8/21/26: Hopedale
- Alton Coolidge
- 19 hours ago
- 2 min read
Today we had an 80-mile jump to Hopedale. We left with the earliest sign of light in hopes of making it to Hopedale with time to explore the town. The morning was a pretty one, or so I was told. The anchor lifted and strapped down, I looked at the 4 other people who had woken for the departure, all with coffee in their hands, and decided that I was good to go back to bed. The second time I woke up the weather was fair with spots of sun on the water and, for the first time in a while, favorable wind. Under sail and with the current behind us we made good time to Hopedale, arriving around midday with time for activities.
Ashore there weren't that many activities. It was a Saturday and the large Moravian mission that functioned both as an active church and museum seemed abandoned, and the two stores Hopedale had to offer were closed. Seeing that our options were limited, Nathan took to playing with and eventually rolling around in the dirt with one of the huskies that was tied up outside a house. Helene and I stood back and watched amusedly, no doubt looking lost, when an extremely nice local drove by and told us that if we waited a few minutes he would return and open the church and museum. We did just that and as promised the man, whose name I've regrettably forgotten, returned with keys. The church building was impressive, with the active church as well as the old Sunday school classrooms, housing for the Moravians, and a workshop equipped with a furnace and a very large set of bellows. The Hopedale Moravian outpost had a concentration on music, especially brass music. All the classrooms and storage spaces contained assorted piles of bent trumpets, dented euphoniums, keyless saxophones, and slideless trombones.
This was in stark contrast to the museum in which everything was immaculate. The exhibits were on full display with no cases or glass boxes. There were harpoon heads, Moravian dentistry equipment, full wolf pelts, an 18th-century copy of the Bible, and much more. The museum itself was all crammed into an old storage building on the outside of the Moravian outpost that gave no hints as to what was housed, which made it all the more impressive how spectacular its contents were. After spending a good amount of time in the museum, we went back to walking the streets, petting dogs that looked friendly, and talking to the locals who were invariably friendly. We eventually retired to the boat for Dede's spaghetti ragù and then an early bed.
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