Take ours, for example. It’s called Nautical Thanksgiving. Twice a year, on long weekends that bookend the summer, the gods of leisure (along with our friends’ parents) grant a large gang of us access to a sturdy little summer cottage perched on the shore. An old Navy house (complete with anchor-emblazoned official china), it has bunks and beds for a dozen, with enough floor and field space for the air mattresses and pup tents of a potential dozen or so more.

On a good weekend, the place feels completely removed from the rest of the world: noisy with birds you never hear in the city, and at night, the whisper of the distant crash of the waves against the rocks beyond the field. And way across the jaggy bay, barely visible behind a scrim of fog, sits Boston — fussing over something, most likely.

Over the course of 10 years, Nauty-T (as it’s affectionately known) has transcended its humble origins as a bunch of 20-somethings who grew up together in Central Massachusetts gathering to destroy a dozen lobsters, roll some bocce, and spit whiskey into a bonfire (which still remain essential ingredients).

The Saturday night dinner that sits at the center of each Nautical has grown into a party-wide production. Guests (and ingredients) roll in on Friday night. Trunks and backseats stuffed with tubs of seafood, cases of prosecco, large hunks of meat, bags and bags of groceries (including a box of Cookie Crisp that I requested one year and have received every time since) are all unloaded and repacked into a smallish kitchen, which quickly becomes the turf of Avery Appleton. Along with husband-chef Gary Strack, owner of Cambridge eateries Central Kitchen, Firebrand Saints, and Brick & Mortar, Appleton steers the culinary ship of Nautical – which, despite her repeated triumphs, quite literally crashes on the rocks immediately following dinner every year.

This year, we’ve got a table of 15 to feed, and a seven-course dinner menu planned. Gary will be making his “poor man’s porchetta”; Avery is steaming lobsters with seaweed and preparing a huge bowl of Lena salad (named for the wifey half of our hosts, Lena and Darcy); my Houstonian husband, Evan, is preparing his favorite brightly flavored ceviche; and we’ll have sides of roasted potatoes and various squashes, and grilled Halloumi cheese served with an olive and red pepper tapenade. Since this is obviously not enough food, we also have the makings for a mean mozzarella and meat platter, as well as what must be a bed-worth of local oysters — just to tide us over until dinner is served.

And all hands are on deck. As the party has repeated, its cast has deepened: The regulars introduced ancillary characters and significant others, and new recruits and near strangers were incorporated into the mix. The party itself has grown wise and seasoned, gnarled with its own traditions and bizarre lexicon (when you are hungry, for instance, your “food arrow” is pointing downward; when you are full, upward). Serving as the gateway in and out of every summer, Nauty-T has assumed its own place in the psychic rhythm of our annual holiday schedules. As such, it has cultivated its own strangely spiritual element, one that is deeply concerned with keeping our food arrows up.

Like other holidays, Nauty-T proceeds in a state of near-unconscious prep. Through the day on Saturday, when one isn’t lobbing one’s bocce ball at the pallino (known exclusively as “the polenta” ever since someone misidentified it as such years ago), one is fulfilling some sort of essential task: plucking sprigs of thyme and rosemary, shucking oysters, husking corn, roasting and peeling peppers for Lena salad, scrubbing mussels, gathering seaweed from the ocean (great for steaming lobsters), and squeezing limes for ceviche.