A purpose of the Maine voyage this summer was overcoming a long-standing issue: Trips haunted by schedules. The fact that Robin stopped in Boston resulted in a conscious decision under way not to push to make a Maine landfall by the time Monica's plane landed in Manchester, New Hampshire. As a result, we got to discover a port we'd never visited and a unique marina. Boston Harbor Shipyard and Marina is actually in East Boston, across the harbor from downtown Boston. There the price of a slip is about half the going rate on the Boston waterfront. And we got a view that we would have missed were Robin at a waterfront dock.
But wait. You get more in the shipyard and marina, where mjm boats builds million-dollar power boats, a Navy destroyer was berthed for repairs and you see the sun set behind the Boston skyline.
You get art. More precisely, sculpture.
Thanks to a number of sponsoring non-profit groups, every building in this sprawling shipyard and most spaces between building are decorated with sculptures. Monica's favorite was the mermaid.

Welded out of what appeared to be scrap metal, she flows atop one of the many buildings that abut the old, sometimes rotting piers in the shipyard. A representation of barnacle tracks or perhaps coral descends the brick siding of the same building.

But wait! There's more. Catching your eye first if you visit by automibile has to be the cod, also welded from scraps.

                 

We would recommend that anyone visiting Boston take the short drive through the tunnel to East Boston and there drive to the end of Marginal Street for a free art experience. Then you could have a meal at Rino's place a few blocks to the north, where you might sample the coconut sorbet, the absolutely best desert I've ever consumed. But that's another story.

Robin arrived on the Boston waterfront to great fanfare.

Turned out there was another celebrity in the harbor, the USS Constitution, out for a parade with all hands on deck.