A few days ago we decided to visit the Herreshoff museum. Nat and John Herreshoff were famous boat builders and this museum was all about them and the boats they built. It was really fun to explore as you can board certain boats and look at the interiors. There were also a lot of small models of the Herreshoff boats that were especially interesting to study. There was also a hall of signs about the America's Cup, starting at the very first Cup in 1851, to the modern day ones. Additionally, at the end of the visit there was a movie about the life of the two Herreshoff brothers, and more importantly, the HMC (Herreshoff Manufacturing Company).  In total, it was a very fun and educational museum that I really enjoyed.

The Herreshoff brothers: At the age of 15 John Herreshoff went blind. He had recently started to build his first boat, Meteor. He managed to finish it with his father and took it out sailing with his little brother, Nat. Whenever John took the helm Nat became his eyes. Soon the two became inseparable and they started building boats as a business in 1863. They became extremely successful and famous. Nat would design the boats and supervise their construction, while John would be in charge of running the business. John and Nat started quarreling about the future of the business, and in 1915 John quit the business. Without him Nat decided to sell HMC. John died soon after.

The Cup: The Herreshoff’s were the boatbuilders of multiple winning America's Cup defenders, so of course there was a section about the Cup. These are a few things I found interesting. One, the competition was always designed (by the defender) to give the defender an advantage, meaning you would really have to work hard to steal the Cup from the defender. Two, It is a competition between “guy with money” and “other guy with money”. If you want to compete, you need money… a lot of it. Three, it is not exclusive to racing yachts. Once, a liveaboard couple crossed the Atlantic from England to try to steal the Cup, it was a cruising boat so they weren’t very upset when they lost, but they did get to cruise the East Coast.