August 24th,

Nice sunny day, close to the lighthouse at the entrance to the Chatham harbor. Used the kayak to land ashore. Really wild sandy islands and sand bars. We saw our first life horseshoe crabs. At low tide you walk through banks of sand that fill with water quickly with rising tide. This evening we caught sight of two large seals and I believe a pair of skuas

The wind and in general the weather conditions getting stormy we opted to move to a town mooring Friday morning.

Friday was as rainy and windy as forecasted but by mid afternoon we had enough and walked to town with raincoats on. We saw the lighthouse, and the old grist mill as well as a couple of art galleries. We came back to the boat soaked but happy to have done a bit of stretching.

Saturday morning was still grey after a night of wind and rain, it seems okay to venture to town. We visited the Atwood museum and found more than the history of the Atwood family home, fascinating objects donated to the historical society well presented. The mural paintings (really canvas framed) which were a series of paintings that Alice Stallknecht did in the 1920s were well worth the visit and we were glad that a docent was there to interpret the exhibit.

After a late lunch in town we walked to the fish pier where we admired the view of the fishing boats moored, the sandbar islands, and the seals attracted by the feeding of fish and released scraps by the fisherman. Along the beach there were shark warning signs as they feed on the seals plentiful in the area...well we were not going to swim for sure.

interestingly, we found a French connection to Chatham, as Samuel de Champlain was the first European to land in this part of Cape Cod in 1606.

The sun made its apparition hopefully we will have a calm night.