FLOTSA& M JETSAM

CLASSIC BOATS GALORE

Boats. Lots of boats. Lots of beautiful, classic and antique boats will be on display at the 36th Annual Antique and Classic Boat Festival — like the 1923, 62-foot Consolidated Speedway luxury commuter Miss Asia, which was last year’s star. This year’s event will take place on Saturday, August 25 and Sunday, August 26 at Brewer Hawthorne Cove Marina in Salem, Massachusetts. For more information, or to enter your boat for the judging, go to boatfestival.org

LISTENING FOR THE LIGHTHOUSE

Someone once wrote that West Quoddy Head in Lubec, Maine, was the place “where they make the fog, at the End of the Earth.” And it may be true. Odds are, you’ll see fog well before you see the West Quoddy Head Light. This sunny photo is more the exception than the rule.

The lighthouse, which sits on the easternmost point of the continental United States, across from Grand Manan Island, Canada, gets so much fog, that they refer to the murk as a “ubiquitous phenomenon.”

Fog cannons, 1,500-pound fog bells, fog bell towers, fog horns, fog steam whistles, and even a fog signal house were installed to prevent maritime mishaps. If a device had the word “fog” attached to it, they tried it here to keep the mariners off the cliffs, ledges and nearby Sail Rock. The lighthouse keepers and their families had to listen to the signals for days on end. One stretch of fog lasted 1,402 hours. (No worries, we have a calculator. That’s 58 straight days of fog).

West Quoddy Head Light is closer to the African continent than any other building in the United States, and during the weeks around the equinoxes it is the first place in the country to see the sun rise. That is, of course, when there’s no fog.