YACK on: Farewell
Grant Sanders
Every now and then, Flint Ranney, our excellent Steamship Authority Governor and island representative sends a number of people, me included, Web links to stories that have to do with the S t e a m s h i p A u t h o r i t y . Sometimes he sends them out via email and sometimes he posts them on YACKon.com.

Grant Sanders is the host of YACK, the Nantucket Online Community at yackon.com and he promises that the first time the Iyanough's run is cancelled he won't refer to it as the "Iwon't go." His views are his alone and therefore do not, in any way, reflect the editorial stance of the Nantucket Independent. Or his wife. Whom he worships.

Most recently, Flint posted a story from one of the Vineyard papers that was about the Vineyard getting a new boat, and, more to the point, about the retirement of the MV Islander, which has served that island for decades.

But this was no mere story. It was an eight-page color pictorial containing heartfelt memories of the Islander. Poems that Vineyarders had written about their beloved, albeit dilapidated boat. Old timers waxing poetic about the majesty of this amazing vessel. Regular people telling anecdotes about how the Islander was sort of a member of the family.

It's sad when something like that changes in our lives. When you get used to something for years - most of your life - and then all of a sudden a boat like the Islander, that has become as familiar and comforting as a well worn pair of boots, is too old to continue its service. Well, it's sad. There's no other word for it.

It does not matter that the new boat that the Vineyard is getting, Our Island Home, is something akin to the Taj Mahal on water. It does not matter that its open-ended design and modern technology will shave precious minutes off of the trip, or that it holds more cars than are currently in the state of Vermont. The Vineyard will still deeply and solemnly miss their old MV Islander. And with good reason. It's a tradition. And with all of the newness and change that coldly swirls around us islanders, it's those longheld traditions that keep us in touch with who we are and where we come from as a community. We need and want to hold onto those things from our past. They are a part of us. And when they are gone, a little bit of us dies.

Now the Vineyard is not the only island getting a new boat this year. Nantucket, I'm very pleased to say, will also be welcoming a new highspeed passenger ferry called the Iyanough. And from what I can glean from Flint Ranney's emails, this boat is a stunner. It's fast. It's clean. It's built by the same people who created the Hy-Line fast ferries we've come to love. It's got wonderful, reliable diesel engines and wireless Internet access and a cool hull design that slices through the water like a fillet knife through a striped bass.

And best of all, it begins its service to and from the island at the end of this month. Plus there will be a wonderful ceremony and party on Saturday the 24th where the public can come down to Steamboat Wharf and participate in the Iyanough open house.

And yet, this day will be marked with a twinge of sadness because Nantucket will never again be able to ride aboard the boat which the Iyanough is, for lack of a better word, displacing - the beloved Flying Cloud.

Okay, "beloved" is maybe too strong a word. The fact is, there will probably not be an 8-page color spread with remembrances and poems and tears. There will be no podcasts of people paying their respects to the Flying Cloud on YACKon.com. There will be no Coast Guard send-off (unless the Coasties decide to use it for target practice). Which is why I have decided to do what others will likely not do. To compose a fitting tribute to the Flying Cloud:

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Oh, Flying Cloud,

we hardly knew you.

Mostly because, on any given day when we purchased a ticket to sail aboard you, there was a very good chance that you would break down. And many of us never got the chance. To know you.

Maybe I'm exaggerating. It's true, the Flying Cloud didn't always break down or have problems or have to turn back to port because of a crack in its hull or something that got sucked into its engines or because its electrical system was all screwed up and required the assistance of experts and engineers and the clergy. The Cloud did make the run between Hyannis and Nantucket many, many times. And except for the several hundred documented instances of mechanical failure, It was swell. Really. Just swell.

But this "mechanical quirkiness" was not the only aspect of the Flying Cloud's charm. There's also the boat's aesthetic quirkiness to consider.

Its exterior profile is best described as "a twin-hulled DeLorean." (So, like, '70s.)

And the interior was even more unique. I'll never forget the first time I stepped aboard and looked around and thought that the interior designers of this boat must have been inspired by the ambience and graphic vocabulary of the average urban bus terminal. How clever, I thought, to put a depressing bus terminal inside a boat. That way, when people finally arrived at their destination, they would be really glad, almost euphoric, to get off. Plus, spending an hour in a bus station makes spending two hours on the MV Eagle or the MV Nantucket seem like no time at all. A brilliant marketing ploy.

(There's one other fond memory I have from that trip. The hot dog I got in the snack bar was not bad.)

And I'll never forget the wonderful nicknames that people gave The Flying Cloud: "The Black Cloud." "The Dying Cloud." "The Flying Clud." Or "the Clod." Plus several other more colorful nicknames that decorum prevents us from printing here.

So, it is true, Flying Cloud, we hardly knew you. (Thank goodness.) Here's hoping someone buys you from the Steamship Authority and melts you down and makes something really, really useful out of you. Like one or two monopile columns that will hold up the Cape Wind windmills that you would have inevitably run into, several times, if you had stayed in service long enough. Or 200,000 Thighmasters®. Or a few really big anchors.

YACK on. I