#creativityconnects #Westport made possible by @lifewtr Eric Chiang #visualartist #cultural #community #volunteer inspired by #ArtistCollective #nature #local #art venues
Beloved by its owners, the Beetle Cat has been bringing sailors together for 100 years
Were you to encounter him in person, Bill Womack likely wouldn’t strike you as a structural engineer with a lifetime of high-profile tunnel, bridge and road projects under his belt. He has a snow-white, Imperial-style beard and a friendly, softly weathered face. He wears a baseball cap, flannel shirt, wool sweater and wire-rimmed glasses. He looks like anyone you might find poking around docks and boatyards just about anywhere in New England.
Perhaps the look is fitting, considering that most of Womack’s work these days centers around sails, sawdust, varnish and the sweet smell of sawn lumber. He’s the owner of the Beetle Cat Boat Shop in Wareham, Massachusetts, the current iteration of a company that, since 1921, has been building the stately but simple Beetle Cat. It’s a 12-foot, wooden, gaff-rigged sailing dinghy that Womack fell in love with near Onset, Massachusetts, during summe
WESTPORT The Westport River Watershed Alliance will offer two talks this winter.
On Jan. 28, Horseshoe Crabs with Dr. Dan Gibson will be held at 4 p.m. and on Feb. 25 Sharks with Dr. Gregory Skomal will be held at 4 p.m. Skomal is an accomplished marine biologist, underwater explorer, photographer, aquarist, and author. He has been a senior fisheries biologist with Massachusetts Marine Fisheries since 1987 and currently heads up the Massachusetts Shark Research Program.
He is also adjunct faculty at the University of Massachusetts School for Marine Science and Technology in New Bedford, a guest investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, MA, and an adjunct scientist with the Center for Shark Research in Sarasota, Fla.
The Martha s Vineyard Times
Don DePriest passed away on Jan. 9, 2021, at Saint Anne’s Hospital in Fall River. He was 74 years old. Don battled cancer for three years, and died peacefully while surrounded by loved ones.
Don was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Osby DePriest Sr. and Avis Williston DePriest. Don was raised in Oak Bluffs by his mother, with his three brothers, Robert Williston, Osby DePriest Jr., and Ashley DePriest. He graduated from Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School in 1964.
He had exceptional mechanical abilities, and a special talent for building fast race cars. He was an expert mechanic, and passionate about auto racing and fine-tuning his race cars and motorcycles. According to his friends, he always had the fastest cars and motorcycles on Martha’s Vineyard. He was known on the Island for winning drag races and building cars that some of his friends still talk about to this day (for example, an Opel with a Buick engine that never lost a