KENNEBUNKPORT (AP) – President Bush went fishing on Friday, relaxing with his dad before his upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Bush family estate.
“Putin watching” will trump whale watching as the local sport as of Sunday. Taking advantage of the lull before the Russian’s arrival, Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, hopped aboard a blue-and-white speedboat with red stripes, to cast their lines along the rocky coast.
Secret Service officers in patrol boats trailed the Bushes as they sped by the shoreline. The president took off his hat and waved to photographers and returned a salute to onlookers on shore. Bush cast his line, hooked with a bait fish, a couple dozen times without luck. Soon after their speedboat, Fidelity III, with the senior Bush at the wheel, motored off so they could try a different angling spot.
The president’s great-grandfather built the Bush estate at Walker’s Point, a rocky strip of land that juts into the Atlantic Ocean.
Kennebunkport, where the president’s father has spent his summers since he was a boy, is buzzing with activity in advance of Putin’s arrival on Sunday for what some have dubbed the “lobster summit.”
Locals and vacationers have taken the extra traffic and heavy security in stride in this tiny town where Maine lobster is sharing the menu at the Arundel Wharf with “Putin Punch” made of rum and pineapple and orange juice.
The coastal getaway doesn’t appeal to the president as much as his Texas ranch, but he will have been here four nights before returning to Washington on Monday. He plans a return trip to Kennebunkport in August for a family wedding.
During the former president’s term in office in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the compound was visited by French President Francois Mitterand, British Prime Minister John Major, Jordan’s King Hussein and other world leaders. The former president also notably retired to Walker’s Point three days after ordering American forces deployed to stop Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
AP-ES-06-29-07 1300EDT
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