Tag Archives: Blessing Of The Privileged

The Blessing is more than the race

I have been a commercial fisherman in and out of Point Judith for going on 50 years. I was there in 1972 for the first Blessing Of The Fleet, and I’ve hardly missed one since. In those 40 odd years I’ve watched Galilee and Point Judith both undergo radical transformation. We went from being a small fishing port where Captains lived along the docks, to a massive powerhouse in the 80s, to the near collapse in the early aughts and now back to something of a revival. And of course, in that time, we became a parking lot for Block Island.  But the one thing that has remained constant has been the tight knit community of fishermen and their families. I am writing because I feel that the fishing boats, the basis of the entire event, are slowly falling by the wayside in the media. >click to read<11:19