Word: yachting
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Harry Truman's vacation on the Presidential yacht Williamsburg had been going badly. In Narragansett Bay he had encountered wind, cold and rain. Then he had found himself struggling against the nameless indignities of seasickness. As the yacht rolled southeast on her hunt for the sun he had bribed his queasy stomach with seasick pills. But now, in the harbor of Hamilton, Bermuda, the deck was solid, the water blue, and there were white coral, pastel walls and green foliage ashore...
Luxury. Next morning as the Williamsburg moved up Chesapeake Bay in cheering sunshine, he slept until seven o'clock-shamelessly abandoning his habit of rising at 5:30. The morning after that, with the yacht moving north in the open Atlantic, he slept until nine...
Between times he took sun baths in a pair of bright green trunks, began reading Arthur Schlesinger's The Age of Jackson. When the yacht anchored in Delaware Bay he went swimming, employing a sedate sidestroke which enabled him to keep his glasses unsplashed...
...week's end, when the Williamsburg moved into Narragansett Bay, he was sporting a two-day beard. He had a second sensation in reserve. When the yacht tied up at the Quonset (R.I.) Naval Air Base, he broke out a cap which made shoreside loiterers blink-a white creation with a wide bill and a billowy crown which flopped like a tam-o'-shanter. Thus arrayed he was driven to the Plum Beach home of his new naval aide, Captain James H. Foskett, where he contentedly attacked a heaping dinner of ham and chicken...
Next day he received a selected knot of Rhode Island politicians aboard the yacht, went ashore to visit the Naval War College at Newport. Then, after waiting out a Northeaster, the Williamsburg headed seaward again...