Salem Harbor's Spring Spell

Paid a visit to Salem, Mass yesterday enjoying our recent spell of spring-like days.  After launching into the Danvers River at McCabe Park I headed out the river's mouth into Salem Sound (photo at left), around Salem Willows, and into Salem Harbor.

Both the highway and train bridges across the Danvers River were busy with traffic...

By contrast there was little boat traffic on the water with only one other kayak and a couple of lobster boats seen.

Numerous loons were seen and heard...

...as well as buffleheads...

Where the long standing coal/oil electricity generating station formerly stood, a new natural gas-fired station is being built...

...and will use only one third of the space previously occupied by the old coal plant.

After rounding the Derby Wharf Light...

 ...I looked towards some of Salem's stately waterfront buildings...

One older building that caught my eye was this one...

...that I suspected to be the House of the Seven Gables.  Confirming its identity later on the internet, I came across the opening sentence of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel: "HALFWAY down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst."

My trip back to McCabe Park allowed me to go with the tide and a spring-like sea breeze once I rounded Juniper Point...

I liked the name of this moored sailboat...

 

Reminds me a little of the schooner's name in Kipling's Captains Courageous, "We're Here".  It was one of the few occupied moorings.

 

Not a single piece of trash was encountered.