Understandable, really. Because what was built as storage for fishermen at the turn of the 19th century , and later became summer housing, performance space for Eugene O'Neill's Experimental Playwrights Theatre, and even a speakeasy known as the Circus Bar , is now a dozen condominiums worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Their owners surely want to protect their investment. But that doesn't make them unapproachable. Visitors with a penchant for Provincetown history -- or merely in search of affordable, quiet lodging -- can rent them by the week or, during the shoulder-season months of June and September, for a few days at a time.
Be forewarned: Captain Jack's has so much character you might not feel the need to leave. A friend and I checked into a second-floor space dubbed Sunrise for a long weekend in mid-June, before the summer heated up, and were instantly charmed by all the painted wood, paper lanterns, window shutters, and a deck overlooking the water's edge.
At Captain Jack's, on the water means on the water, which means heavenly sleeping amid sounds of the tide. And even though we had that little deck of our own, the whole place is pretty much a deck, with old buoys and lights strung from the pilings all along the way.
Inside, Sunrise's open plan puts a double bed on one end near a tiny bathroom, a kitchen and dining area in the middle, and a little daybed and book-lined reading area leading to the deck on the other end. With paint-splattered floors, yellow and white walls, and multi colored wooden chairs around the dining table, Sunrise seems like an artist's cottage, perhaps part of an artist's colony, the kind of place you come to get inspiration and write a novel.
