Joanne bought me this great reproduction on canvas entitled "Becalmed at Halfway Rock" by Fitz Lane.
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The scene shows ships in the 1850's at Halfway Rock, an island outcropping equidistant from Gloucester to Boston and a few miles outside of Marblehead Harbor, which is the same place that we fish from now.
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We usually start our trips there to fish for mackerel and pollack to use for bait and we've seen a seal on a number of occasions sitting on the rock. And then there is the famous Halfway Rock game, where the winner is the one who consumes the most beers during the five mile trek out to the island.
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It is the landmark that we use leaving Marblehead Harbor for Stellwagen, and signaling the return from that run, which can be very uncomfortable in a rough chop.
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What is bizarrely weird is that Joanne had no idea that this scene was depicted just outside of Marblehead and is a favorite of ours, when she bought the artwork in North Conway. I had a hunch that this was Halfway and Ryan pointed it out last night at dinner. Then we checked for it online for the confirmation.
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Turns out that Fitz Lane painted a number of excellent, mid nineteenth century maritime secenes of the Gloucester and the New England coast, including Mt. Desert Island, Maine, which is our final destination for today.
Last night after a pile of crawdad's and some luke-warm Piel's i painted a spatter job on my BVDs that rivals anything yer missus picks out at a yard sale in Wherever, NH. I hungs it outside the double wide and Effy Tradwell (whom I pleasured at last years Yankee Wife swap) commented that I have "the stylings of a new age Jackson Pollack." A man fer all the seasonings, TL is.