy the laws of the natural world.

            “I guess I don’t understand science,” said McEvoy, in charge of keeping time of each race, “because the ones I thought were gonna sink don’t!”

            Gauvin values SCOPE Week for its opportunity to get students and families and educators all together at one place for a really fun event.

            “We just don’t have enough days in the year when we can share an experience like this with each other and with the community,” said Gauvin. “I look at today and feel very fortunate.”

By Jean Perry