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Squeezing one more newsletter out of 2016 while awaiting another heavily announced snow storm which so far has produced a light dusting and now drizzle. Following are a not very well connected assortment of pictures summarizing the past year, both afloat and ashore.
Sarah is overhauling Roscoe, our little red rowboat, due for new knees after 35 years (the boat, not Sarah). She has most of the removable boat bits varnished or painted and ready for next season. Before spring we'll have the other boats overhauled and a lot of deck projects done.
Happy New Year and hope to see some of you in the spring, if not before.
Cruise News
Chartering
While meeting new friends is a big part of a trip on the American Eagle, sometimes everyone on for the adventure already knows each other. This past season we hosted four such cruises and they were about as varied as anyone could imagine. Fitted into or in between our scheduled departures were our annual Rotary exchange student overnight, a group of retirees from New Hampshire, a four-night bachelor party (they were all sailors), and an afternoon wedding daysail. Two charters are already reserved for 2017 and there are a few early sailings still open for your group.
not the senior group except for the officiant
Not the senior group either but a charter from Northeastern University
There they are. Best group all season!
Crews News
Turned out that Chris was the filleting expert aboard when we were presented with two very nice salmon on our down east trip this summer.
And these were all the people who helped eat the fish!
Anchored at Hall Quarry in Somes Sound at the end of an eventful day
celebrating Acadia National Park's centenary.
Pictures From Here
The Jacob Pike hauled out on our railway for the winter. She's 67 years old,
forty years as a sardine carrier, recently a lobster smack.
Older type of lobster boat off Deer Isle. Diamond shaped cabin windows
say she's a Jonesporter.
The
Double Eagle, as nice a wooden fishing boat as you'll see anywhere, from her oiled deck to gold leaf on her nameboards. She's going through the Fox Island Thorofare on her way back to Rockland. One man rebuilt here at our place in 1991; her second restoration since her launching in East Machais in 1929. Her name came from a popular brand of sardines.
Traps piled up in our summer parking lot as the lobstering season winds down.
The
schooner Bowdoin going back in the water last spring after a winter rebuild in Camden
Another white boat: the famous
ketch Ticonderoga, crossing East Penobscot Bay in July.
It may seem small but
Boston Light has been there since 1716,
except for a brief period when the British blew it up as they left in 1776.
We'll be by there again in June participating in
Sail Boston 2017.
Cards From Away
Friends sent this note card of the schooner cruising the waterfront in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Our arrival at the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic in 2010 happened to coincide with the monthly meeting of the Rum Club in the restaurant just above our berth at the museum wharf. That was our third cruise to the
Folk Harbour Festival.
photo by Paul Haresign Williams
Haresign Photo Works
Andy Jackson regularly announces his retirement from schooner cooking and then turns up by postcard on another vessel in a long list of adventures going back twenty five years or so. This time he's cooking on a school ship based in St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Funny, he didn't invite any of us to come visit.
Evidently this card is part of a series which may drag on into February.
the
Georgie C. Bowden
This postcard came in the mail.. in 1941. The sloop is tied up at the original Fishermen's Wharf in Boothbay Harbor. We'll be anchored just off that dock in late June when we participate in Windjammer Days! The
Bowden was built in 1912 by Wilbur Morse in Friendship, Maine; at 48 feet probably the largest sloop he ever built. Rather than intended for lobstering, she was used as a dory trawler out of Portland, offered daysails in Rockland from the Samoset Hotel, then in government service during WW II, put up for sale in June 1945 by the War Shipping Administration for $1900., and burned by a frustrated boat yard owner (for unpaid repair bills)in the early sixties.
Just before she was destroyed
I tried to convince my father that we should buy her and rebuild her.
photo courtesy of MB Rolfe
Looks like I'd better practice rowing before May.
Expect snow and ice pictures in the January letter.
And the phone just rang here in the office; there's a cabin open for Sail Boston!
