Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/835998
10 BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM PHOTOGRAPHY BY FRANK O'BRIEN/THE BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY IMAGES THE FERRY IS HERE! THE SOUNDS AND SIGHTS OF SUMMER START WITH WATER. BY JARED BOWEN The Steamship Authority's ferry, Eagle, heads past Brant Point Lighthouse on its way into Nantucket Harbor. There's something about a boat. All the gnarled problems of mainland life just dissolve in the lapping Atlantic waters. Since 1960, the Steamship Authority ferries have delivered passengers to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. And whether they are natives or vacationers, all step aboard with the feeling that bliss is on the horizon. On classic summer days, under impossibly blue skies, it's as if Edward Hopper has painted the seascape. Get caught in a rare storm and it feels as though you are being dropped into the pages of a Herman Melville tale with fraught waters and angrily painted grey skies. Score an early morning departure and you chance being swallowed up by a wall of fog that transforms Nantucket Sound into a mythological landscape. The ferry is a chance to be transported in every regard. Charles Sennott knows it well. The peripatetic foreign correspondent and founder of The GroundTruth Project has taken the ferry to the Vineyard home he shares with his wife and four sons for 25 years. For him, it's a way to distance himself from the worries of the world. "The ferry horn blasting across the deck and out over the water always makes me feel settled and excited to get back to the island," he says. "[It's] like some blast of a ram's horn in ancient religion, a spiritual calling." . FULL FRONTAL