Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors Magazine, April-May 2008

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Expedition Trawler

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Timber-Frame Barn

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Migrating Alewives

MAINE &

BOATS, HOMES

HARBORS MAY 2008 | ISSUE 99

Exploring THE PORTLAND Waterfront

The Magazine of the Coast VISIT MAINEBOATS.COM TO SUBSCRIBE ! or CALL 800-710-9368

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Time and tide wait for no one... but you.

Alerion Sailing doesn’t depend on conditions or crew. Singlehand if you wish, and enjoy whatever time you can grab — an hour, an evening or a weekend. Underway in no time, your Alerion Express flies in zephyrs yet remains easy when the wind pipes up. Here’s great sailing... pure & simple.

20 28 33 38 Performance, simplicity, comfort, grace... sailing on your own terms. Alerion Sailing.

For more information contact Alerion Express. 401.247.3000 www.alerionexp.com Our New England dealer, from Milford, CT through Maine, is

For their office nearest you, call them toll-free at 866-657-9929.

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The Magazine of the Coast

CONTENTS APRIL/MAY 2008

✯

VOLUME 21

✯

NUMBER 2

✯

ISSUE 99

Features 38 A Timber-Framer’s Art,

DEPARTMENTS 5 6

PUBLISHER’S LETTER BOATYARD DOG®

Skipper, From Away

8 11

19

LETTERS

We welcome your comments, and we print them too!

IN THE LEE OF THE BOATHOUSE

Wherever he found himself in the world this artist rendered the local scene with a blend of truth and poetry, painting what he loved.

BY CARL LITTLE

58 Fast Boats, Fast Times

BY CHARLES J. DOANE

AWANADJO ALMANACK

A POSTCARD IN TIME

66 Around Portland by Canoe Sometimes those things we think we know well are not really known to us at all.

BY ZIP KELLOGG, ILLUSTRATIONS BY TED WALSH

72 Wanderbird: Rugged Exterior,

BY PETER H. SPECTRE

Warmly Comfortable Interior

A LETTER FROM AWAY

A tour of this 90' North Sea trawler reveals a stout vessel that runs like a fine watch.

The Growboat, a Progress Report

BY LAIRD FUNK

A LETTER FROM MATINICUS

Sidewalk Astronomy Without the Sidewalk

BY EVA MURRAY

35

46 Stephen Etnier: Painter of Coasts, Sailor of Seas

BY PETER H. SPECTRE

“Tougher Than a Boiled Owl’s Butt”

29

BY JANET MENDELSOHN, PHOTOGRAPHS BY TODD CAVERLY

How did the Maine Yacht Center in Portland become an epicenter for high-end ocean racers?

BY ROB MCCALL

27

Art, craft, history, tradition, and architectural heritage all rolled into one.

A bridge for flies, an ode to an outhouse, and encircling the Big Blue Marble.

Giving blood that our national bird might live.

25

An Artist’s Timber Frame

MY BOAT, MY HARBOR

My Life in Boats:Three Steves and a Certain Inevitability

BY DAVID PLATT

21

BY AVERY BROTT

78 Alewives: Feast of the Season In the spring, in coastal rivers and streams, the alewives run.

It’s a sight to see when they do.

BY CATHERINE SCHMITT On the cover: Eagle’s Wings, built by Southport Island Marine. Photograph by Benjamin Mendlowitz.

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DEPARTMENTS continued 85

A LETTER FROM HOME

The Best Bug-Juice on the Planet

BY BOB ZUBER

87

OFF THE DRAWING BOARD

Cranberry Gull: An Amateur’s Take on a Professional’s Hull

BY ART PAINE

92

SALTWATER FOODWAYS

Cooking Under Pressure

BY SANDRA L. OLIVER

REVIEWS

95 Sailboat Hull & Deck Repair The Sailing Handbook Health at Home®Lifetime

58 78

REVIEWED BY JOHN ANDREWS

96 Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the Battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound REVIEWED BY LINDA HEDMAN BEYUS

98 Swallows and Amazons REVIEWED BY JOHN K. HANSON, JR.

99 Blood and Fire: The Duke of Windsor and the Strange Murder of Sir Harry Oakes REVIEWED BY ART PAINE

118

MAINELY GOURMET

Vignola, the Old Port, Portland

BY LETITIA BALDWIN

120

GUNKHOLING WITH GIZMO

Port Clyde

BY BEN ELLISON

In Print. Online. In Person.

®

www.maineboats.com

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PUBLISHER John K. Hanson, Jr.

• Fireplaces

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Dave Getchell, Jr.

• Granite countertops

EDITOR Peter H. Spectre

• Landscape stonework • Quarrying and raw stone

MANAGING EDITOR Gretchen Piston Ogden

• A wide selection of Maine granite and imported stone

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jennifer W. McIntosh CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Peter Bass, Ben Ellison, Ruth Ann Hill, Carl Little, Iver E. Lofving, Rob McCall, Janet Mendelsohn, Eva Murray, Sandra Oliver, Art Paine, Robert Lloyd Webb, Greg Rössel CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS Jan Adkins, Candice Hutchison, Caroline Magerl, Sam Manning, Ted Walsh DESIGN KAT Design, LLC PRODUCTION Tim Seymour Designs, LLC

The Art of Maine Stone

DIRECTOR OF NEW MEDIA Jamie Bloomquist WWW.MAINEBOATS.COM ADVERTISING John Hanson, Dave Getchell, Jr. 800-565-4951 ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Julie Corcoran

P.O. Box 15, US Route 1 Orland, ME 04472 207.469.6331 fax: 207.469.7057 www.freshwaterstone.com

Freshwater Stone, Inc. Jeff Gammelin

OFFICE MANAGER Nadine Gallagher BOOKKEEPER Laurel Frye MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS SHOW AUGUST 8-10, 2008 SHOW MANAGER Mary Carey SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES Orders, address changes, gifts 800-710-9368 (U.S. & Canada) www.maineboats.com

TO SELL MBH&H IN YOUR STORE 800-565-4951

where color lives

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS (ISSN 08948887) is published five times a year: February/March, April/May, June/July, Boat Show Issue (August), and Winter (November) by Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors, Inc., 43 Mechanic Street, Suite 300, P.O. Box 758, Camden, ME 04843, 207-236-8622. Fax: 207-236-0811, info@maineboats.com. ©2008. All rights reserved.

No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

SUBSCRIPTION RATE: $19.95 for five issues in the U.S. and its possessions. Standard postage paid at Burlington, VT. POSTMASTER: Send change of address to: Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors, P.O. Box 758, Camden, ME 04843.

CONTRIBUTIONS: Address all editorial communications to Editor, Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors, P.O. Box 758, Camden, ME 04843. We consider contributions in the form of manuscripts, drawings and photographs. All material must be identified with the sender’s name and address. Material returned only if accompanied by sufficient return postage. Care is taken with contributions, but we are not responsible for damage or loss. Contributor guidelines available at www.maineboats.com.

Call, visit and go online, we make it easy and fun.

mainecottage.com 888.859.5522 106 lafayette street yarmouth, maine

4

MEMBER

MEMBER

Maine Marine Trade Association

Maine Built Boats

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

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Issue 99

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CAMDEN, MAINE

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Jeff Scher

T

HE SHOP IS STILL BRUTALLY COLD as I write this. While the spirit is willing to start spring fitting out, the body and the paints and adhesives are quite unwilling. Waiting for a few more warm days and nights won’t push the launching schedules too far back. In the back of the shop, Banzai, the Blue Jay that has been in our family since 1963, when my twin sister and I were twelve, started me thinking of sailing classes... our young boys... the future of sailing... are we doing enough?... the price of tea in China... (and all of this without opening a can of paint!).

When I was a boy I thoroughly enjoyed sailing classes. I loved to race sailboats—I still love to race sailboats—and that is pretty much what we did in sailing class. From what I can tell that seems to be the curriculum that still holds today. But I wonder— out of the, let’s say, 20 kids in my early classes, how many are still involved with boats today? Ten percent? Twenty-five percent? Fifty percent? More? I don’t know. My intuition tells me that it is more likely a smaller percentage than a larger one.

For me the love of boats preceded sailing classes. I used to mess around in a rowboat, exploring the backwaters of my home river, and imagining greater voyages and adventures. The boat love came from those days; the sailing classes simply built on it.

And when I became burned out from competition, as I eventually did, it was the love of small boat adventuring that brought me back.

I wonder. Are we providing our children that bedrock love of boats and adventuring before we teach them the Holy Grail of boat speed? Could there be ways to include more rowing and generally messing about in boats into our children’s sailing programs? Could we hook more of them into the lifelong joys of a life spent with boats? I John K. Hanson, Jr., publisher, Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors, Inc. think we can. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

PIERCE YACHT COMPANY

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www.maineboats.com

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MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

ROCKPORT POST & BEAM 1-888-285-8562 PO BOX 353 • RT. 90 • ROCKPORT, MAINE 04856

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BOATYARD DOG®

Skipper, From Away

S

KIPPER is a salty little dog. He lives on Hodgdon Island down Boothbay way, where the local dockwallopers allow him to think he’s in charge of the waterfront. In reality he isn’t, because deep down inside they know and he knows that he has a fundamental flaw: the place of his birth.

Born in Arkansas and shifted about for reasons unknown, Skipper was rescued from a pound in that state and eventually brought to Maine. In other words, he might look like a salty little Mainer, and he might act like one, but the truth is, he’s not. He’s From Away.

But don’t be fooled by that deficiency. Mess with him on the docks at the Boothbay Region Boatyard, most especially mess with his boat, the Albin 28 Tournament Express Curmudgeon, and you’ll find out pretty quickly that he might be a terrier mix from the hinterlands, but he’s a tough little customer nevertheless. What’s more, he’s internationally famous: the first officially sanctioned Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors Boatyard Dog® with his own United States Postal Service commemorative stamp.

We’d all like to see your Boatyard Dog® (okay, or cat) too. Send a clear photo and pertinent details to BYD, P.O. Box 758, Camden, ME 04843. View more dogs and learn about the World Championship Boatyard Dog Trials at maineboats.com.

Life goes on, even when the power doesn’t.

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Whether it’s at our main yard in Thomaston or our convenient service yard in Tenants Harbor, Lyman-Morse is there with the full capabilities to do virtually any job with the skill and expertise knowledgeable owners and professionals expect.

that rhythm going, even during a power outage. Clean, quiet, automatic backup power—just what your family needs to be safe and comfortable. Power for life uninterupted.

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6

'OWEN 0OWER 3YSTEMS 400 Commercial St. Portland, ME (207) 773-1761 l www.gowenpower.com

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

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April / May 2008

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Issue 99

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NEW

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40z

™

Twice the Fun…Half the Fuel With Computer-Controlled Sterndrives This new Doug Zurn design is the easiest to handle and most fuel-efficient passagemaker of its size.

Boarding through side-opening doors onto the same level as floating docks or a dinghy couldn’t be easier.

For all-weather versatility, the pilothouse features roll-up curtains, fully-opening windshields and air conditioning.

The spacious, two-cabin layout below and comfortable on-deck seating compare favorably to much larger yachts.

The magic of the

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Twin 370-HP diesel sterndrives are independently operated by computer for direction, forward-reverse gear and rpm.

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Your fuel bill will be halved thanks to very strong but light, pre-preg epoxy/Kevlar/Eglass/Corecell construction.

With neither beam nor overall height exceeding 12 feet, more slips are available and the boat is readily trucked.

For information on the

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LETTERS The key to euphoria I enjoy Eva Murray’s column “A Letter from Matinicus,” especially since I have a small but tangible tie to the island. Several years ago I wanted a small Mainebuilt boat and found one on the Internet that seemed reasonable. So I set about the steps of negotiation and inspection.

The boat was a dark-green hull (faded at the time) built by Don Ellis. The condition was not yacht-like, but more workboat, yet the lines were definitely Ellis and with more than a little sweat equity it could become a yacht. The negotiations finished at two-thirds the asking price, and I became the owner of a 24' Ellis named Euphoria from Matinicus (photo at right).

Euphoria, now named Babs after my wife, is now very yacht-like and a great sea boat and I love it. It still has the homemade wooden key float labeled “Euphoria—Matinicus.”

Bob Goldson Milton, Massachusetts

This 24' Ellis, formerly from Matinicus, has a new home and a new name.

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8

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

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High desert enthusiast I enjoy your magazine from way afar. I reside in the edge of high desert country in the Snake River drainage at Boise, Idaho. While the Snake is a tributary of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean, Boise is nearly 500 miles from the Oregon Coast—the closest salt water to my home.

In MBH&H #97 you celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the magazine, and in your publisher’s letter invited comments from your readers. I’m an amateur builder of wooden boats in a place where that kind of thing may be considered strange, so your magazine is a critical linkage for me. I thank you.

Moving on to coastal issues, I recently read a most disturbing Internet posting on the subject of sea-level rise in the Pacific Northwest, and it made me think of your publication. I think the effects of climate change will be profound everywhere; however, more so perhaps in coastal areas. I think it would be interesting if your magazine were to provide readers with a glimpse of things to come on the Maine Coast and New England’s coastal states if we are unable to grapple effectively with the problem of global climate change. That’s just a thought.

Thank you for getting me through winters in Idaho.

Roy Heberger, landlocked in Boise, Idaho

machines? Think of the themes we could have in various sections: the Net, where locals get caught up in the frenzy and blow last week’s paycheck; or the Gurry Chute, which would be the exit for the drunk and impecunious.

We can have our cake and eat it too.

As Earl Butz proved as the Secretary of Agriculture, we can pay draggers for not catching lobsters, and fund it by fleecing

Saving the groundfisherman The answer to the groundfisherman’s woes and the departure of fishing vessels to Gloucester should be clear to any student of Maine politics: a Casino. Or in this case, a Codsino. As our enlightened electorate has proven, any industry, regardless of financial viability or market forces, can be saved with a few thousand slot machines. All the proponents need do is conjure up a romantic image of struggling but noble tradespeople, such as harness racers, who are trying to preserve a disappearing way of life. This would surely be an easy task with fishermen. Let’s man those petition tables.

Plus it would be something we can do with the State Pier. What would be better than taking a cruise ship up ta Maine to pound some quarters into slot www.maineboats.com

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MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

the crewmembers. There are plenty of financial models from the Department of Agriculture to help calculate the subsidy. We’d be flooded with draggers here, unloading at the Portland Fish Exchange and then swinging around the Gurry Chute to pick up a crew.

We should have done this long ago.

We could have saved the shoe industry, toothpicks and dowels, textiles, toilet

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LETTERS paper. Every town could have a Moccasino or Toothpickacino. We could have saved Moosehead furniture in Monson with a Chest-of-Draws-acino. It’s not too late, there are a few furniture makers left. Let’s man those tables. I can see Greenville now, think Reno with a snowmobile entrance, baby. Now that Moosehead has been resurrected, we may still get another chance.

This may be a stupid idea, but as we

have proven by endorsing a casino to save an industry riding off into the sunset, stupid is the path to success with Maine voters. We don’t have the highest tax rates in America by accident. We think hard in the voting booth. Maybe we can save a dozen industries this year. Don’t mis-underestimate us. Let’s man those tables.

Peter Bass North Yarmouth, Maine

We Welcome Your Comments!

Be sure to include your name, phone number, and postal address. Send to Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors, P.O. Box 758, Camden, ME 04843; fax, 207-236-0811; e-mail, editor@maineboats.com.

All materials become the property of Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors. Letters may be edited for style, length, and clarity.

NEW at Maineboats.com

If you are looking for the authentic Maine experience, this is it.

Send for our free magazine

800-562-2529 info@therealmaine.com Penobscot Bay Regional Chamber of Commerce

www.TheRealMaine.com 10

Our web site continues to grow and add new features. In early February, we inked a partnership with Maine Harbors and now provide regional monthly tide charts to visitors to our web site, free of charge. The charts are printer-friendly, available for 49 harbors in 4 regions, and cover the entire Maine and New Hampshire coasts.

We have also expanded the section devoted to our regular correspondents and added a link to their columns from the menu on the left-hand side of the home page. Some of your favorite authors from the print magazine are there: Peter Bass (“Boats I Like”), Eva Murray (“A Letter from Matinicus”), Peter Spectre (“Compass Rose Review”), and Ben Ellison (“Gunkholing with Gizmo”).

There are some new voices online too: Marie Malin (“Fledgling”) and Michael Porter (“The View from my Mooring”) among them.

In addition to offering some departments from the print magazine (Boatyard Dog, In the Lee of the Boathouse, Mainely Gourmet), maineboats.com is the best place to renew your subscription or purchase gift subscriptions.

There’s a section devoted to the annual MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS SHOW (August 8-10, 2008) too. Visit to view a list of exhibitors and for information on special show events, travel to the Rockland show site, the schedule of live music, and the running of the wacky Sixth Annual World Championship Boatyard Dog® Trials on Sunday, August 10 at 10:30 a.m. Note: all dogs must prequalify to participate, and only participating dogs will be allowed on show grounds. The deadline to enter is June 30, 2008; more information at maineboats.com.

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

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IN THE LEE OF THE BOATHOUSE women and those troubled men who have forgotten the hallowed heritage of the barbershop get their hair styled. It is also a place where people with literary and intellectual pretensions meet in the afternoon for tea. It is not the place where cocktails are served after the yacht has rounded the last buoy, the harbor furl is in, and the sun has passed over the yardarm.

M

OST BUSINESSES and institutions leave their clients with calling cards and brochures, perhaps even a commemorative key chain or an electric-blue windshield scraper, but Eastport’s Boat School has topped them all. On visits to conferences and trade shows, representatives from the school, which teaches boatbuilding and other marine trades and is now affiliated with Husson College, leave behind jars of “Boat Builder’s Composite Mustard,” a custom composite made for them by Raye’s Mustard of Eastport.

Speaking of composites, Wilbur Yachts of Southwest Harbor has plans to expand, particularly in the area of composite technology, now that it has been certified as a Pine Tree Development Zone by the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development. Pine Tree Zones are subject to reduced taxation in the interest of encouraging business investment.

The marina at the Point East Maritime Village development on the Sheepscot River in Wiscasset is due to open this summer. While plans call for 239 slips eventually, this initial phase will have 20 to 25.

The Brooklin Boat Yard and boatbuilder Donald Tofias are joining forces to continue building the justifiably famous peapods built by the late Jim Steele. (For more information about Steele and his peapods, see “Remembering Jimmy Steele” by Bill Mayher in MBH&H #98, February/March 2008).

O A bridge for flies, an ode to an outhouse, and encircling the Big Blue Marble.

BY PETER H. SPECTRE

NCE UPON A TIME—fairly recently, actually—the open topside platform on a powerboat was called a flying bridge—a noble, evocative, blow-yourhair-back term with roots in the Navy’s old torpedoboat destroyers. Then someone, for reasons known only to him or her, started calling it a flybridge, and the editors of the national boating slicks down in the big city picked up the term and went with it. “What is this?” one of my correspondents once asked. “A bridge for flies?”

The word saloon has morphed in the same way. For generations the saloon was the principal common space on a yacht, comparable to the living room in a house.

Then along came an ad writer who didn’t know the difference between Stormy Weather and intermittent showers, and we got that degeneracy, salon.

For the record, a salon is a place where

Caroline Magerl

B

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MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

OATBUILDER and modelmaker Dynamite Payson of South Thomaston, who lived with his young family on Metinic Island for several years back in the 1950s while he fished for lobsters (see “Metinic On My Mind,” by Dynamite’s wife Amy in MBH&H #81), remembers the old island outhouse: “The passage of time or some other unknown cause recently did what no storm 11

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MAINE BOATS , HOMES

&HARBORS

SHOW

HARBOR PARK, ROCKLAND, MAINE

AUGUST 8 10, 2008 ~

Friday-Saturday 10-6, Sunday 10-4 • Adults $10 • Under 12 FREE

No pets allowed on show grounds.

Photographs (8) ©Jeff Scher

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PRESENTED BY MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS | 800-565-4951

®

In Print. Online. In Person.

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www.maineboats.com The 2008 Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors Show Come see Maine’s finest artisans, architects, boatbuilders, craftsmen, designers, furniture makers, marine gear vendors, and musicians. There’ll be a model yacht pond, a children’s area, exhibits, fine food, the running of the Sixth Annual World Championship Boatyard Dog® Trials,* and more!

Presented by Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors magazine.

2008 World Championship Boatyard Dog® Trials Enter Wet,Wild,Wacky FUN! Today WHAT? A silly event for adventurous dogs and their people WHEN? Sunday, August 10, 10:30 a.m. during the Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors Show HOW? All dogs MUST pre-qualify.* Entry details at maineboats.com *Only pre-qualified dogs will be allowed on show grounds. No other pets allowed.

see more BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS...

Jeff Scher

...FASTER!

Jamie Bloomquist

Sign up for our e-newsletter at

Jamie Bloomquist

Alison Langley

maineboats.com

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IN THE LEE OF THE BOATHOUSE was able to do before, during, or since the Hurricane of 1938,” Dynamite writes. “It finally leveled the tall and skinny outhouse that stood so proudly all those years on the northern end of Metinic. I’m sure its demise would have saddened the outhouse’s unknown builder, who put so much of himself into the construction, including thoughtfully providing a door that swung inward.

Apparently caught up in the beauty of his creation, he was moved to poetry and inscribed the following on the inside wall of his pride and joy: This little house is all I own I aim to keep it neat.

Please be kind with your behind And don’t s**t on the seat.”

L

AST YEAR Portland saw a 55% increase over 2006 in cruise ship passengers landing in the city. A total of 48,768 passengers disembarked in 2007, leaving behind a considerable amount of cash before reembarking.

Bar Harbor had a large increase as

well, so much so that, due to periodic severe congestion, the Bar Harbor Town Council voted to restrict the number of cruise-ship passengers who will be allowed to land in the town at any one time. Beginning in the summer of 2010, 3,500 passengers will be allowed ashore at once during July and August; from May 1 to June 30, and September 1 to October 31, the allowed number will be 5,500.

Times are tough in the real estate biz, but the toughness is mixed in the state of Maine according to statistics released by the Maine Real Estate Information Service. During 2007, the number of properties sold decreased a little more than 10% from the year before, but the median sales price went up, albeit slightly (.77%). The picture for the last month of 2007, however, wasn’t so good. The number of properties sold decreased 23.27% from December 2006, and the median sales price decreased 4.62%.

The wild blueberry business, however, was on a roll during 2007. According

to preliminary statistics, the harvest came in at 76.9 million pounds, 3% more than the year before. The value of the crop was $72.1 million, a 20% increase over 2006.

Maine’s lobster industry is having problems. According to preliminary statistics, the 2007 lobster harvest was 23% lower than the year before, the greatest decline in almost 50 years—73 million pounds in 2006; 56 million pounds in 2007. Revenue was down 16%, from $297 million in 2006 to $249 million in 2007.

With declining revenue and increasing fuel and bait costs, many lobstermen— especially those with large boat-loan payments—are feeling squeezed.

Meanwhile, the Zone C Lobster Management Council has voted not to limit the entry of new fishermen into the zone. Zone C, which includes much of Penobscot and Blue Hill bays, including the major territories around Deer Isle, Matinicus, the Fox Islands, and Isle au Haut, is the only one of Maine’s seven zones that does not limit entry.

Northern Bay 36 GENERAL MARINE Landry St., Biddeford, ME 04005 207-284-7517 www.generalmarine.com 14

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E HAVE THE AROUND ALONE, the Vendée Globe, the Route de Rhum, the Transat, the Transpac, and for all we know, the Six-Pac, so why should we be surprised when we learn that some nut case has come up with the Around in Ten—“A Circumnavigation Race in TenFoot Boats,” a.k.a. “The Biggest Challenge in the Smallest Boats”? And no, this isn’t a circumnavigation of Staten Island; this is an encirclement of the whole enchilada, the Big Blue Marble.

Moving on to the subject of oxymoronic derangement—or is it senile dementia?—no matter—we have a news release from Sparkman & Stephens, the yacht design firm, announcing with a straight face that they have a commission from a client who wants a “green” 129foot motor yacht with all the bells and whistles in a configuration that will “reduce the vessel’s larger impact on the environment.” Evidently, the owner “is trying to be socially responsible in everything he does.”

ing was reportedly out of hand. When the officers arrived, instead of intoxicated customers—the usual case—they found the bar’s staff to be stumble-down drunk.

Over the bar: Samuel Pennington, III, 78, in Damariscotta, publisher of the influential Maine Antiques Digest, founded by him

and his wife on their kitchen table in 1973.

Maine poet Sylvester Pollet, 68, in Ellsworth, about whom Contributing Editor Carl Little has a few words: Sylvester Pollet (1939-2007) was that most wondrous of breeds: the poet-sailor. He and his wife, artist MaJo Keleshian, moved to Maine from New York City in 1971, but only began sailing in the early 1980s, first with

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N OUR CHRONICLES of Crime Department, Downeast Division, we have this about Southwest Harbor from the Mount Desert Islander: “Something was fishy at the Upper Town Dock. A driver reported that he returned to his vehicle to find a dead fish on the windshield held in place by a windshield wiper.”

And this from the Bar Harbor Times: “A Tremont man went to his ex-girlfriend’s house to return some of her belongings; he allegedly would not leave initially, and the woman called the police.

A sheriff started to go to the home and learned that the man could not get any traction in the icy driveway of his home with his 1991 Mercury sedan; he kept spinning the tires until they caught fire— and then the entire car went up in flames.

While the man was not hurt, the car was destroyed.”

And this, also from the Bar Harbor Times: “A trailer had been left with a sign saying it held free items on Old County Road.

Somebody took the sign a bit too literally, though, and took the trailer as well.”

And then there was the call one night to the Bar Harbor police that there was a disturbance at a local saloon. The drink-

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Let’s color.

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IN THE LEE OF THE BOATHOUSE friends and then in a 14' daysailer they purchased.

“Sylvester pledged to have a sloop he could cruise in when he to got to be 50— whether he had the money or not,” Keleshian recalled recently. “Sure enough,” she wrote, “in the spring before his fiftieth birthday we found a boat in Massachusetts and sailed her to Maine.”

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by Philip Rhodes, and its name was Echo.

The couple made Castine their port for excursions among the islands of Penobscot Bay from June to mid-October.

“Whether Sylvester was working in the boatyard or tinkering with a stalled engine, he never complained,” Keleshian remembered. ‘It’s all sailing,’ he liked to say.”

Sailing worked its way into a number of Pollet’s poems; at times, the open sea

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competed with the open page. The poem “Mooring Stone” is a particularly fine example of his chiseled verse—thoughts of a Maine sailor in winter, dreaming of the return to that special mooring stone in Castine Harbor.

The Mooring Stone

by Sylvester Pollet (1939-2007) I. On the woodstove a pea soup simmers and thickens around the neckbones of a lamb.

With the killing frosts come the rootcrops carrots, onions, potatoes; the rattle of dried peas hitting the white enamel pan— sleet on a windowpane.

Wax your boots.

Wear wool.

As a rule of thumb, For every cord of wood lay by a liter of dark rum.

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II. The mast is under the house now, anchor-rode and halyards in the attic with the sailbag.

The mooring stone settles in the salt-mud off Castine; the mooring ball, though, still bobs in the rip like a tethered shag but fluorescent pink perfect in its roundness against that cold black water bright and vibrant as a mermaid’s breast, or a child’s drawn icon of the sun, and

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it still finds place to bob in mind, and now as then it marks the mooring stone— the place we round up into the teeth of the wind to hook the pennant chock it cleat it lash it down,

INALLY, a couple of newspaper headlines we like, the second of which is easily the above-the-fold frontpage newspaper headline of the decade, if not the century: From the Bar Harbor Times: “Hangout for Underaged Clams Closed.”

And from the Knox County Times: “Middle School Issues Ban on Intentional Flatulence.”

relieved and disappointed to be again safe home.

Information Welcome!

We look forward to your notes, tips, tirades, clippings, press releases, photographs, rants, and raves for possible inclusion in this column. Send to: (post) P.O. Box 758, Camden, ME 04843; (fax) 207-236-0811; (e-mail) editor@maineboats.com. You may also send us your comments via our web site: www.maineboats.com.

J IMMY S TEELE ’ S D OWNEAST P EAPOD

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POSTCARD MAILED from the East Sumner, Maine, post office, and postmarked August 14, 1957, was finally delivered in January 2008 to the Stratford, Connecticut, Town Hall.

Signed by a woman named Alice, it was addressed to former town manager Harry Flood, who has been dead for almost 40 years. Nobody knows who Alice was, and nobody can figure out why the postcard took so long to get to its destination.

The town library in Southwest Harbor has more than 5,000 photographs in their historical collection. The images date from 1890 to 1958 and show people and places primarily on Mount Desert Island, though there are many showing much of the rest of the Maine coast. Library volunteers have undertaken to scan all the photos and plan to eventually post them on the library’s web site. In the meantime, they are trying to identify the people and places in the photos. The library kicked off the search for information in February with a show called “Is this your grandmother? Is this your grandmother’s house?”

With the sale of the Carina House on Monhegan Island, there was concern about the future of the Carina House Residency, which enables selected artists to spend time on Monhegan with a place to live and a place to work. The Monhegan Artists Residency Corporation, which administers the program, has found a solution—living quarters at the Hitchcock House and a studio in the Black Duck fish house—and the residency lives on.

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AWANADJO ALMANACK

Sam Manning

BLUE HILL | THE TOWN, THE BAY, THE MOUNTAIN

Giving blood that our national bird might live.

All through the long winter I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring I want to dig my fingers deep into the earth. I can feel its energy and my spirits soar.—Helen Hayes In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.—Margaret Atwood The frost heaves are settling and the pot holes are being filled by the efforts of dauntless town road crews as fewer and fewer mornings show the white rime of frost on the roof and ice on the bird bath.

In former days, townsmen paid off their taxes by working on the roads. During April vacation high school students used to sweep the streets of all the sand left by the plow trucks through the winter. Nowadays a flashing mechanical street sweeper growls along the curbstones and throws up clouds of dust pushed off the sidewalks into the gutters by whining gasoline-powered brooms.

Part of aging is seeing the way we used to do things as better than the way we do them now. When I’m raking down the sand onto Main Street in front of our house as huge smoking trucks roar up Tenney Hill or come belching downhill with jake brakes rattling and cars careening down the hill at 45 in a 25 zone or squealing up the hill when school lets out, I’ll admit I do get nostalgic. I recall Mary Ellen Chase’s The White Gate, her enchanting memoir of growing up in Blue Hill around 1900. I see the sepia postcards of the village 100 years ago showing Main www.maineboats.com

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MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

Street a dirt road lined with white picket fences and overarched by a tunnel of American elms with nothing on the road louder or faster than a loping horse, and the town so quiet that you could hear human voices or a horse nickering a half mile away. I know there was no hospital then: no electricity, radio, TV, chiming cell phones, or whooping car alarms.

Still, I’m with Maine poet David Mallett when he sings: There’s no stopping it, I guess It’s all part of progress Trading the old for the new But, I miss Main Street What in the world is this world coming to?

Natural events Last year the biggest April northeaster in 25 years roared across the country and up the coast like a raging dragon. We were at our Moose Island field station in Eastport at the time and battened down the hatches. Campobello Island bore some of the force of the storm, but the high tide surge reached nearly to the top of the Eastport breakwater, which sheltered fortunate fishing boats. Wind-driven waves crashed all along the eastern side of Moose Island, sending soaking spray over the breakwater and into the windows of the old Wass sardine factory, which lost a part of its roof to the gale. Our little 1850 cape trembled 19

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and groaned in the wind, but stood firm, having weathered many storms. Shingles were ripped off buildings all over town and littered the ground like charred leaves. For two days trees roared and bent, and many were uprooted or snapped off near the ground.

During a lull in the storm I walked to Harris Cove and was hailed by a young, wet fox with buff, brown body, black legs, and black, bushy tail tipped in white. It barked at me several times with a hoarse call as if to say, “Fie on you, Pitiful Man, with your rain gear, your boots, your warm house, and your steaming chow-

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der. I will survive the storm with only my bare feet, my fur coat, my sharp teeth, and no place to lay my head.” Then, with great leaps, it bounded off into the whistling white birches.

The next morning the eye of the storm passed over, the rains let up, and the winds died down some, but by noon the back side of the storm arrived with more rain and high winds. We headed home by way of Schoodic Point where we were amazed by the huge rollers with windswept spray and great plumes 50 to 60 feet high rising from breakers that thundered onto the pink granite rocks.

We were also amazed by the countless downed trees that had already been bucked up and hauled off the roads by Acadia’s industrious crews. On the third morning, back in Blue Hill, we woke to

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flocking red-winged blackbirds, starlings, cowbirds, and grackles calling joyfully from treetops, “Hallelujah, the Great Storm is over, lift up your wings and fly.”

Mountain report After the storm I climbed Awanadjo— “small misty mountain” in Algonkian, a.k.a. Blue Hill—in strong northeast winds. There were numerous blowdowns in the Wisdom Woods and still a foot of snow in many places near the summit. Good dry boots and a hiking stick were essential. Coming down the Osgood Trail the sweet chant of snow meltwater running over rocks rang through the woods. I crossed the same spring freshet four or five times following the switchbacks on the way down.

Not having walked the Osgood trail since the previous fall, I greeted the great Getchell birch and the mighty Robin Hood oak like old friends.

Field and forest report, late April Have you seen the breathtaking blossoms breaking out on the red maples and elms? They’re small flowers to be sure, but a hand lens will reveal flamboyant shapes and colors pushed forth by the sap surging up from thirsty roots drinking up the warm spring rains. Our early apple trees are starting to open their bud scales and show the silver tips of burning leaves. The lupine leaves are the size of a newborn’s hand, and the yellow colt’s foot blooms on the roadsides.

Thanks to our selectmen and tree warden for giving the stately and ancient sugar maple behind the town hall another chance by cabling it last year instead of cutting it down. No tree in town makes a finer show in fall.

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Natural events, early May One of the few benefits of the black fly is that Mainers can tell the world about the depredations of this tiny carnivore, and discourage the faint-hearted from coming here. Unlike the mosquito, which rather delicately sticks a tiny needle into its prey, the black fly takes a real bite.

“What is the purpose of the Black Fly?” I asked.

He replied, practically, “To feed the small birds.”

I remember climbing the mountain with my mother some years ago in May. Originally from Massachusetts, where the black fly is rarely seen, she had been living in Southern California, where her hide had softened, just the sort of specimen this insidious insect craves. As we labored up and down the mountain, the flies swarmed her eyes and nose and crawled into her sleeves, her collar, and her socks. When I asked if the flies were bothering her she replied with ancestral Yankee stoicism, “I’m fine, dear. Isn’t it a lovely day?” Back home her neck, wrists, and ankles were ringed with red dots

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where the black flies had taken their toll, and she retired to rest. Some newcomers actually get sick for a few days after encountering these tiny predators.

Like the selling of “camp wood,” one of the cottage industries that keeps the Maine economy so vibrant is the manufacture of what is whimsically called Black Fly Repellent. Ingredients may include pine tar, citronella, balsam, and bar-and-chain oil. Over the ages, black flies have learned to savor these ingredients and will swarm from far and wide to partake. We still slather on such concoctions, giving new meaning to the term Bug Dope. Seasoned veterans know that the surest weapon against black flies is a good, stiff breeze. Thus our friend Pete sets up a huge fan he saved from the dump. It blows a small gale—just the thing if you have to paint the house during May, plus it dries the paint.

Perhaps the best feature of the black fly was noted by the late Leon Sylvester of South Blue Hill. I once asked him philosophically, “What is the purpose of the Black Fly?” He replied, practically, “To feed the small birds.”

So it is. The black flies eat you and in

Mountain report, late April Look for cloudy white clusters of salamander eggs in the vernal pools any day now.

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turn are eaten by the small birds, which are eaten in turn by larger birds, such as the bald eagle. Thus, in a small act of sacrificial patriotism you give your blood that our national bird may live.

their spring show. Yellow colt’s foot is still in bloom. It looks like the dandelion, but with reddish stems and no leaves yet. The tiny bluets, or Quaker ladies, are coming into bloom in the fields, along with blue violets and white “dog-tooth” violets. Overhead the elms and red maples drop their bountiful flowers to the ground, and the Norway maples show their larger green flowers.

On early apple trees we see blossom clusters appearing, though still tightly bunched and closed. On later varieties we see what the old-timers called “mouse’s ear” when one or two leaves pull back from the bud clusters. As the weather warms, the heart of the earth beats faster and life quickens, each day revealing new delights. Like a fine fiddler, each spring plays the same old song, but with the slight and beautiful variations that make it all new.

Field and forest report, mid May

Critter of the season

Our native wildflowers are opening

For months a chipmunk has been gath-

ering seeds under our bird feeder. It became almost family. One evening we watched it load its cheeks and scurry off to the woodshed. I was at the woodpile when Becky suddenly appeared looking shocked. A falcon had just swooped down under the bird feeder,

Like a fine fiddler, each spring plays the same old song, but with beautiful variations that make it all new. and it seemed our chipmunk friend had met its end. We were heartsick. All evening we watched as the sun and our hearts sank, but, alas, still no chippie.

Next morning early I fashioned a small cross and some flowers, and put them near a burrow under the feeder. It just made us feel better. After breakfast I wistfully went out to work and, lo and behold, there was the late, lamented

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AWANADJO ALMANACK chipmunk fit as a fiddle gobbling sunflower seeds. I ran back in the house shouting, “It’s a miracle!” We were both delighted, of course, and now we’re thinking about starting a new chipmunk religion.

Natural events, late May There’s an old “pickling pear” tree right outside our kitchen window that gives us endless wonder and delight all year ’round. It stands as high as the house. It’s also hollow, and we see gray squirrels, chipmunks, and starlings passing peacefully in and out of the smooth hole in its trunk. One afternoon, when the fog lifted and the temperature finally broke 70 for the first time in many months, the old pickling pear came alive. First, the white blossoms ever so slowly opened to the warmth. Then, the bees began buzzing and bobbing languidly in and out of the blooms. Hovering hummingbirds followed suit. Then, a flock of cedar waxwings alighted in the branches and began leisurely feeding on the blossoms

while whispering sweetly and quietly to each other. The legendary Tree of Life stands right outside our window. Maybe yours, too.

“If we had not winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.”

Anne Dudley Bradstreet Seedpods to carry around with you From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “If spring came but once a century instead of once a year or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change.”

From Anne Dudley Bradstreet: “If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste

adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”

From E.B. White: “Spring was once the time for taking the young virgins in the fields, there in dalliances to set an example for nature to follow. Now we just set the clocks an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase.”

And from Doug Larson: “Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush.”

That’s the almanack for this time. But don’t take it from me—I’m no expert. Go out and see for yourself.

Yr. mst. hmble & obd’nt servant, Rob McCall Rob McCall is the minister of the First Congregational Church, Blue Hill, Maine. This almanack is excerpted from transcripts of his weekly radio show, which can be heard on WERU, 89.9 FM Blue Hill and 102.9 Bangor, and streamed live via www.weru.org. His recent book, Small Misty Mountain: The Awanadjo Almanack, was published by Pushcart Press.

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A POSTCARD IN TIME

from the author’s collection

“Tougher Than a Boiled Owl’s Butt”

I Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.

BY PETER H. SPECTRE

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T TOOK ME AWHILE to get the pun— “Girl and B(u)oy on the Maine Coast”—because I was too busy thinking to myself how wrong this is. After all, Coast Guard rules are adamant about aids to navigation: Thou Shalt Not tie up to, or climb on board of, or mess around with them in any way. Period. This young lady isn’t just violating the rules, she’s flaunting their violation.

There are times, however, when a situation is so dire that violating the rules is, if not permissible, at least excusable. Back in the late 1980s, a Penobscot Bay schooner skipper once described such a situation—a true one—during a conversation about tough times on the coast of Maine: “There’s a rock on Sheep Island over on the other side of Vinalhaven near Roberts Harbor,” the skipper said. “They call it Tom Perry’s Rock after a fellow who nearly bought the farm back in the mid-1800s. Tom was from Vinalhaven and went duck hunting out on the ledges in late January or February or something like that. He was rowing a peapod. It was a nice sunny day, like today. All of a sudden the wind shifted and it

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

started to snow and the temperature dropped.

Tom broke one oar trying to get back and lost the other overboard. By the time he drifted to Sheep Island, which didn’t get its name because it was populated by people, if you get my meaning, it was colder than a well-digger’s ass, like 20 below, and darker than the black hole of Calcutta. The only shelter was a big boulder. Tom tucked in behind it and kept himself awake—he was afraid if he fell asleep he’d freeze to death—by chewing tobacco and spitting into his hands and rubbing the juice into his eyes. When that didn’t work he walked around the rock to keep warm. Around and around the rock.

“Was Tom Perry tough? He walked all night and in the morning took off his red flannel shirt and tied it to the stump of the broken oar and stood there in his union suit in the godawful hellish cold and waved the shirt like a flag to attract attention. Some folks over to Roberts Harbor, probably the Roberts themselves, saw the shirt and came over to get him. They had to cut Tom’s frozen boots off his frozen feet, but he lived to be 75 and they named the boulder Tom Perry’s Rock in his honor.

“You wonder whether they’re still tough like that now? About five, ten years back one of those hard-case clam-diggers from over to Waldoboro was crossing the west bay from Rockland to Vinalhaven, right near here, in the middle of winter. He was in an old wooden skiff with an outboard motor. The skiff sprang a wicked leak, a gusher that filled the boat faster than he could bail it out. He managed to get to a big bell buoy before the skiff sank and climbed over and tied himself to the bell caging. He was there all night with ice freezing on the buoy. He had a knife and a cigarette lighter and he cut the tops of his boots off and ripped them into strips and made a little tent with his coat. He burned the rubber to keep warm. When a passing fisherman found him the next day—alive, I might add—his face and hands were black from smoke from that burned rubber. Tough? That clam-digger was tougher than a boiled owl’s butt.”

Peter H. Spectre is editor of this magazine. His blog, which is titled Compass Rose Review: Views & Reviews from the Coast of Maine, can be read at www.compassrosereview.blogspot.com.

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THE PENOBSCOT MARINE MUSEUM SPRING 2008 www.penobscotmarinemuseum.org THE JACOB PIKE As the Penobscot Marine Museum assesses its collections and programs, we are constantly looking for examples of artifacts that allow us to not only preserve the past, but to make vibrant connections with the past and the present.

Recently the museum was given an 83-foot-long sardine carrier that has worked this region since 1949. This beautiful vessel in near-original condition—a remarkably generous gift from Martha White and Taylor Allen of Rockport Marine—symbolizes both the boatbuilding industry in Maine, as well as the colorful fisheries industry.

Built by Newbert and Wallace of Thomaston, the Jacob Pike is an iconic vessel still recognized by many. Though its holds are no longer overflowing with herring, they reek with history and are filled with memories that help define this region. The Jacob Pike will ultimately become the centerpiece of a new Hall of Maine Built Boats on the campus of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport.

THE MAINE FOLK ART TRAIL

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This summer, eleven of Maine’s art and history museums will exhibit their folk art collections simultaneously as part of a coordinated statewide exhibition. The exhibition at the Penobscot Marine Museum, Finest Kind, Folk Art from the Penobscot Bay, will be of interest to anyone with an interest in folk art and maritime culture. PMM’s installation will include traditional examples of paintings and scrimshaw, and will also incorporate more functional forms of folk art such as boats, textiles, and tools. Objects from regional historical societies will be represented to provide a broader view of area collections and encourage visitors to continue their travels to the east and north. Besides the exhibit gallery, visitors will be encouraged to follow a Folk Art Trail on the museum grounds. Finest Kind will be on view from June 12 through October 19, 2008. To learn more, log on to www.penobscotmarinemuseum.org or www.mainefolkarttrail.org.

PENOBSCOT MARINE MUSEUM P.O. Box 498, Church Street, Searsport, ME 04974-0498 (207) 548-2529

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A LETTER FROM AWAY

The Growboat, a Progress Report

R. Reames

be severed cleanly from their roots with as little trauma as possible. Then the ribs were pinned to the keel to strengthen the grafted joints for the move. The ribs were severed from their roots with swift strokes of the loppers, and the keel from its roots with a saw. The Growboat, freed from the nurturing earth that had been its home for so long and to which it will not return for a very, very long time if we have anything to say about it, sat wobbling back and forth in the sun.

Our leftcoast friends have finished growing the frame for the wooden boat to end all wooden boats.

Lynn Funk(2)

BY LAIRD FUNK

The Growboat in summer glory. www.maineboats.com

|

Several years ago the crew at the Bentbranch Boatworks in the Williams Valley, Oregon, began building a boat by planting a bunch of trees, grafting them together, and training them to grow into the frame of a rowboat.

(Yes, yes, yes, we were skeptical, too.)

Laird Funk, one of the perpetrators, has been keeping us up to date on progress. Here is his latest report. — Eds.

R. Reames

The author with the frame of the Growboat.

Freeing the frame from the roots.

A

FTER FIVE YEARS of growing from ash seedlings planted in the fertile Oregon earth, the frame of the Growboat, resting quietly at its bark-covered mooring, was a magnificent sight to see. The gentle curves of the rib trees blended perfectly with the shape of the keel trees, and the stem and stern post stood proudly erect.

The time had come to harvest the frame and move it to the boatshop. There, previously prepared molds would be used to help transform the fair but bare frame into a graceful, sleek double-ender.

To harvest the frame, we excavated the bases of the rib and keel trees, so they could

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

Trussed up and ready for trimming.

We gently trussed together the Growboat, clipped off the extra lengths of the rib trees, carefully lifted it to our shoulders, and moved it to its new home in the nice warm boatshop, where the transformation from a bunch of trees to a full-grown boat will be completed.

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A LETTER FROM AWAY

R. Reames

Right now the whole crew is in the shop, enjoying some of the sacred liquid (really strong coffee) that engendered this whole fairy tale in the first place.

Passersby no doubt can hear the voices within raised in the ancient song of the Growboat Elves: “Grow, grow, grow your boat, Out there on the lawn, When it’s done, Cut it down And put the planking on!”

The frame of the Growboat set up in the shop, ready to be planked.

With the Growboat set up in the shop, we slowly worked our way around the frame, inspecting each grafted joint for strength and carefully adjusting the cross-bracing of the molds, which hold the frame in perfect position as it dries and cures into the permanent shape. We inventoried the size of each rib and marked those that might need sistering or even a radical replacement should sistering not be appropriate. We measured the length of the gunwales and calculat-

ed the size of the four trees that would be needed to form them, and are now scouting the vast forests of southern Oregon for just the perfect specimens.

We expect that we will have them by the time the work of transforming the raw frame begins in earnest. We are also collecting wood for the planking, and are designing seats, a centerboard trunk, a rudder, and a rig for the Growboat’s intended dual usage as a rowing and sailing craft.

Laird Funk of Bentbranch Boatworks lives in the Williams Valley of southern Oregon.

Previous articles in this ongoing series about the Growboat project can be found in the May 2003 (#74), May 2004 (#79), May 2005 (#84), May 2006 (#89), and May 2007 (#94) issues of this magazine.

See www.arborsmith.com for more information about everyday objects (not just boats) grown from trees.

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A LETTER FROM MATINICUS

Ted Walsh(2)

Sidewalk Astronomy Without the Sidewalk

More people out on the island watch the night sky than you might imagine.

BY EVA MURRAY

www.maineboats.com

|

I

N THE 1960s, John Dobson and a couple of his buddies founded the Sidewalk Astronomers of America in San Francisco. The goal was to celebrate the astronomy of the common man, the kind of low-tech, down-and-dirty, spontaneous stargazing that’s just for fun, and does not require graduate study in astrophysics, or charge-coupled device computerized photography, or particular understanding of catadioptrics (even while making use of same).

Dobson would set up a large, homebuilt telescope on a city street corner and

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

offer views of the rings of Saturn, or whatever was looking good that evening, to any passer-by who took an interest. During the day, he might offer glimpses of sunspots.

His telescopes were odd-looking contraptions, compared to the sleek instruments available to stargazers with the bucks to buy them, and hardly resembled what you see in The Sharper Image catalog. Nevertheless, they worked, and a lot of people had their first peek deep into the night sky on a San Francisco sidewalk.

That’s just about what is going on here on Matinicus Island, except that we don’t have any sidewalks.

John Dobson has an interesting history. With a degree in chemistry and some experience working for defense contractors, he joined a monastery, where he lived for 23 years until he was essentially kicked out because he kept going AWOL to build and share telescopes with the public. (To Dobson, “sidewalk astronomy” was public service.)

A Dobsonian telescope is a Newtonian telescope built on the cheap, generally made by an amateur out of stuff like scrap lumber and bottle bottoms and Sonotubes and marine-salvage porthole glass. Anybody can learn how to grind lenses from a book.

Dobson’s passion was, and still is (he’s in his nineties), to make the sky accessible, to show anybody and everybody who’s interested what there is to see out there, and to let somebody else do the technical research. He’s definitely a bit of an icon.

Like any other, this tiny community has its amateur astronomers. On one islander’s refrigerator is the annual star chart centerfold from Sky and Telescope. People know this guy pays attention to the goings-on overhead, so they call him up and demand to know, “What is that planet I’m seeing over the back shed?”

When the road commissioner who lived 29

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A LETTER FROM MATINICUS nearby expressed interest in a bright mercury-vapor light for his truck-filled driveway, our stargazer, also being the island electrician, simply refused to install it because he didn’t want the light to overpower the night sky. His computer alerts him whenever the International Space Station will be visible crossing the sky overhead, and he in turn alerts the parents of small children who might wish to step outside and wave to the astronauts. He reminds people that the shapes of the constellations you hold in your mind depend upon where you grew up. He has a stockpile of #14 extra-dark welding shades duct-taped into cardboard boxes for solar-eclipse viewing. He carries a red flashlight and a green laser pointer, taught his kids what Flamsteed and Messier did for civilization, and put aluminum light-pollution-reduction shields on the municipal mercury-vapor lamps. He has seen the “green flash” in the early morning from the deck of the Jan Ellen. His neighbors seek him out to ask about the night sky.

He does not own a telescope.

Most of what’s happening on this island isn’t really “astronomy.” It isn’t even really “stargazing.” It is more like “sky watching,” which includes turning a lens toward the craters of the moon, tracing the paths of planets, waking people up to see the northern lights, stepping out on the lawn with a wristwatch to catch an Iridium flare, admiring the Milky Way on a really, really starry night, viewing the moons of Jupiter with powerful binoculars on a mount, hiking around in the snow to find a good vantage point to see a comet, saluting the International Space Station, enjoying the “shooting stars,” preparing a contraption with which to look at any solar eclipses that might happen to be visible, hoping to see the elusive “green flash” some day, all while trying to avoid pneumonia and frostbite (astronomy is such a cold hobby).

By the way, that green flash—which few are fortunate enough ever to see—is an instant of lime-green light occasion-

ally visible just as the sun sets or rises, when the horizon is visible and perfectly flat, such as on a calm sea. I have never seen it.

What one does see depends to a considerable extent on the season of the year. Without the fog of summer, and with only a short walk or drive needed to see an ocean horizon in almost any direction, winter on Matinicus Island is the season for stargazing. (Many properties are unoccupied this time of year, and we hope the owners don’t mind a little harmless trespassing for scientific purposes.) Frequently there are clear skies without too much interference from city lights. If anything, the lights of Rockland in the distance to the north, eerily reflected off a cloud layer, can look at first like a washed-out Aurora Borealis, until you realize it’s just ol’ Rockland and those colors never are going to develop.

Some nights, you go outside in the early dark on an errand, perhaps to cross the yard to the shop for a tool or what-

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MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

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A Dobsonian telescope is a Newtonian telescope built on the cheap, generally made by an amateur out of stuff like scrap lumber and bottle bottoms and Sonotubes and marinesalvage porthole glass.

www.maineboats.com

|

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

ever, and you stand there, transfixed by the brilliance of the sky, until the shivering sets in. If one is patient, one is almost guaranteed a shooting star.

There is one thing you can count on though: the Perseid meteor shower in August will be impossible to see due to fog. Count on it.

Until a few years ago, Captain Albert Bunker ran the pilot boat when Matinicus Island was a pilot station; he put pilots aboard the tankers, tugs and barges, and container ships that came past the 2WB buoy. From time to time a few of us civilians hanging around the wharf would be lucky enough to hitch a ride on a pilot trip, and sometimes it might even happen to be a pleasant evening. Skywatching from the stern of a boat is often as good as it can get without instruments. (Many shipboard readers will be muttering right now about how that should be perfectly obvious.) One fall evening while “shuttling,” or waiting between putting a pilot on one ship and taking another off (occasionally two ships would be too close together to warrant another round trip back into Matinicus Harbor), we were treated to the full complement of light shows: multiple shooting stars—maybe the Orionid meteor shower?—early-season northern lights, and to top it all off, lots of bioluminescence

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A LETTER FROM MATINICUS in the water. We talked about that trip for weeks.

A few years ago, after observing that there were a lot of lobsterboats around with very noble-sounding star names, such as Captain Carver’s Antares, we considered naming a scabby little punt Zubenelgenubi, but never got around to it.

We were dog-sitting for the lovely and estimable Rossi last fall when Comet 17P/Holmes was discovered to be visible. A fuzzy, star-like, tailless object, visible to the naked eye but not obviously a comet without some amplification, Holmes was a fairly interesting sight with decent binoculars. The first night we tried to see it, we concluded that our best bet would be to drive up to the Matinicus airstrip on the north end of the island just after sunset, as the required view to the northeast should be pretty good and the spruce woods might be just the shield needed to keep the bright moon out of our eyes. Certain that she was going for a moonlit walk, or at least a respectable truck ride,

Rossi eagerly hopped into the pickup when we climbed aboard to head the one mile north to the strip.

Sure enough, we saw the comet. We hung around the lonely airstrip parking area for 20 minutes or so, looking through binoculars and wandering around in the dark. The good Rossi was less than impressed. She just looked at us, hopping around and perking up her ears as if to ask, “You ready yet?” Eventually harrumphing to signal her boredom, she threw herself down on the ground beside the truck in disgust, as much as if to say, “Well, FINE, if this is your idea of fun!”

Dogs don’t like astronomy.

There’s a web site out of Germany (go to heavens-above.com) where you can enter your exact location and get listings for the times when the International Space Station, various satellites, and miscellaneous space junk will be visible overhead.

Iridium flares are fun to see. In this case “Iridium” does not refer to elemen-

tal iridium but to the name of a phone company, whose telecommunications satellites from time to time reflect the sunlight for a brief, brilliant moment in the almost-dark sky. The flare looks like a very bright star blinking quickly in and then out of existence. Like the International Space Station, the flare needs to be seen shortly after sunset or before dawn, when the sun has set enough on the surface to give us somewhat darkened skies, but is still shining on higher-orbit objects.

The flash of reflected light off an inuse satellite can be predicted, although I have seen such flashes that were not listed on the German web site; possibly these are from “abandoned” satellites, the orbits of which become less certain as they descend toward Earth. Maybe there’s more space junk up there than we think.

In fact, it is amazing, if a bit unsettling, to discover how much abandoned metallic debris is orbiting the Earth. It’s like a big dooryard up there, full of bust-

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ed satellites, pieces of rockets, and other scrap steel, the high-orbit version of bent truck tailgates, dead snow machines, and upside-down refrigerators. Some of it is ours, some belongs to the Russians and others.

Speaking of Russia and that part of the world, a little space story: Our aforementioned dirt-road astronomer has his birthday in September. On that occasion last year, neighbor Martin, who happens to be Our Nation’s Desk Agent for Kazakhstan (whatever that means), having until recently been only the Desk Agent for Kyrgyzstan, and who lives part-time up on Spook End with all the other spies on the island, came to the birthday dinner bearing an interesting and unique gift that he got from work: an ornamental Kazakh riding whip. This implement, useful for urging on a horse, making a ceremonial presentation, or keeping a slack crew busy at their appointed tasks, is approximately two feet long, of leather with deer fur and silver decorative elements, and is ostentatiously ornate, per-

haps even elegant in a Central Asian sort of way.

A couple of weeks later, on October 13, 2007, the International Space Station was due for a crew change, and this otherwise routine operation made big news because the new commander for the next rotation was to be an American woman, NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson. The launch to bring the new crew to the ISS and to bring home those getting off shift was leaving from the former Soviet space base at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. In a moment of lightheartedness perhaps not historically typical of formerly Soviet space agency personnel, the Russians gave the new commander a gift to take on board: an ornamental Kazakh riding whip.

I saw the BBC story about it on the Internet. There was a picture of Commander Whitson with her whip. It is exactly the same as the one our stargazer on Matinicus received for his

birthday. Now, as he watches the ISS traverse the early evening sky, our man knows the mate to his, uh, ornamental Kazakh riding whip is up there, keeping the crew in line.

Our island stargazer, as I have already mentioned, still doesn’t have a telescope.

This fact perplexes his friends, but a good telescope is expensive, and is sensitive to the weather, and is generally a big project to set up and to move. A conveniently portable telescope is apt to be an optical disappointment, and anyway, telescope shopping itself seems to be a full-fledged hobby. Eventually, we suspect, he will probably scrounge up some plywood and a porthole glass and get started.

Eva Murray lives on Matinicus Island, where it seems that Mercury is always in retrograde.

DEDICATION This one is for John Dobson. Perhaps someone will send a copy to him.

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MY BOAT, MY HARBOR

Douglas Coffin

My Life in Boats: Three Steves and a Certain Inevitability

N One boat leads to another... and another... and another.

DAVID PLATT

www.maineboats.com

|

OT LONG AGO I bought a new boat. I hadn’t intended to (who does?), but I was not-so-gently pushed into this major transaction by the loss of my earlier boat in a storm.

It wasn’t my fault, I hasten to explain: the next guy over in the anchorage didn’t have an adequate mooring, and when the wind came up his boat dragged about 100 feet. The two boats became entangled and gnawed at each other for much of the night. Damage to mine prompted the insurance company to declare it a total loss; I don’t know what happened to the other boat or its too-light mooring.

Two months later, after a flurry of reports, surveys, and visits by adjusters, I was in possession of a large amount of cash but without a boat. The outcome was probably inevitable: being an unattached male at the same time, I went shopping.

My friends were no help. “Looks like a deal,” they’d say when I showed them

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

the latest results of my Internet surfing.

(Boat ads, particularly the kind you can look at on-line, without ever walking into a brokerage, are a form of pornography to some of us.) The bookmarked boats saved on my hard drive proliferated; the stacks of printed-out listings rose on my kitchen counter. The newfound cash sitting in my checking account seemed to be saying it needed someplace to go.

Early in the game I got lucky, or so I thought. A handsome teal-colored cutter, looking irresistible, showed up on one broker’s web site. Printing her out, so to speak, I began carrying this beauty around in my briefcase, showing it to selected friends. Again, no help: “Don’t wait too long for that one,” they’d say.

“She won’t be around long. If you love her, act!”

Taking along one friend I drove down to see the boat. With the broker we climbed aboard on a frigid January day, poked around in lockers and peered at things, spun the wheel and admired the new decks and finely maintained varnish.

“The owner’s got a couple of other lookers,” the broker said, predictably. “Great boat,” said my friend on the way home.

“You won’t do much better than that.”

Trying mightily to be safe and sane I booked another weekend trip with the same friend to see a different boat—half the money, less teak, more plastic—and headed out again to an icy boatyard, where we slipped and slid our way up and down a ladder to look things over.

Suffice to say, we’d already set a higher standard with the first boat, and this one didn’t measure up. I knew I was hooked on that teal cutter with the new decks.

After all, it was only twice the price of the dog we’d just visited, and I had nearly a third of the purchase price already in my checking account. Free money, I convinced myself. Go for it!

After a thorough survey that revealed no problems, I did. Money changed 35

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MY BOAT, MY HARBOR hands; insurance was arranged for. The deal was done.

The seeming inevitability of it all got me thinking. It wasn’t the first time in my life that a change of boats had come about under unforeseen circumstances, or that things that might have gone badly instead came out very well.

Twenty-five years ago I ran into a friend in a restaurant who said he was selling his boat. I should come for a look, he said; I did, fell in love, bought the boat (he let me take it out for a weekend first, just to convince me), and kept it for 18 years. The boat was as beautiful as its name—Wings of the Morning—and I decided only reluctantly to sell when its age got me thinking about Expensive Work. I parted with the boat after two years of back-andforth with a very nice teacher from Vermont that included trial sails in Penobscot and Casco bays, and after hearing the buyer’s own remarkable story. He had looked at the boat toward the end of a season, and then went back to work,

forgetting about it until, on a trip to France, he seriously injured his leg in a fall. During his extended convalescence in hospitals on both sides of the Atlantic he had sustained himself with thoughts of my lovely boat. After a second look

How could I not buy a boat called Karma?

Like all of my boat transactions, it was meant to be. he’d fallen in love; a deal became inevitable. Wings moved to Port Clyde, and I went looking for a boat on the Internet.

Of course, I found one right away.

Googling “Cape Dory 30 cutter”—my chosen next boat—I ran across a web

site put up by an enterprising man in Wisconsin, advertising just such a boat, lightly used, sailed only in fresh water, owned by his family since it was new in 1982. The pictures were convincing; he shared his recent survey with me; I flew out for a look; after a short negotiation the boat was mine. It traveled to Maine on a truck, and after a small amount of work and a new mainsail, we went sailing.

Seabird became the name, after the Holling Clancy Holling book I’d read as a child. I sailed all along the coast of Maine for four seasons, crossed the Bay of Fundy twice, and even negotiated the Annisquam Canal. My last sail aboard Seabird was from Rockland to Falmouth in heavy weather, with rain and thick fog and wind on the nose. The boat came through beautifully, but a week after we snugged it down on the mooring in Falmouth it was damaged in the storm and subsequently “totaled” by the insurance company.

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you off, it takes away your boat. Hauled out in Yarmouth, Seabird didn’t go anywhere in a physical sense, but—true to its origins—it did end up on a web site maintained by a salvage company. Things looked pretty ignominious for a while,

I ran into a friend who was looking for a cruising boat.

“Interested in a project?” I asked. “I know of a good one.” but then I ran into a friend at the Maine Boatbuilders’ Show who was looking for a cruising boat. “Interested in a project?”

I asked. “I know of a good one.” I described the damage (mostly woodwork, and the guy owns a woodworking shop) and the probable minimum bid; he took a look on his way home, liked what he saw, put in a bid, and got the boat, new mainsail and all. I hope he’ll be as happy with it as I was.

Two summers ago I spotted Wings on a mooring in Port Clyde and rowed over for a look. Close up, the boat looked like a million bucks, topsides fair, bright work gleaming. Steve, the new owner, had obviously done what needed to be done.

My old boat was enjoying the happy old age she deserved. A second Steve, the new owner of Seabird, was about to take possession of the boat I’d helped him find via the salvage company. And a third Steve, from whom I’ve just bought my newest boat, can know it’s in the hands of someone who’s had a history of good outcomes in boats for a lot of years.

The name of my new boat, bought from the third Steve? Karma. As I’ve told a number of people this winter, how could I not buy a boat called Karma? Like all of my boat transactions, it was meant to be.

David Platt is the Publications Director at the Island Institute. www.maineboats.com

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A TimberFramer’s Art, An Artist’s Timber Frame Art, craft, history, tradition, and architectural heritage all rolled into one.

BY JANET MENDELSOHN PHOTOGRAPHS BY TODD CAVERLY

N

OT EVERY NEW HOME built in Maine for people “from away” is a McMansion. This is the story of a different kind of house—a post-and-beam barn in Cushing. It is owned by an artist from Cape Cod and was designed by a Connecticut craftsman dedicated to preserving the ancient art of timber framing. George Senerchia, the timber framer, is also a teacher whose course Marieluise Hutchinson, the artist, took to get a better feel for the bones of barns central to her rural landscapes.

On a morning in July 2006, Hutchinson and 34 of Senerchia’s former students from across New England gathered to raise this, Senerchia’s thirty-third barn. The day began by honoring an unknown Boston woman whose heart beats in the timber framer’s chest. Like the traditional skills and antique barns he rescues, her transplanted heart gave him a second chance at life.

“I tell this story to anyone who will listen,” the artist said, “because George is an amazing man. He begins each barn raising with an inspirational talk about the history of the craft, patriotism, and how he lives each day honoring ‘his Boston girl’ by giving back to others. Everyone present is a volunteer. We come together to raise each new barn, and for all of us, it is always a spiritual event.”

Hutchinson’s barn is an antidote to overbuilding and proof that it is possible to move to Maine affordably and without offending the neighbors. It sits unobtrusively on five wooded

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MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

Above: Hutchinson’s new barn is 22 x 30 feet of open space.

The main floor combines living and dining areas with a cozy kitchen; a bathroom is tucked off to one side. A central staircase leads to a loft bedroom, plus a second full bath.

Opposite page: A new barn-home built in the old post-andbeam way looks “right” in its setting.

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The barn’s fireplace is surrounded by bricks interspersed with seven blue stars, one for each member of the family.

Below: The compact and tidy kitchen occupies a corner of the open-plan first floor.

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acres in Wyeth country. Eagles fly overhead. A flock of 20 wild turkeys often comes out of the woods to cross her yard.

From the cupola and second story windows, there are easy views of nearby Broad Cove and the St. George River.

They are reminiscent of Hutchinson’s oil paintings, which sell briskly in galleries from Camden, Maine, to Cape Cod, New York City, and Carmel, California. Her luminescent landscapes depict simple homes and barns on country lanes, like her own.

Hutchinson said her barn raising was among the most important days in her life.

“It was breathtaking to stand on my empty land, see an 18-wheeler arrive up over the hill and get stuck in mud, and then all those people unloading it, working together to line it all up,” she said.

“George was like a musical conductor, hollering in cadence, ‘Lift, Lift, Lift,’ and everyone pushed up a wall. It’s obvious he loves what he does, and it’s remarkable that a few short years ago we almost lost him.”

Hutchinson named the barn “Amazing Grace” for the beauty of the framers’ teamwork, the coincidental title of that week’s Sunday sermon at the church next door, and the way Senerchia has taught so many about large and small acts of kindness. During the morning’s ceremony, she handed the builder an envelope of checks totaling $5,200 that she had collected for the Northford Timber Framers Transplant Fund, which Senerchia founded to help other organ transplant patients, their families, and others in need.

The barn is an extension of Hutchinson’s art. The photographer for this story was captivated, as I was, by the fine woodworking and structural details.

During my visit, sunlight streamed through windows, at times distracting both the artist and me from our conversation as light beamed across the living room, illuminating her newly finished canvas—a painting of a rambling, white, shingled house in a snowy field. The painting rested on an easel beside a fireplace that is surrounded by bricks. Interspersed are seven tiles, each decorated with a blue star, one tile for each family member as of 2006.

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A Timber-Framer’s Art, An Artist’s Timber Frame Hutchinson’s new barn is 22 x 30 feet of open space. The main floor combines living and dining areas with a cozy kitchen; a bathroom is tucked off to one side. A central staircase leads to a loft bedroom large enough for extra beds ready for her grandchildren and other visiting family members, plus a second full bath. In the lower, below-ground level is her still-unfinished art studio.

Eventually, it will also contain a more private guest bedroom.

Hutchinson has filled her retreat with antique and faux folk art, wooden toys, signs, and crafts that she has collected at flea markets, antiques shops, craft fairs, and yard sales. Hers is an orderly array of Americana, antique

the braces. After Senerchia taught Hutchinson how to plane hickory, she carved 80 of the 100 pegs that hold the post-and-beam frame together and hammered in the first one herself.

“That moment was so huge, so emotional,” Hutchinson said. “I never thought I would have anything like this.

It’s hard to believe this is mine. When my

girls were two and five, I used to have yard sales just to buy groceries. To have George and 35 volunteers from all walks of life build my barn—a jet pilot, computer geeks, a deed researcher, men and women—was amazing. Some people fish or hunt. These guys raise barns, and when he calls them, they show up.”

While awaiting his transplant operase

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Hutchinson has filled her retreat with an eclectic, artisanal mix of art and Americana that she has collected at flea markets, antiques shops, craft fairs, and yard sales. clocks, and Lone Ranger memorabilia.

As was common practice in the 1800s, Senerchia has used a variety of local woods in the exterior and interior—hemlock, pine, walnut, cherry, tiger maple, white oak, and butternut.

Antique floorboards were recycled from dismantled buildings, circa 1820 to the early 1900s. There is a massive 9" x 14" summer beam, reminiscent of a ship’s keel, at the center of the first floor ceiling. The beam’s growth rings indicate that the tree pre-dated the Civil War. Senerchia used gnarly, twisted cherry for www.maineboats.com

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tion and watching news coverage of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Senerchia was making cherry wood turnings in the shape of acorns, an Early American symbol of strength. Thereafter, he placed one acorn on a newel post in most of his barns; in Hutchinson’s there are three acorns—one on the newel post and two atop the walnut braces that support the summer beam.

The barn is more than a weekend home for Hutchinson; it is her haven, where she comes to paint as often as she can. It is also the extension of an intellectual connection between Hutchinson and Senerchia. Both admire Eric Sloane (1905-1985), a writer, artist, philosopher, historian, and environmentalist who identified with Early American settlers.

Sloane believed that a nation’s heritage is a reflection of each person’s contributions to his country. “The moral strength of the nation,” he wrote, “is only as strong as the moral strength of its individuals.”

PROPERTY

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Senerchia leaves a quote from Sloane inside each barn he raises. In Hutchinson’s, burned into paneling at the top of the stairs, it reads: “It takes only an instant for a person to be directed to a path that he will follow for the rest of his life.”

Now 54, Senerchia experienced his “instant” when he was 22 and his wife brought home a library book that set him on a lifelong journey. That book, Diary of an Early American Boy: Noah Blake 1805, was the real diary of an observant boy. It was reprinted and illustrated by Sloane, and filled with information on farming, building, and cooking in the early 1800s. Senerchia put away his power tools.

“The book opened a world to me,” said Senerchia, a woodworker since childhood. “I was hooked. In the sixties, I was absolutely living the Woodstock era life. I had gotten into blacksmithing and boatbuilding, as well as rock ‘n’ roll. The book, through American history, taught me about harvesting timber and how to

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A Timber-Framer’s Art, An Artist’s Timber Frame

Photography: Rob Karosis

think like a timber framer.” Timber framing in those days was nearly a forgotten art, he said, so he decided to learn by dismantling the work of a master.

On Easter Sunday in 1977, Senerchia knocked on the door of a stranger who owned a tumble-down antique barn in Wallingford, Connecticut. “He said I could have it if I hauled it away. Board by board, I dismantled that hand-hewn barn and moved it four miles down the road to my home in Northford. Carved into a beam was the year 1818 and the builder’s name, Aaron Hall, who was a soldier in the Revolutionary War. Restoring and re-assembling it felt wonderful.

I was 24 years old and knew I’d found my reason for being.” The barn became his workshop. Over the years he has refined it into a masterpiece of woodworking art.

For the next 20 years Senerchia dismantled and re-erected old post-andbeam barns using time-honored methods. “I was saving part of our American

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heritage, our patriotic and architectural history,” he said. “This was the work of people who came long before me and now I could do something to keep it alive. Timber framing is spiritual. As a young man, I worked in a boat shop, and building wooden boats is the only kind of work I can compare this to.”

Senerchia now has to his credit 40 timber-frame structures in every New England state but New Hampshire, including three in Maine. Recent projects are all-new construction but he continues to learn from antique restorations. The restorations are reborn as working barns, homes, and music and art studios. An 18th-century hay barn now houses clocks. A former dairy barn became a rare book library containing 7,000 volumes.

“We have five centuries of experience to learn from,” Senerchia tells his students in the course he teaches each spring at the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking, in Manchester, Connecticut. The students enroll for a variety of reasons.

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A Timber-Framer’s Art, An Artist’s Timber Frame “We get everyone you can imagine,” Senerchia said. “Priests, doctors, moms, teachers, firemen, police officers, boatbuilders, singles, couples, and friends.

Their skill upon entering is irrelevant.

Some are excellent professional carpenters, others just beginners.” In lieu of a course fee, students are asked to contribute to the organ transplant fund. Senerchia volunteers his time.

Marieluise Hutchinson’s path, on the other hand, began with a prolonged sort of “instant,” an early divorce. “If I were still married,” she observed, “and hadn’t had to raise my daughters as a single parent since they were very small, if I didn’t have to find a way to support them, maybe I wouldn’t have what I have today.” She might not have taught herself to paint, learned how to market her work, or found herself downeast.

“I’ve loved this part of Maine since I was seven and my family began coming here,” said Hutchinson. She bought the land in Cushing without plans for its use.

add considerably to the cost. “Builders in the 1700s and 1800s were practical,” he said. “They used wood from their own backyards. It is still a practical, inexpensive way to build.”

“I love the work,” George Senerchia said. “It is why I live and breathe. I get to be like the Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi, leading controlled madness, not chaos.”

Contributing Editor Janet Mendelsohn is a freelance writer who divides her time between Massachusetts and Maine.

A small- to medium-sized post-andbeam home or barn, like Hutchinson’s, costs about $8,000 to $10,000 for the timber framing itself, said Senerchia.

That’s excluding excavation, windows, plumbing, finish carpentry, and a driveway, which require a local contractor and

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STEPHEN ETNIER: Wherever he found himself in the world— Maine, the tropics, Europe—this artist rendered the local scene with a blend of truth and poetry, painting what he loved.

BY CARL LITTLE

Rockwell Kent Bookplate for Stephen Morgan Etnier, 1929.

T

HE BOOKPLATE THAT ROCKWELL KENT DESIGNED for Stephen Etnier in 1929 shows a man bearing oars—a small canvas and a book tucked under his arm—standing on a rocky ledge, looking out at a flat sea. Two masts prick the clouds gathering on the horizon. Kent captured the young man embarking on a career as a painter—and a sailor.

The bookplate’s setting and its details were well chosen. In a few years, the coast would become Etnier’s favorite subject matter. What is more, the artist would spend as much time as possible on a boat, and he would prefer to paint calm waters in the clarity of strong, morning light. And the book under his arm? Perhaps it was W. Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, the fictional account of Gauguin’s trip to the South Seas, which had spurred Etnier’s wan-

Study for Hurricane Ridge, Harpswell, circa 1970s.

Oil on canvas.

Private collection.

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Painter of Coasts, Sailor of Seas

Portrait of Stephen Etnier, Harpswell, 1982. Photograph by David Etnier.

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The Sailor (Stephen Etnier) 1945, by Andrew Wyeth. Watercolor and graphite on off-white wove paper, 22 3⁄8 x 30 1⁄8".

photographer unknown

Stephen Etnier at work at Maurice Moody’s lobster wharf, Ash Point, Harpswell, circa 1950s.

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derlust early on and led him to explore the tropics throughout his life.

Kent knew his subject’s situation well. In 1928 Etnier moved with his first wife Mathilde Gray and their daughter to upstate New York to study with the renowned landscape painter at Asgaard, Kent’s home in Au Sable Forks.

He came to Kent out of something like desperation—a last chance to prove to himself and to friends and family (especially his doubting father) that he was a painter, not just a ne’er-do-well son of wealth who had chosen art because he never wanted to work in an office. “I figured if [Kent] didn’t fix me, nobody would,” Etnier said during an interview with Robert Brown of the Archives of American Art in 1973.

Born in York, Pennsylvania, in 1903, Etnier started making art early in his life, copying western paintings in pen and ink while a student at the Hill School in Pottstown in 1918-1920. His education was marked by several Holden Caulfield-esque stints at prep schools and a mixed bag of training that included Yale Art School, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the San Francisco Art School.

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Kent taught the adrift Etnier a good deal about technique while encouraging him to simplify his compositions, to “paint the mountains the way they are” and to be true to the light of a particular time of day.

Etnier recognized that Kent was not out to make art with a capital A, but rather to represent something that excited him. Years later, talking about Maine, Etnier said, “The only reason I paint is because this, I think, is wonderful and I want other people to know that it’s wonderful. You should paint what you love.”

Another lesson learned from Kent related to discipline. “I learned to work—really work,” Etnier later said of his time at Asgaard.

In a recent conversation, David Etnier, the painter’s son, recalled his father’s routine.

He rose before the crack of dawn every day to head off in search of a motif, later returning to his studio in South Harpswell, Maine, to continue to work off and on through the rest of the day.

Stephen Etnier recognized his debt to Kent. In a letter to his mentor shortly after his first show in New York City, he wrote, “I didn’t list your name among my teachers in

On Gilbert Head Revisited When Elizabeth Etnier, nee Jay, died in June 1991, the New York Times ran a short obituary that included the fact that she had been the author of On Gilbert Head (Little, Brown and Company, 1937). The paper described the book as “a critically praised journal of her life in the 1930s with her first husband, the painter Stephen Etnier, on an island in Maine.”

One imagines that readers back then were taken by the romance of the isolated coastal setting. They must have also enjoyed Etnier’s engaging portrait of the artist, from the comic—Stephen shooting a woodchuck from the bedroom window—to the candid: Stephen, under the influence of Hemingway, addressing his wife as “you bitch.”

When not describing repairs to the house or the ever-changing view, which encompasses Fort Popham and Seguin Light, Elizabeth Etnier notes the comings and goings of the household, frequently commenting on the help, including the wonderful handyman Ellison Moody. Trips off island to purchase building or garden supplies, or to have a baby (daughter Stephanie, born at Maine General Hospital), are often adventures. Bits of local color—breakfast at the Miss Brunswick Diner, a visit to the Topsham Fair, traversing the rough road from Popham to Bath—add to a lively picture of Maine 70 years ago.

The Etniers lived on their schooner Morgana while renovating the house. The book’s fourth section describes a cruise downeast in September 1935, with stops at Isle au Haut, Eastport, and other ports of call. While continued on page 50

Georgia O’Keeffe and the Camera: The Art of Identity Arnold Newman, Georgia OʼKeeffe, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. Gift of the artist for the Ernst Haas Memorial Collection. Photo by meyersphoto.com.

Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick. Gift of John S. Etnier, in memory of his father, Stephen Morgan Etnier, Honorary Degree, 1969. BCMA Acces. #1991.104.

STEPHEN ETNIER: PAINTER OF COASTS, SAILOR OF SEAS

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On Gilbert Head continued. . . extolling the pleasures of cruising, the author also offers commentary. The couple find Mount Desert Island depressing, “the huge houses of the rich” representing “futile ostentation” and Seal Harbor “so nouveau.”

Were the book to be reissued, annotations would be in order. A number of interesting figures make appearances, from actress Jane Wyatt to poet Robert P. Tristram Coffin and A. Everett “Chick” Austin, Jr., the Wadsworth Atheneum’s renowned director (and Stephen Etnier’s cousin). A reprint might be accompanied by Elizabeth Etnier’s short novel The Willow, which Time magazine called “a cleanly written story of a Maine coast tragedy” when it appeared in 1954.

“Elegance has a joy, an excitement, on a rocky Maine island it simply can’t have in a suave New York apartment,” Elizabeth Etnier wrote, and On Gilbert Head is her testament to this. While the pair divorced a decade or so later, their island idyll lives on in 272 pages of entertaining prose.

— CL

the catalogue because the critics would recognize that I had gotten it all from you.” While this was fine flattery, the reality is that Etnier was already developing his own ways of rendering the world, blending truth and poetry.

Etnier’s apprenticeship with Kent and, soon after, with painter John Carroll (whose “mannered” approach Etnier felt would add a bit of “zip” to his work), paid off in sales and critical notice. The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased a painting in 1936. Two years later, a critic for Time magazine reviewing Etnier’s show at the Milch Galleries praised this “young U.S. painter of romantic renown” and his “19 unusual paintings of the Maine coast.” The writer gave best picture honors to a canvas titled “Rough Crossing,” described as “looking down as if from a masthead on a fisherman’s launch on a choppy sea.”

Etnier first visited Maine as an infant and returned nearly every

year until he and his second wife, Elizabeth, took up residence in the state at Gilbert Head in 1935. A panoramic outpost on Long Island, Georgetown, at the mouth of the Kennebec River, the setting and the couple’s pioneering life there inspired Mrs. Etnier’s bestselling book On Gilbert Head (1936).

“We noticed how strangely much the scene resembled the bookplate Rockwell Kent made Stephen for his birthday long before he ever had a schooner or had laid eyes on this island,” Elizabeth Etnier wrote. The area inspired the first of Etnier’s major Maine paintings, as he proceeded to explore the coves and working waterfront of the coast.

The 1940s were a decade of flux in Etnier’s life and art. During WWII, he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve and moved around the country on various assignments. He also took up flying, purchasing a Cessna, followed by a Seabee amphibious aircraft.

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STEPHEN ETNIER: PAINTER OF COASTS, SAILOR OF SEAS His third wife, Jane Pearce, committed suicide in 1949, a year after they were married. Etnier’s marriage to Samuella “Brownie” Rose the next year led to the most productive and stable period of painting in his career (he became Portland painter Robert Solotaire’s brotherin-law through this marriage).

In 1948 Etnier had commissioned Portland architect James Saunders to design a house on Basin Point in South Harpswell, near Ash Cove where his parents had summered. The modern sharpangled house, recalling Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs, is perched on a tip of land looking south toward Portland, with island-accented Middle Bay and Casco Bay stretching to the horizon.

David Etnier, who now lives there with his wife Maryellen and two children, Ellison and Emma, reports that the front of the house is so close to the sea that it is showered with salt spray during coastal storms.

Stephen Etnier loved the clarity of early morning; tall walls of glass in his South Harpswell studio provided strong

From Gilbert Head, 1945. Oil on canvas, 28 x 35 7⁄8". Martin Memorial Library.

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ESSO, 1959. Oil on canvas, 14 x 24". University of Maine Museum of Art, The Kenduskeag Fund. north light to aid in the completion of his matinals. He might have been following Constable’s dictum as handed down through historian Kenneth Clark: “Some drama of light and shade must

underlie all landscape compositions, and give the keynote of feeling in which the scene was painted.”

For the most part, the pigment in an Etnier painting is laid on flat and uni-

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form, an approach that perfectly suited the still waters and profound shadows that often caught his eye. That said, the artist often turned to the palette knife or the end of his paintbrush to build up the surface or scratch in a pattern. In tropical scenes his impasto brushwork sometimes mimics the texture of the walls of the buildings.

If considered by many critics to be a romantic, Etnier was also something of a documentary artist. Whether painting the old Union Station in Portland, a bar in Isle of Pines, Cuba, or a conch fisherman in Nassau, the Bahamas, he was true to the particulars of a locale. David Etnier, who is deputy commissioner of Maine’s Department of Marine Resources, points out how in one of his father’s paintings the smoke from a tugboat blows ahead of the vessel as it proceeds up river, which happens when the wind blows from astern. He also notes the liberties his father took from time to time, such as leaving out the lines between telephone poles in a painting of a gas-and-bait boat shop on Florida’s inland waterway.

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STEPHEN ETNIER: PAINTER OF COASTS, SAILOR OF SEAS Many paintings feature signage, such as the large gas station letters painted in reverse in ESSO, 1959. Some observers found this body of work pioneering, anticipating certain contemporary tendencies—“proto-pop,” as Daniel O’Leary referred to it in his catalog essay for the Portland Museum of Art’s marvelous 1998 retrospective, “Journeys Over Water: The Paintings of Stephen Etnier.”

The exhibition brought to light the painter’s use of photographs as visual aids. A plein air painter, Etnier also took on-site Polaroids, which he would refer to while establishing the composition and elements of a canvas back in the studio. Photographs weren’t always necessary, however, as he could recreate a scene from memory.

From his earliest work Etnier sought to avoid the hackneyed. Although his paintings can be sublime in their simplicity, he was apt to feature an ungainly object—a rusted anchor, a cannon, a fish shack, or a pile of crates—in the landscape as if to make it less pretty. He was always looking for fresh subjects or treat-

The Hersilia, 1938. Oil on canvas 10 1⁄8 x 12 1⁄4". Private collection.

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Still Morning (Orr’s Island looking toward Harpswell mainland), 1960. Private collection. ing well-known motifs in a new manner.

A passion for the working waterfront is reflected in the veritable inventory Etnier made in his paintings of its many elements, from bell buoys and channel markers to a scallop drag. He painted every kind of boat: lobster, sail, row, Coast Guard surf, as well as steamship

and scow—even the pedal-driven swan boats in Boston’s Public Garden.

A lifelong love of the sea began when, as a nine-year-old, Etnier taught himself to sail, maneuvering a boat off his parents’ summer home on Ash Cove.

He made his first cruise when he was 15, sailing down to Bar Harbor with a

friend. “In those days having an engine on a boat was considered very vulgar,” he noted during the Archives of American Art interview.

In 1922, Etnier’s mother gave him the 31' I-class sloop Whisper. Later boats included the 70' schooner Morgana, 52' cutter Hersilia, 40' Pacemaker Jonda, and 52' Huckins Timberfish (which he donated to Florida Atlantic University in 1971). These boats often served as second homes to the artist and his family as they made their way up and down the East Coast and across the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.

“There’s a certain something that you get from having your whole goddamn house in the cabin of a boat,” Etnier once remarked. His skills as a sailor also strengthened his ego: “You’d just as soon have about 15 people in the grandstand when you pick up that final buoy” after a hundred-mile cruise, he said.

Etnier harbored a romance for sea travel from early on. His passion was bolstered by some memorable journeys, including a trip to the 1915 World Expo-

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STEPHEN ETNIER: PAINTER OF COASTS, SAILOR OF SEAS sition in San Francisco aboard Great Northern, the first large ship to traverse the Panama Canal. On that trip he fell in love with the tropics, which, next to Maine, would provide the most material for his art. His many paintings of Jamaica, Cuba, Barbados, the Bahamas, and other island ports of call amount to a stunning visual diary of his travels— and deserve an exhibition of their own at some point in the future.

Over the years, Etnier befriended other artists, including the sculptor Chippy Chase and painter George DeLyra (who produced a remarkable portrait of the artist in which his likeness is surrounded by one of his signature seascapes, meticulously replicated). Most notable among his comrades-in-art was Andrew Wyeth, whom he knew from an early age.

It was Andrew’s father, N.C., who had convinced young Stephen to enroll at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (he also helped Etnier’s father recognize that artists were not all “sissies”).

Etnier and Wyeth shared an appreciation for the hardscrabble side of Maine,

Storefront—Nassau, 1957. Oil on canvas. Private collection. the beauty of a sometimes severe landscape. Their subject matter overlapped from time to time, from a weathervane to an abandoned dinghy. Wyeth’s watercolor portrait of Etnier, The Sailor (Stephen Etnier), 1945, in the Bowdoin College Museum collection, depicts his friend standing beside a channel marker

at the mouth of the Kennebec River—an apt prop and setting for an artist devoted to the coast of Maine.

After a successful 35-year stint with the Milch Galleries, Etnier moved to the Midtown Galleries for representation in New York City. Sales were strong over the years; two shows in Dallas late in his life

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STEPHEN ETNIER: PAINTER OF COASTS, SAILOR OF SEAS an artist. “If I have had anything to say,” he professed toward the end of the interview, “it has long since been said.” While referring to “the end of the line,” the painter still looked forward to “polishing up the pictures”—those same paintings that continue to give pleasure to their beholders today.

Fort Popham, 1981. Oil on canvas. Private collection. more or less sold out, and the Frost Gully Gallery in Portland and Freeport has done a brisk business in Etnier canvases.

Today, collectors covet his work, especially his Maine coast pieces. Prices at Barridoff ’s annual auction in Portland have consistently risen. At last year’s auction a view of Portland fetched $72,000.

Reading a transcript of the 1973 Archives of American Art interview with Etnier, one appreciates the painter’s humble attitude toward his accomplishments. Time and again he was critical of

his work, whether it was his figures (of which he did few) or his habit of releasing a painting for sale before being completely satisfied with it. He was ambitious—“I’d like to be able to paint like Fitz Hugh Lane,” he stated at one point—but also cognizant of his own limitations. “When I look at Wyeth drawings,” he remarked, “I realize how little I know about the subject.”

Although he went on painting until his death in 1984, Etnier was already waxing elegiac about his achievements as

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Carl Little is a contributing editor for Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors magazine. His latest book, Paintings of Maine: A New Collection, features Etnier’s painting Scows, South Freeport, Maine, circa 1970, from the Portland Museum of Art collection.

Stephen Etnier’s paintings can be found in most Maine museums. A dozen or so works from the Bowdoin Museum of Art are on long-term loan to the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick, where they are displayed in the lobby and in the periodicals room. This group includes a mural of the South Harpswell waterfront that Etnier painted for the Stowe House Restaurant and Inn on Federal Street in Brunswick.

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Fast Boats Fast Times

(above) Brian Harris has built a life around maintaining big ocean-racers. (below) The Open 60 Great American III back in the water in Portland following an extensive refit at Maine Yacht Center.

How did the Maine Yacht Center in Portland become an epicenter for high-end ocean racers?

(right) Lifting the swing keel into place. .

BY CHARLES J. DOANE

Jeff Scher(3)

B

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RIAN HARRIS WORMED HIS WAY INTO the exotic realm of professional ocean racing the same way he got into boats as a career in the first place. He just plain couldn’t help himself. Having grown up outside Buffalo, New York, sailing with his dad on the Great Lakes, Harris was all too ready to abandon the more well-worn trails of shoreside existence after he got a chance to spend a summer on the tall ship Young America in 1982 following his junior year in high school.

“There was no way I was going back,” he explained. “I had way too much fun.”

Instead Harris did his senior year through a correspondence course, kept on working aboard Young America, and also spent several months cruising with a family of friendly liveaboards. Then came a year studying yacht design at the Landing School in Arundel, Maine. Afterward he worked with various designers, including Maine’s own Cy Hamlin, before going on to college. On graduating from Tufts University with a degree in physics he was contemplating graduate school when Greg Carroll of MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

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Rumery’s Boat Yard in Biddeford, for whom he worked summers while in college, made him an offer he could not refuse: Carroll would leave the yard to study medicine, and Harris would become manager with 50 percent equity interest in the company.

Harris spent nine years at Rumery’s, turned it into a profitable business, and among other things launched the yard’s successful program building Alerions, a daysailer designed by Nathanael Herreshoff. But by 1998 wanderlust set in again, and he and his bride, schoolteacher Alison Hawkes, decided they wanted to travel around the world.

Coincidentally, Harris’s last project at Rumery’s was refitting a sleek Open 50 ocean racer for a friend, Brian Hancock, who hoped to compete in the 1998 Around Alone race, a competition for singlehanded circumnavigators.

“That’s what first sparked my interest,” said Harris. “Working on Brian’s boat I became fascinated with the whole scene—solo sailing, the people who do it, and the engineering that goes into these amazing boats.”

Hancock never found the sponsorship he needed to get his boat to Charleston, South Carolina, for the Around Alone start that fall, but he had no trouble luring the newly liberated Harris and his wife down to see the preparations for the start of the race. One of the people Hancock introduced Harris to on the docks in Charleston was British solo sailor Josh Hall, who was scrambling to get his new Open 60 Gartmore ready to race.

“They were totally behind the eight ball and needed all the help they could get,” said Harris. “Josh offered me a job right on the spot.”

Josh Hall did not succeed in finishing the race that year, but Brian Harris and his wife Alison did fulfill their ambition.

With Harris working as the shore team gofer they trailed Hall from Charleston to South Africa, then to New Zealand, before Gartmore lost its rig in the Southern Ocean and was forced to retire six days into leg three of the race. With tickets to Uruguay already in hand, Harris and Alison continued on and explored South America on their own before returning to Portland in 1999.

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Billy Black

Hawkes went right back to work as a teacher, but Harris was at loose ends. Then he got a call from Hall asking if he wanted a job managing the Gartmore shore team in the upcoming Vendée Globe campaign, another round-the-world race. Once again, the fun factor made it impossible for him to say no.

For the next six years Harris was quite the anomaly—he was an American, perhaps the only one in all the world, earning a living in the very exclusive Euro-centric world of IMOCA (International Monohull Open Class Association) singlehanded ocean racing. Better than that, he was one of the best in the game, managing shore teams for such top competitors as Josh Hall, Emma Richards, and Alex Thompson in top events: the Vendée Globe, Around Alone, Route de Rhum, and Transat Jacques Vabres. Along the way he gained invaluable experience outfitting and maintaining some of the world’s most sophisticated sailing machines.

It was fun, yes, but Harris knew there was more to life. In 2003 he and Alison adopted a baby boy, Jackson, and this changed his perspective. “I really wanted to come home

(above) On a singlehanded yacht this large, it helps to have all sails controlled from the cockpit.

Jeff Scher

(below) Great American III owner Rich Wilson (right) confers with Brian Harris on launch day.

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courtesy Maine Yacht Center

(right) GAIII undergoes stability testing in Portland Harbor, conducted by the IMOCA (International Monohull Open Class Association).

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and do the family thing,” he explained, “but I kept getting calls from people doing races.” So for the lack of anything better to do, Harris still kept disappearing for weeks at a time into the alternative world of high-end ocean racing. Then one day he spotted a help-wanted ad for a general manager at the new Maine Yacht Center just north of central Portland near the entrance to the Presumpscot River.

“First time I came down here I took one look at the marina docks with all that fetch across Casco Bay and wondered how they’d do in a northeaster.” He laughed and shook his head ruefully.

“They told me it wasn’t a problem.”

Just two weeks after Harris started as general manager in May 2005, the MYC marina was obliterated in a strong spring northeaster that also chewed up much of the waterfront in Portland Harbor proper.

“It was a disaster,” Harris recalled.

“We lost all our docks, we had boats in the water that sank, and I had people yelling at me I had never met before.”

In the three years since then, Harris

has certainly had his hands full. Besides supervising the rebuilding of the MYC marina (complete now with a substantial floating breakwater) and the completion of MYC’s new super-sized indoor boatstorage facility, he has also managed to stay in touch with the world he left behind. First came a rather small project—refitting an Open 40 for a private owner intent on making a noncompetitive solo circumnavigation. Then he landed a much bigger job. American Rich Wilson—a renowned sailor/educator for whom Harris had previously worked as shore manager on two sucwww.maineboats.com

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© Transat Ecover B to B (right)

“I thought I was leaving that part of my life behind. For me it has been a big surprise—and a very pleasant one—that I still get to work on boats like this.”

Rich Wilson’s War Rich Wilson, who will be 58 years old when he starts the Vendée Globe this November, has suffered from severe asthma since age one. Early on in his life he focused on sailing as a sport where he could excel in spite of this handicap. He first made his mark at age 30 when he skippered a heavy, full-keel Aage Nielsen ketch, Holger Danske, to a spectacular overall win in the 1980 Newport-Bermuda Race. He followed this with an important class win aboard a small trimaran, Curtana, in the 1988 Carlsberg Singlehanded Transat Race.

Since 1990 Wilson, once a math teacher in the Boston public school system, has sought to use ocean sailing as a tool to create multi-disciplinary interactive educational programs.

His very first campaign, a bid to break the San Francisco-New York speed record aboard the trimaran Great American, ended when he and his partner Steve Pettengill flipped the boat in huge breaking seas 400 miles west of Cape Horn. Undaunted, Wilson put together another tri, Great American II, and from 1993 to 2004 sailed the boat on several doublehanded record runs and once raced it singlehanded across the Atlantic. All these efforts were coupled with programs sponsored by his nonprofit Sites Alive Foundation that reaches hundreds of thousands of American school children. As Wilson noted with some pride, “We’ve brought sailing to more people in the U.S. than any other organization.”

By moving into an Open 60 and setting his sights on the Vendée Globe, Wilson has taken something of a quantum leap, in more ways than one. Great American III, compared to its more contemporary siblings, is not terribly sophisticated. Besides being fitted with canting keels under their hulls to shift ballast, the fastest Open 60s now boast exotic lightweight carbon-fiber hulls with Nomex honeycomb cores, rotating masts, deck spreaders, and offset twin daggerboards to create lift when sailing on the wind. Great American III does have a canting keel, but it is shifted with a crude block and tackle (taken to an electric winch) rather than a powerful hydraulic ram. The mast is fixed, with conventional spreaders, there is but one centerline daggerboard, and the relatively heavy hull, though reinforced with carbon in spots, is primarily fiberglass cored with foam.

Wilson readily admitted that sailing his new boat is physically more demanding than anything he’s done in his life. He admitted, too, that he is daunted by the prospect of racing Great American III singlehanded nonstop around the globe. His longest passages to date have been about 70 days doublehanded, and this time he’ll be sailing more than 100 days all by himself. “This is definitely the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced,” he declared. “And I say that as a guy who’s run four marathons and has lost a boat off Cape Horn.”

The newest Open 60s are so much faster than Great American III that Wilson can harbor no illusions about actually winning the race. “The top guys in this game have $10 million budgets and are super-human athletes,” he said. “They’ll fly full masthead spinnakers singlehanded in 25 knots true wind, and I’m just not sure I’m up to that. But as far as I’m concerned—as far as anyone competing in this event is concerned—if you just finish the race you’re a winner.”

In Wilson’s mind the competition is superfluous in any event. What excites him most is that this very international race is giving him a chance to target his Sites Alive program at a much larger global audience of school children. This time out he expects to reach 10 million readers including 500,000 students in the U.S., plus millions more in as many as 37 different countries. “For me,” he said, “that’s what this is really all about.”

—CD

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cessful world-record multihull speed runs in 2001 and 2003—-decided he would compete in the 2008-09 Vendée Globe and knew he wanted Harris to prep his boat for him.

Wilson brought his new Open 60, Great American III (ex-Solidaires, originally launched for French solo racer Thierry Dubois in 2000), to MYC for a complete refit in September 2006. Just getting the boat out of the water was a challenge, as MYC hauls boats on a hydraulic trailer and doesn’t have nearly enough draft in its slipway to accommodate a modern Open 60 with a 15-foot keel. Instead, Harris took the boat around to Gowen Marine, a big commercial yard in Portland Harbor, and dismantled it there. First he pulled the mast, picked up the boat with a crane, removed the long keel, and dropped the hull back in the water. The mast was then placed on deck and the hull, now drawing just a foot or so with its keel off and both rudders up, motored around to the Presumpscot where it was slipped on to the MYC trailer with no

(above) Great American III is towed from the Maine Yacht Center after a major refit.

Jeff Scher(3)

(below) The 15-foot, 8,400-pound swing keel is a serious piece of business.

(right) That’s not a sailboat, it’s a sled! (opposite page) Great American III during early sea trials in Maine.

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problem. The 8,400-pound keel, meanwhile, was carted to the MYC yard on a flatbed truck.

Over the winter Harris and the MYC crew gutted the boat entirely, transforming it from a low-budget racer for a young hard-as-nails Frenchman into a somewhat more forgiving beast that can be handled by an athletic American in his late 50s. All electrics and electronics were replaced, the central “nav pod” was rebuilt, all sailhandling controls were led aft to the cockpit to a new central coffee-grinder pedestal winch with three different two-speed drums, the deck-mounted carbon-fiber boom gooseneck was rebuilt, a new carbon-fiber bow stem and a headstay chainplate were installed, the canting keel’s pivoting joint was entirely rebuilt, all standing rigging was replaced, and a new engine, new high-output alternator, new solar panels, and a new wind generator were installed.

Relaunching Great American III the following spring involved another trip to Gowen’s yard to reinsert the keel.

Once the rig was back in, the boat was moved up the Fore River to the Cianbro yard on Ricker’s Wharf, where a 90degree IMOCA stability test was performed to re-certify the craft for racing. This involved putting a sling on the keel and hoisting it up 90 degrees, which in turn laid the mast parallel to the water so a load cell could measure the actual righting moment at the masthead.

For Harris this was all standard procedure. What was not standard was the need to open the South Portland

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Billy Black

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The Akilaria Class 40 Amhas hard on the wind during the Sail for Hope Regatta in Newport, Rhode Island.

bridge to get Great American III to the Cianbro yard. “It was the very first time they ever opened for a sailboat,” he noted with pride.

The summer of 2007 was spent sailing the boat out of Portland Harbor on sea trails and in tuning the rig. On a modern Open 60 this is an incredibly fiddley, time-consuming process, as the high-modulus-fiber standing rigging is not secured with turnbuckles and cannot be tuned under load. Instead, the shrouds and stays are simply lashed to the chainplates, and the entire rig is tensioned with hydraulic jacks under the mast step. To make

Photo: Thomas Mignone

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even minor adjustments it is necessary to first douse the sails, drop the mast step, relash the relevant shrouds or stays, then retension the entire rig by jacking up and shimming the mast again.

“It is a huge pain,” admitted Harris.

Implicit in the admission, however, was a distinct note of joy. Very obviously Brian Harris is happy to be grappling with problems like this again.

“When I took this job I thought I was leaving that part of my life behind,” he explained. “For me it has been a big surprise—and a very pleasant one—that I still get to work on boats like this.”

Charlie Doane is an editor-at-large for SAIL magazine, and sails his Tanton 39 out of Portland. His book about cruising sailboats will be published by International Marine.

Maine Yacht Center: 100 Kensington Street, Portland, ME 04101. 207-842-9000; www.maineyacht.com.

Rich Wilson: www.greatamerican3.com Vendée Globe: www.vendeeglobe.org

New Boat on the Block Besides refitting existing ocean racers, Brian Harris has been working to introduce one of the latest Euro-designed shorthanded race boats to American sailors. First, together with a friend, he spent time shopping the French market for the hottest new Class 40 boat to buy for himself. Unlike Open designs, which are built to rules limiting only length and draft, Class 40s are built to a more prescriptive box rule that encourages speed but limits technology to keep boats from getting prohibitively expensive. Twin rudders, carbon rigs, retractable sprits, and water ballasting are allowed, but carbon hulls, rotating masts, and canting keels are verboten. The class has been quite successful in Europe, with numerous builders and designers building more than 70 boats to date, many of which have already raced in major international events.

In the end Harris and his friend decided to buy an Akilaria Class 40, designed by Marc Lombard, and had it shipped to the Maine Yacht Center. They launched the boat in Portland last summer for sea trials and were quite pleased with the results, as the boat reportedly sails close to wind speed when pressed. Maine Yacht Center is the exclusive agent for these boats in the United States.

The Akilaria weighs just 10,000 pounds, flys more than 1,000 square feet of plain working sail (over 2,800 square feet with a spinnaker up), and promises to be anything but a sedate ride. The hulls are SCRIMPed glass over foam cores set in vinylester resin; spars are carbon fiber. Boats can be ordered with either a stripped-out racing interior featuring a central nav pod, a one-burner stove, and pipe berths, or a heavier cruising interior replete with furniture and other amenities.

Akilarias are built in Tunisia at a Franco-German yard and are normally finished in Brittany. Boats ordered through Maine Yacht Center, however, are shipped directly to Portland to be commissioned under Harris’s watchful eye. Already orders have been placed for two new boats to be delivered this year. Just a few more, hopes Harris, and he’ll have a class fleet to race against right here in his own backyard.

—CD

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Around PORTLAND

Sometimes those things we think we know well are not really known to us at all.

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W

E LIVE IN A PARTICULARLY WATERY part of the planet. A glance at any map of Maine reveals much blue ink—the ocean, rivers, streams, thousands of lakes and ponds. I’ve had the good fortune to paddle a canoe around much of that blue, and I’m ever on the lookout for new waters in our state that will reveal beautiful places, wonderful wildlife, and evidence of history. One day when perusing a map it occurred to me that water very nearly surrounded Portland, where I live. I decided to paddle completely around the city.

One of the best things about canoeing is that it affords a per-

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by CANOE

BY ZIP KELLOGG ILLUSTRATIONS BY TED WALSH

Keep This In Mind A voyage around greater Portland is recommended for die-hards, lunatics, and mud-lovers only. While there is much that is beautiful about the trip, and while the perspectives on Portland are very different from those seen by foot, bike,

spective on things you’d never see any other way. How else would you get to see the underside of bridges, with their unique bird life, graffitti, young lovers, and ubiquitous beer cans? How else would you see waterfalls that people in cars will never see? By canoeing you can travel a whole network of water “roads” where there’s little noise, often little development, and where life, even in these troubled times, is often good. You get a different twist on the familiar by seeing it from a boat.

Portlanders take great pride in their Observatory and their City Hall.

I can understand that, for they lend character to a city that, like much of America, has had parts ruined by crass commercialism, malls, strip development, poor planning, suburbia, and more. But to see City Hall and the Observatory from the perspective of the waterfront, peeking out between the wharves, framed by barnacles and seaweed, is difficult to beat. So, too, is seeing just what it is that holds up DiMillo’s floating restaurant.

It’s one thing to paddle the Allagash, the Rio Grande, or the Colorado through the Grand Canyon, but it’s quite another to literally start and end a trip at your home, using no car, plane, or anything else but your arms, legs, and a canoe. So one morning I put my canoe on two wheels at my house in Portland and pushed it across Forest Avenue, one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares. I headed for Back Cove, where the tide, by

car, or bus, it is not an easy trip.

A canoe voyage from place to place involving portages from one body of water to another can be done in many places. It would be quite easy, for example, to find a route to Quebec City by water from almost any place in Maine. Actually carrying out the trip might, of course, be difficult, but keep in mind that Lewis and Clark traversed the North American continent, traveling by boat.

The voyageurs did likewise in Canada, not to mention the continent’s earliest inhabitants. Water is a fabulous means for expanding your horizons and developing a perspective on things that you’d never get by land.

my calculation, was high. I was the only one with a canoe crossing Forest Avenue. Strange glances were abundant. So, too, were the comments from passersby. “Next thing you know,” one person, seeing my amphibious craft, said, “they’ll put someone on the moon!”

Luckily for me Back Cove was indeed full of water when I got to it, so I launched my canoe and got underway into the outer harbor and around the Eastern Promenade. As I progressed from the outer to the inner harbor, the shores started to close in, the boat traffic became more dense, and the need for caution increased. On the Portland side of the harbor, many piers extend out from busy Commercial Street, home to condos, the State Pier, fishmongers, and dozens of other businesses. On the South Portland side are oil tanks, a public boat launch, yacht clubs with dozens of sailboats awaiting the next race or regatta, the Coast Guard base, and numerous residences and condos. All in all, the feeling in the harbor from a small boat is that of a thriving port with much to observe.

A watchful eye, respect for others using the

PORTLAND HARBOR www.maineboats.com

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same water, and a PFD (lifejacket) are indispensable. In a small boat in the harbor, especially a canoe, one has to be careful of the wakes of powerboats, ferries coming and going, etc. One must also exercise caution near the piers. As I rounded each, for example, I glanced around the corner to make sure there were no lobsterboats, scallop draggers,

I was the only one with a canoe crossing Forest Avenue. Strange glances were abundant.

THE STROUDWATER RIVER

or island ferries under way whose path I might cross. While Coast Guard rules of the road say that human-powered craft have the right of way over power craft, the common sense protocol is always to keep clear, as a power craft’s maneuver-

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ability is not as great as that of a canoe.

Wind is always a concern for the canoeist. The day I chose for my paddle up the harbor was a calm one. However, the wind goes every which way in the harbor, and if it and the tides are at odds, a chop can form. The bottom line is that if you wish to paddle around this or any other congested harbor in Maine (or elsewhere), you’ll save yourself many a headache by doing so on a calm or nearly calm day.

Deep into the inner harbor, I passed under Veteran’s Bridge and, with the roar of jets landing at the jetport in my ears, paddled up the Stroudwater River. Luckily, the tide was still high enough to spare me having to slide my canoe over the extensive Stroudwater mud flats. At Stroudwater Village, not far from Tate House, which was built in 1755 and today is a museum (www.tatehouse.org), I put my canoe on wheels again to make the transition from saltwater to the nontidal fresh water of the river.

So far on this trip I had seen a seal in

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Portland Harbor, an osprey, a bittern, a kingfisher, crows, and gulls. Not bad for Maine’s largest city, I thought. And then, paddling upstream on the Stroudwater, a very placid, lake-like ribbon of water, I saw two deer, one in the river right in front of me.

Farther up the Stroudwater I passed beneath a bridge that carries the Maine Turnpike. No one saw me. When people go by at 60-plus miles an hour they hardly ever see the “road� I’m on. My road is much more peaceful, much more scenic, a ribbon of water where road rage is unheard of. Aside from the turnpike’s intrusion on the quiet of the river, this could have been a remote northern Maine stream. Had you dropped me here blindfolded I could not have guessed that I was within three miles of the center of Maine’s largest city.

I paddled about three miles upstream to the point where Spring Street crosses the Stroudwater River in Westbrook. When one embarks on trips like these you have to expect difficulties

and setbacks in the form of mosquitoes, litter—rivers are the dustbin of history; everything, EVERYTHING has been thrown in them—and more. The difficulty here was a waterfall. Waterfalls can

One of the delights of canoeing on rivers is that it gets you wondering a lot—wondering about where the river began, where it is headed, what happens along the way. be problematic for canoes, and this one was no exception.

Climbing over slippery ledges while carrying a canoe over my head to gain

ground from the river was no simple task. A sudden thunderstorm at the moment didn’t help matters, either. I was doomed to get wet either from above or below. To add insult to injury, the very next challenge was a one-mile carry from the Stroudwater to the next navigable water, the Presumpscot River in Westbrook, near the paper mill. On went the canoe wheels again.

The mill in Westbrook also poses problems for the paddler. It literally straddles the Presumpscot River, something environmental laws would never allow today. Because this story is fundamentally about perspective, and because there is no harm in a little mystery in novel approaches to the familiar, let’s just skip over how I worked my way past the mill complex. The object was to get the canoe downstream of the mill. How I did it lies in a healthy dose of abracadabra.

One of the delights of canoeing on rivers is that it gets you wondering a lot—wondering about where the river

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began, where it is headed, what happens along the way, what uses history has made of it, and much more. The water in the Presumpscot comes from near Bethel via Sebago Lake before getting to Westbrook and continuing on to Casco Bay. The river has a rich and varied history, including the development in the nineteenth century of the Cumberland & Oxford Canal for the movement of goods up and down river (in the days when the rivers were essentially roads).

Paper and other mills also exploited the river’s water power. These industrial uses brought about changes to the river, often deleterious ones. Organizations like Friends of the Presumpscot and Presumpscot River Watch are trying to remedy them today.

Paddling downstream from the mill in Westbrook I passed beneath several bridges, including, once again, one carrying the Maine Turnpike. After a golf course, a few bends in the river, and a few more bridges, I came to difficult but scenic rapids. Most canoeists are well

advised to portage around these rapids, and that’s what I did. Seasoned paddlers may choose to run the rapids if all the circumstances are right, but carrying is always a viable option if your skill isn’t up to the demands of the job.

Just downstream from these rapids is the site of the recently removed Eel Weir Dam. Here is where tidewater begins, and here is where I could begin to bask in the glory that I had worked so hard to earn, for I had nearly completed my circumnavigation of fair Portland. As I paddled beneath the roaring cars and trucks on Route 295 and past the Maine Audubon Society’s lovely Gilsland Farm, I pondered why we don’t earmark more of our tax dollars for conservation, for open spaces, for parks, and for those havens where peace just might reign in a very, very troubled world.

Upon reaching the mouth of the Presumpscot River I was greeted by the sight not only of Munjoy Hill, but also of the glorious domes of the city’s sewage treatment facility. And then I worked my way

past the plant where B&M Baked Beans are made—if you enjoy the aroma of beans, you’ll love the atmosphere here— beneath Tukey’s Bridge, and into Back Cove, my starting point. (If you trace my route, you will do well to calculate this part of the trip to be in sync with high tide or else...well... you’ll discover what real mud is like.

Regional tide charts are available at www.maineboats.com.)

I rewarded myself with a short walk to a nearby grocery store for an ice cream. From there it was back across Forest Avenue with the canoe on wheels and more of those weird stares from passersby. People in automobiles just don’t understand people in canoes.

Zip Kellogg is the author of several guidebooks on Maine’s rivers, the Whole Paddler’s Catalog, and a variety of magazine articles. If you’ve been over a Maine bridge, he’s likely been under it. When not on the water he is a reference librarian at the University of Southern Maine in Portland.

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photo Tom Kiley

Rockland, Maine (207) 596-7293 E-mail: info@popesails.com

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Wander Rugged Exterior, Warmly Comfortable Interior

Rick and Karen Miles

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bird A tour of this 90-foot North Sea trawler rebuilt for carrying passengers on expeditions reveals a stout vessel that runs like a fine watch.

BY AVERY BROTT

Wanderbird mounts expeditions to some of the most remote regions of the Atlantic coast. The vessel can take a pounding, but the passengers needn’t. Down below the feeling is one of thoughtful, practical comfort.

www.maineboats.com

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MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

all photographs courtesy Wanderbird Expedition Cruises

D

ON’T LET RICK MILES pierce your ear. I thought this as my hand disappeared into his loaf-sized mitt when we recently met for lunch. I was reminded of a midwinter evening years ago when Rick plunged a sailmaker’s needle through my left earlobe as we hunkered down by a woodstove, sipping rum. Although I haven’t worn an earring in 16 years, the result of that night’s harpooning still looks like a gunshot scar, a reminder that even when you shake hands with Rick Miles you pray that you might get your hand back intact.

Over grilled-cheese sandwiches at Rollie’s Café in Belfast, Rick and his wife Karen described the evolution of finding, buying, and transforming Wanderbird, a 90-foot-long, 140-ton North Sea beam trawler, into a comfortable expedition vessel for carrying 12 passengers on far-ranging cruises, with an emphasis on destinations of cultural, historical, and natural significance.

Seeking a departure from running one of Maine’s famed windjammers, Timberwind, for eleven years, Rick and Karen saw the potential for a roomy, power-driven vessel capable of providing comfortable, eco-oriented voyages for small groups of passengers looking for something off the beaten track and farther afield than Penobscot Bay. After bringing Wanderbird across the Atlantic from Antibes, France, to Rockport, Maine, the couple undertook a full-scale renovation split between boatyards in Maine and Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

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Who wouldn’t want to sail to Labrador in a vessel such as this?

An engineer’s engine room.

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After lunch we went next door to tour the building the Mileses bought to anchor the operation. The business office and storefront where the reservations are taken and Wanderbird merchandise is sold are downstairs. Also for sale are art—including Inuit scrimshaw— and artifacts from their travels to Labrador, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia. Upstairs will be their home when finished, complete with a rooftop aerie offering a view of Belfast Bay across to Castine, but for now the boat comes first.

A brutal northwest wind punished Belfast harbor as we headed down the hill to a pier just upriver from Belfast Boatyard, where Wanderbird lay against the floats, the outsize dock lines easily taking the strain. The vessel was built to operate in weather far surpassing that day’s 30 knots; shouldering into the breeze posed no challenge whatsoever. An imposing, flared bow and commanding pilothouse cut a profile that announced “oceangoing.”

Whether recommissioned for relaxed cruising or not, it was perfectly at home in adverse conditions.

Rick acknowledged that the vessel’s traditional, “working” look helps to ingratiate them with wary locals when Wanderbird steams into small, seldom-visited harbors in, say, Labrador. Once the vessel is alongside a pier in a far-away port, one would be hard-put to not find the Mileses’ operation an engaging one.

Rick and Karen both offer easy smiles and exude the relaxed enthusiasm of a couple who love what they’re doing, and their understated confidence makes it look easy. The two black labs (Pilot and Maggie), two birds (Junior and Finchy Miles), and cat (Hector), who all travel aboard Wanderbird, serve to seal the deal.

Karen threw back the dog on a heavy steel door, and the scope of the vessel’s transformation became clear.

Wanderbird’s rugged exterior belied a bright, warm comfort below decks, enhanced by deeply varnished woodwork and airy saloons kept spacious by expansive windows and skylights. Rick took his leave to continue a project in the chartroom a deck above us; Karen showed me the galley, crew’s quarters, and library as she chronicled the vessel’s transformation from fishing on one side of the Atlantic to whale-watching on the other.

Once the vessel was cleared of old gear and gurry, electrical and plumbing systems were overhauled, a galley was built, six double cabins and a dining coach house were fitted, the galley was refurbished, and the pilothouse electronics were modernized. When I was seen eyeing the raw plywood desk in the Mileses’ private cabin, Karen allowed as how their personal space was only then being finished after four years of cruising, the priority having been to get the rest of the vessel completed first.

Karen, who managed the rebuilding project in Lunenburg, has formal training in architectural design and woodworking, a background apparent in the interior’s thoughtful details: brass handrails and sensibly placed kerosene lamps aren’t just adornments; they’re classically utilitarian. Comfortable settees occupy key vantage points. And though the enamel Glenwood gas stove in the galley isn’t original to the vessel, it fits its MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

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Karen and Rick Miles complement each other well.

He’s the burly, steel-plate, let’s-take-the-engine-apart type; she excels at design and detail. space as if it grew there. Spice racks, book shelves, and half-hull models of the Mileses’ past vessels grace the paneled bulkheads and doorway lintels. Even on that day, cold enough to give the Inuit pause, the space radiated elegant comfort. Anyone who has been aboard a commercial fishing vessel with its liberal use of Formica, linoleum, and Naugahyde will appreciate Wanderbird’s mahogany makeover.

Bracing ourselves for the Arctic blasts coming down the river, we went back outside to get a feel for the deck spaces. The area forward of the house, where midwater trawls once hauled back cod ends full of herring, is occupied by a deckhouse with windows on three sides. Here guests can sit, protected from the elements and warmed by a tiny wood-burning “Little Cod” stove, and still enjoy a view of their surroundings. It is also here that Karen’s cooked-fromscratch meals are served, family-style, ferried from the aft house by one of the six crewmembers.

One of my favorite details here is a remnant from Wanderbird’s fishing days: It is a simple iron togglepin, chained to the forward coaming of the hatchway leading down an elegantly curved ladderway—again, Karen’s handiwork—to the six cabins. Once used to secure the open hatch in place, it could easily have been nipped off during the conversion by a yardworker’s cutting torch; instead, the mechanism was carefully wired in place and remains as testament to the vessel’s working heritage.

The six double cabins are snug but provide full standing headroom for the passengers to dress comfortably. Each cabin—four with double berths and two with singles—is fitted with quilts, reading lamps, framed pictures, a video screen, and its own composting toilet and shower. After I learned that the bath soap is made by Karen in the wintertime, I eluded my creeping sense of underachievement by heading up to check out the pilothouse.

A cascade of 1980s rock ‘n’ roll—Aerosmith, I believe—poured from the top of the ladder. I entered the pilothouse to find Rick rebuilding the area back by the chart table. Next to the gyrocompass, the autopilot, the chart plotter, the radar, and the satellite radio resided a laptop computer, the second (or was it the third?) I’d seen aboard. Obviously, Rick enjoyed his electronics.

Rick turned down the volume and confessed that at the end of the day he’s not always ready to descend to the saloon to play official host, so in the spirit of compromise they’re converting the ample space just www.maineboats.com

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Nobody goes hungry on a Wanderbird expedition.

Rick Miles is the let’s-take-the-engine-apart type; Karen excels at design and detail.

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aft of the pilothouse proper into a second lounge. Here he can put his feet up with the guests at day’s end, yet still enjoy that part of the vessel where he feels most comfortable. Candor like this defines a desirable shipmate.

Karen ventured that partly due to their disparities, she and Rick complement each other well. He’s the burly, steel-plate, let’s-take-the-engine-apart type; she excels at design and detail. Even their differing sleep habits pay dividends: since Karen is a night owl and Rick turns in early, he rises first and therefore not only cooks breakfast for everyone but also proofs the yeast for the day’s baking.

For the guests, days aboard the Wanderbird involve reading, napping, sightseeing, and eating. Having run a windjammer for more than a decade before trading wood for steel, Rick and Karen understand what their guests are looking for—R&R—and provide the accoutrements that allow them to do nothing in comfort, if that is what they want. Rick’s project in the chartroom, for example, will include a raised settee that will allow guests to sit facing forward at a slightly

elevated level, thereby giving them a helmsman’s view of their destination over the foredeck.

Other entertainment amenities include, in the saloon below decks, books, games, and space for educational videos; rattan steamer chairs on the

Karen Miles managed the transformation from fishing boat to expedition vessel. observation decks; two motorized skiffs suspended from davits in which to ferry the guests ashore; and six kayaks and a

lapstrake rowboat for exploration of remote anchorages.

Thus far the couple’s voyages have remained in northern latitudes, with guests participating in pelagic birding, wildlife surveys, and whale-watching (complete with hydrophones and a speaker system to let all aboard listen to the cetaceans’ songs). This summer’s schedule includes observing polar bears and visiting the sparse communities of eastern Canada, including Inuit villages; cruises with special themes—wine-tasting, vegetarian dining, lighthouse tours, and island hiking—are also on the roster.

The final stop on my tour was the engine room, with its green 510-hp Industrie diesel—fuel and air lines all color-coded and exposed for simple maintenance—looking like a contraption straight out of a Thomas the Tank Engine children’s book. Alongside was a workbench with orderly sets of openend wrenches awaiting the next oil change; around the edges of the room were three generators, fuel and lube oil tanks, and a desalination plant.

Totally in his element, Rick bragged

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“We’re not here to get rich,” Rick Miles said.

“Our measure of success is to be able to pay the bills and have just a little bit left over.” about the engine, rattling off horsepower and RPM figures, yet taking the occasion to point out that Wanderbird’s mechanical propulsion is augmented by sail. Indeed, the vessel sports a foreshortened ketch rig that serves not only to steady it while underway and bolster fuel economy, but also to provide a respite from engine noise. Fuel consumption is surprisingly little, Rick said, less than 10 gallons per hour to turn the engine at the comfortable 500 RPM that it takes to move Wanderbird along at seven knots. With 20 knots of quartering breeze, the canvas spread delivers a 20 percent fuel saving. Range without refueling is approximately 4,000 nautical miles. Due to a massive bank of batteries, Wanderbird’s hotel load can be supported for over 12

hours without having to run engines of any kind, making for whisper-quiet anchorages.

Clearly the Miles’s are onto something. Reservations have been steady and growing with each season. “We’re not here to get rich,” Rick said. “Our measure of success is to be able to pay the bills and have just a little bit left over.”

At a glance, one might observe the operation and mistakenly underestimate what they’ve set in motion: Buy boat, make boat nice, take people on boat rides for money, live the dream happily ever after. If only. Having spent some years in the passenger-carrying trade, I have seen what sometimes passes for both captain and crew: too many jaded mariners providing their guests with tepid, unremarkable out-

ings, seemingly remaining in the business due merely to inertia. I came away from my visit to Wanderbird admiring the Mileses for their appreciation of what they have achieved and for providing an experience that comes from a rare mix of talent, experience, and enthusiasm.

As I departed the warmth of the Wanderbird, Rick Miles shook my hand a second time. Once again, I was pleased to see it released unharmed.

Avery Brott is a merchant mariner who returns home to his family in Camden, Maine.

For more information: Wanderbird Expedition Cruises, P.O. Box 272, Belfast, ME 04915. 866-732-2473 or 207-338-3088; www.wanderbirdcruises.com.

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Each spring, alewives move upriver from salt water to fresh, an annual passage to the spawning grounds. Here, they work their way to a fish ladder around a dam.

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Alewives Alosa pseudoharengus

Immediate left: ©2008 Heather Perry. Far right: Maine Historical Society.

T

Joe Tommeleri

FEAST OF THE SEASON

In the spring, in coastal rivers and streams, the alewives run. It’s a sight to see when they do.

HE TIME IS MAY, before the greening that will soon wash over the spring landscape. A pale, fuzzy haze appears in the woods throughout coastal Maine, as white flowers emerge from the slender, leafless branches of certain small trees. These are the flowers of the shadbush, native to the Atlantic coast, so named because it flowers around the same time that millions of shad are leaving the open sea and making their way into coastal rivers and streams.

In Maine, where shad run a bit later than in more southern regions, the flowers are more closely timed with the movement of such other river herring as the alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) and the blueback herring (Alosa aestivalis).

BY CATHERINE SCHMITT Alewives and blueback herring—also known as sawbellies, gaspereau, and graybacks—spend most of their lives in the Atlantic Ocean, but they return to fresh water as adults to spawn in the same lakes and ponds where they were born.

You can watch the alewives run upriver in Using a dip net to harvest migra Damariscotta Mills, at a historic fish ladder ting alewives.

Dennys Stream, Dennysville, circ restored by local residents in 1998. Climb the a 1930. path that zig-zags alongside the steep fishway for a close view of the fish as they crowd into the flumes and pools. Watch the fish as they power their way uphill, pausing to rest between surges. Side by side, they face upstream, driven forward by ancestral urges passed from one generation to the next.

Focused solely on reproduction, they have stopped eating. Occasionally an impatient fish writhes in anticipation of home, a tail flicks the surface in a splash of silver.

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Jake Sullivan waits for the alewife migration to begin on the Orland River.

When they finally surmount the top of the fishway, the alewives will spawn in quiet coves of Damariscotta Lake, one of roughly 90 ponds in Maine accessible to sea-run alewives. Some of the adults will die from exhaustion, others will return downstream to the sea shortly after spawning.

The newly hatched fish will spend the summer in the lake before following their parents to the ocean.

You can tell where the fish are running by watching the sky for hovering osprey, eagles, and gulls. Fish tend to pile up where their route is blocked or slowed by dams or natural falls, attracting human and animal predators. Should you find yourself near Winslow on a late spring day, follow the gulls down to the Sebasticook River below the Fort Halifax dam. As the noises of the falls and cars zooming by on the road above fill your ears, you might see lobstermen gathering bait; they’ll be scurrying around on the ledges below the

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spillway, scooping alewives into plastic crates as a nearby fisherman reels in a big striped bass.

“The feast of the season is alewives,” wrote Robert Peter Tristram Coffin of the fish runs on the Sebasticook River in the nineteenth century, when one million herring would have swum up the river, “for the fattest of the herring have returned, and the land near all the brooks is frosted with their scales.”

The river herring fishery is one of the oldest documented fisheries in North America. Before the Europeans arrived, Native Americans wove sticks in intricate designs to trap migrating fish at the mouths of rivers. Later, the spring fish runs were busy days and nights for early colonists in Maine, who dried, pickled, salted, and smoked millions of the bony fish. Alewives and other river herring represented food after a winter’s scarcity, a sign that the warm season’s bounty had begun.

Commercial harvests of river herring have decreased over the last century all along the Atlantic coast. Steep declines

in numbers in the past few years have forced Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut to place moratoriums on harvesting alewives and blueback herring. In 2006, the National Marine Fisheries Service placed alewives on its list of species of special concern. Commercial landings in Maine have decreased in the

Watch the fish as they power their way uphill, pausing to rest between surges.

Side by side, they face upstream, driven forward by ancestral urges carried from one generation to the next. last 50 years by more than three million pounds, although there has been a slight increase in the last decade.

In many areas, the reasons for the declines in fish populations are still unknown. In Maine, fisheries scientists link local declines to a loss of habitat

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access, either because of dams and other barriers, or because, according to Gail Wippelhauser, a fisheries biologist with the Maine Department of Marine Resources, stocking efforts have been halted.

Where the fish do have habitat access, they are coming back in force.

The fish runs are strong enough in some rivers that alewife harvesting took place in 25 Maine municipalities in 2007, including the town of Orland.

Jake Sullivan tends the herring weir in the Orland River, a short tributary of the Penobscot River.

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The herring weir in the Orland River.

“Got a few so far,” Sullivan told me on the telephone one night last May. Sullivan is quiet, a man who thinks before he speaks and chooses his words carefully. This was only his second year tending the weir.

The next day I found Sullivan at the weir.

An osprey sat in a tree, several cormorants skulked about the rocks, a bald eagle drifted in and out of view, the shiny curved head of a harbor seal bobbed in the distance. As we watched for the telltale ripple on the surface of the river that signifies the fish are running, men stopped by to visit with Sullivan and check on the fish. They clutched cups of hot coffee and talked in modest Downeast accents; most of them, like Sullivan and me, were new to this game.

The alewives may have been nearby that day, but they weren’t running. As much as I wanted to hold a silvery alewife in my hands and feel the sharp serrations on its belly and see the sun reflecting off the grayish-greenishblue of its back, no fish funneled into the maze of sticks that made up the weir. Sullivan and his buddies would have to wait for another day to shovel trapped fish into barrels. What were the alewives waiting for? Some cue, some subtle

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change in temperature or flow that would spur the school upstream.

Alewives will migrate great distances to reach their inland spawning areas, as far as 130 miles in the case of the Penobscot River, although they will also spawn closer to the coast, in freshwater coves behind barrier beaches. The run begins when the water temperature reaches 40 to 50° F, which in Maine occurs any time from late April to the middle of May. Blueback herring and shad arrive about a month later, and by mid-June the herring run is over.

Herring provide food for a vast variety of animals and other fish, whether they are in the ocean during the fall and winter, or in inland waters during the spring and summer. The list of predators includes striped bass, bluefish, weakfish, tuna, cod, haddock, halibut, American eel, rainbow trout, brown trout, landlocked salmon, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, pickerel, pike, white and yellow perch, seabirds, bald eagles, ospreys, great blue herons, gulls, terns, cormorants, seals, whales, otter,

mink, fox, raccoon, skunk, weasel, fisher, and turtles.

Restoring populations of alewives and other herring may bolster other struggling species. For example, when large numbers of migrating alewives are in rivers at the same time that young Atlantic salmon are moving downstream

disrupted the traditional movement patterns and arrival times of inshore spawning populations of Atlantic cod, because cod are a major herring predator.

Theo Willis and Karen Wilson, researchers at the University of Southern Maine, with funding from the Northeast Consortium and Maine Sea Grant, have

What do the alewives wait for?

Some cue, some subtle change in temperature or flow that would spur the school upstream. in spring, alewives are more likely to be eaten. As a result of this “prey buffering,” more of the salmon survive their journey. Some fisheries scientists think that river herring may be a key component in restoring Maine’s groundfish stocks.

According to Ted Ames of the Penobscot East Resource Center in Stonington, the disappearance of river herring may have

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been trying to look for these links in places where river herring are still abundant, such as the Damariscotta River.

“We worked in the Damariscotta estuary this spring, summer, and fall,” said Willis. “As far as we could tell, there were no fish around big enough to eat an adult alewife in the spring. The fall was a different story. From the mouth of the

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Damariscotta River out to the White Islands we caught cod, pollock, mackerel, and a few other species stuffed full of baby alewives.”

Because of the potentially important role of alewives in the ecology of coastal watersheds, much effort has been directed toward restoring river herring populations. River herring will return to a coastal stream when barriers are removed and habitat improved, even after having been absent for many years.

Alewives readily use most types of fishways. Gail Wippelhauser of the Department of Marine Resources said that state-of-the-art fish lifts have been built in many rivers to allow fish to pass upstream over dams. At bigger dams on the larger rivers, such as the Kennebec, Androscoggin, and Saco, fish are collected and trucked to upriver spawning areas. Downstream passages or controlled water releases at hydropower dams allow for the safe downstream movement of adult and juvenile fish. Since the early 1970s, over $12 million has been spent on fish

passages to restore runs of alewives and other sea-run fish in Maine. Wippelhauser said that alewife runs in the Kennebec and Sebasticook Rivers have been steadily high since Edwards Dam was removed in 1999. The Penobscot

the tributaries and ponds they once knew, the herring population will increase, which means that existing runs, such as the one in the Orland River, will improve as well. The more there streams fat with herring there are, the more birds, mammals,

Restoring populations of alewives and other herring may bolster other struggling species. Some fisheries scientists think that river herring may be a key component in restoring Maine’s groundfish stocks.

River Restoration Trust, a coalition of the Penobscot Indian Nation, conservation organizations, state and federal agencies, and the PPL hydropower corporation, is proposing to remove two major dams on the Penobscot River to provide access to hundreds of miles of river herring habitat.

The trust hopes that as fish return to

and other fish will benefit. By encouraging the growth of the herring population, we will encourage the strengthening of our coastal food web.

Catherine Schmitt is a science writer at Maine Sea Grant. Her last article for MBH&H was “Maine Oyster Cult,” which appeared in the March 2008 issue.

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A LETTER FROM HOME

Jan Adkins

The Best Bug-Juice on the Planet

L Yet another use for transmission fluid.

BY BOB ZUBER

www.maineboats.com

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AST BLACK FLY SEASON, when polling my friends and neighbors where I now live (not in Maine) about how they accurately measured blood loss for their medical records, I found that not one had used transmission fluid. When I checked with the locals back home, they all reported that with the fluid, proper blood pressure could be maintained while putting in the peas during planting season—something the sprays, ointments, and screenedin body tents could not claim. This makes me think the transmission-fluid method may have been old man Tottman’s own invention. I describe it here now, because I believe its widespread use could do as much to dramatically decrease the biting insect population as a late-May frost.

Tottman lived on the Waldoboro road in the usual white clapboard nineteenth-century farmhouse with opposing barn. The property was distinguished by a brightly colored five-foot-tall sign nailed to an ancient sugar maple with a trunk that engulfed most of the front yard. The sign read, “Best Maine

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

Christmas Tree, 10 Years Running.” When I asked which ten years, Tottman replied that he had put the sign up about five or so years back and that it was still accurate. He then added that his trees were the best because they were natural. Then he took me out back to see them.

We passed the large asparagus bed, the strawberry beds, and finally the larger plot of soil prepared for peas and corn. There they stood, a majestic row of balsam firs, 60 feet tall. A radiating green color and obviously very happy, they were the proud parents of the smaller balsams that stood spattered across the broad, sloping acres beyond.

Similar parents were along the other three edges of the field. As we walked through the unkempt mix of grasses, elderberry, and occasional wild cranberry, I could see that the field was actually a bog, a huge geological bowl that caught the heat of the bright June sun.

This balsam bowl was also humming, or rather, buzzing. What I first took to be the sound of wind blowing through balsam boughs turned out to be the noise of battalions of insects. Thick, black clouds of healthy mosquitoes, gnats, and black flies rose from our boots as we walked. Still, the number of black flies and mosquitoes seemed to be a little thin for the height of the season. Then I realized that the sound I had mistaken for wind actually came from the greenheads.

Greenheads are the only insect I know that can carry off a piece of flesh that you could weigh on a deli scale. And these particular bad boys were easily an inch long.

They crisscrossed the bog like precision fighter jets, gobbling up the juicier gnats and mosquitoes on each pass. I had just grabbed for my deep woods repellant to defend myself when Tottman turned and said I wouldn’t need that and headed back toward the barn.

Like his field of trees, Tottman’s barn was organized by natural selection. The riding lawn mower was front and center and 85

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A LETTER FROM HOME old mower blades and dust-covered oil and gas cans fanned out toward the large hand-hewn beams that supported the barn’s two stories. It was the usual farmhouse barn that had been in constant use for more than a century.

What was perhaps most striking were the skeletons. The expected rack of moose horns was hung outside above the wide entrance, as with many barns, but there were more remains inside. A complete set of neatly arranged raccoon bones was attached to a sidewall. There were mouse bones arranged with the skull in a mousetrap—a joke—complete with a painted piece of wooden cheese as bait. The bones of a large bird of prey hung by wire from the rafters.

Tottman showed me the tools, buckets, and sacks of pure nitrogen he used to prune and feed his trees. The elder balsams got a whole bag each of nitrogen, burlap and all, which slowly leached to the roots through the year. This made these trees so remarkable that one year, two of his green giants were selected to

be the National Christmas Tree in Washington, D.C. He said it took a committee several months to decide which one would actually make the cut. Tottman then explained how he “shaved” the trees and rolled up his pant legs to show where pieces of shin had been lost to carelessness or not finding sure footing while swinging the razor-sharp pruning blade.

There were several hardhats lying about looking greasy and well used.

Tottman gave me one and took one for himself. He also handed me a pair of thick leather gloves, a cotton handkerchief, and a pint of transmission fluid. He soaked the handkerchief with a healthy amount of transmission fluid, and wiped it evenly over the hardhat. He told me to put the hat on and then issued a stern warning:“Don’t leave your gloves on while wiping your sweat.” Then he said that no bug would so much as light on me as long as I kept the hat clean. I didn’t understand, but having envisioned my bones carefully arranged on the back barn wall, I didn’t ask any ques-

tions. We headed back out to the bog.

Sure enough after some time spent feeding and pruning a tree, Tottman took off his hardhat. It looked like something straight out of a low-budget sci-fi flick. It was completely covered with bugs—their wings stuck in the transmission fluid, their legs still kicking.

Tottman explained that the sweet smell of the fluid was much more enticing than our smell was. He took out his handkerchief, cleaned off the bugs, re-soaked the handkerchief with transmission fluid, and re-coated the hat. He said that we wouldn’t get bitten once if we were careful to keep our hats clean. But, he warned, if we accidentally smeared transmission fluid anywhere near our jugular, it would be like being covered with honey and tied to a pole set atop a hill of fire ants. And with that, I understood.

Bob Zuber is a musician and freelance writer who grew up in Friendship, Maine, where he learned respect for bugs of all kinds, and to keep his hardhat clean.

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OFF THE DRAWING BOARD

all photographs by Art Paine

An Amateur’s Take on a Professional’s Hull

Cranberry Gull: quintessential Caribbean cruiser on a Maine-built hull.

Dick Avery’s Cranberry Gull: an amateur design that rivals those of the professionals.

BY ART PAINE

www.maineboats.com

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I

SPEND ENOUGH TIME rubbing shoulders with professional yacht designers to be able to attest that they don’t often admire amateurs. One obvious motive for that feeling is that yacht design is a tiny bailiwick—there’s hardly enough commerce to feed a few dozen full-time practitioners in all of America without bothersome competition from dabblers on the sidelines. Another motive is the feeling that the complexities inherent in making a boat float right, perform well, and be safe and structurally sound are better left to people fully educated and committed to the art and science of yacht design. Truth to tell, when in the past amateurs drew boats, they have been responsible for plenty of flaws and flops.

I’m an amateur designer myself, one

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

with divided allegiances. On the one hand I’m sufficiently involved as a part-time draftsman to fully appreciate the intricacies of yacht design; on the other, as a reviewer, I occasionally unearth some inventive amateur genius who conjures up a breakthrough in styling or performance. In the latter case I don’t give a hoot about curriculum vitae—excellence deserves its hour in the sun!

Designer/builder Dick Avery, the amateur who configured the boat under consideration from a bare hull onward to completion, is magnificently versatile and talented. His finished product, produced with ambition, cleverness, and economy, will be a huge inspiration to any average boat-nut, especially one with fat dreams and a thin wallet.

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OFF THE DRAWING BOARD I first met Avery in the winter of 1980, in Frenchtown, St. Thomas, the U.S. Virgin Islands. I was captaining boats around, and Avery snagged my anchor by employing me at his bareboat charter outfit, Avery’s Boathouse.

Though a great sailor, he could often be found working in his tiny, stifling hot office sketching away at his ultimate retirement dream boat, a powered “trawler yacht.”

Avery originally became excited about voyaging under power by reading Robert Beebe’s book of that name and wanted to go cruising by turning a key.

He didn’t want 60,000 pounds of boat— rather, 25,000 would do for the same results. First he planned to outfit a Wilbur 39 but found space too tight.

That led him to a 41-foot hull by Duffy, designed by Joel White. It had an easily driven transom shape that drew only four inches. “The boat has a single 415cubic-inch John Deere which, at 1,500 rpm, gives us 65 actual horsepower,” said Avery. “This gives us a range of 2,000 miles on 500 gallons—2 gallons an hour at eight knots. And 8 knots seems really fast for an old sailor!”

The Duffy model had what was wanted for efficiency and comfort on the open sea—a full keel with enough builtdown fillet to depress the engine, good bow flare, plenty of sheer, and as mentioned, a transom break that’s high enough not to create suction at low speed. Dick Avery was looking for a hull

with a wide, wineglassy shape that wouldn’t produce a snappy roll, but rounded in the chine to be easily driven by limited horsepower. He didn’t fear unpleasant motion on the ocean with the chine-less hull, because he’d sketched in flopper-stoppers from day one.

Avery claims his boat, named Cranberry Gull, is much like an offshore Maine lobsterboat because of its high,

One advantage an amateur designer has when he’s also the builder is that he can make improvements in real time. protective bow and because he can stand at the wheel on the bridge and, by stretching his arm out the door, grab a mooring whip. Heck, he could even retrofit a hydraulic pothauler and haul a trap or two. In fact, to port and starboard there are two tiny side-cockpits that make it easy to pick up moorings, handle docking lines, or even shed a tear for Ireland without resorting to pumping the head. It is easy as pie to take the mooring pendant from the Gull’s bow and lead it aft to the steering side, pull up

even with a mooring, and reach down and hook up—without having to go out to the bow during the process.

I’ve never been on a boat on which it’s as easy to move around. You can ascend a short, three-step ladder from the huge after cabin to the pilothouse.

Stay there or turn right around, and it’s an easy few steps up to the flybridge cockpit. In all respects, there is extremely good communication between that aft cabin, specifically the galley portion of it, and the flybridge. Someone at the icebox can honor a request from another “upstairs” for a cool one without taking a step. People—and tropical air—can move easily throughout the longitudinal length of the spaces, and the reason relates to the Joel White hull—the engine is depressed into the built-down, and that results in a nice, low, pilothouse deck.

One advantage an amateur designer has when he’s also the builder is that he can make improvements in real time. For example, Dick Avery and his son, who helped with the building, decided to maximize stability and headroom in the after cabin by lowering the cabin sole a little below what he’d drawn. It meant that the very outer edges of the sole met the slanted haunches of the hull. In my experience with “professional” design, this wouldn’t be commonly drawn. But what Dick Avery recognized was that once he had carpeted that sole, you’d never even notice the outboard aft corners. What you would

Cranberry Gull was laid out by the owner/builder to suit his own particular cruising style and budget.

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notice was the extra inch or two of headroom throughout.

Here’s an actual plus for the designerbuilder. Little advantages that are at variance with a professional’s blueprints are seldom acted on, but they can be when the draftsman is the craftsman.

Having lived and cruised mostly on sailboats, the feeling of elbow room aboard the Cranberry Gull is astounding.

The after cabin is extremely spacious, measuring 12.6 by 14 feet—far larger than the after cabin of the wooden Grand Banks 42 I once inhabited. There are two heads in the boat, but Avery made the after one very tiny, so as not to make much of an impact on this huge room.

Where a design office wouldn’t think of drafting a head without a sink, this one was minimized to the point where a sink is a decided afterthought. In fact, this head probably wouldn’t have a sink at all except that one of Avery’s buddies had a cute little flip-down model that was salvaged from a wreck.

The galley is located on center at the

The pilothouse is large enough for its purpose—navigating the boat—and no more.

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OFF THE DRAWING BOARD forward end of this great room. Again, I’m quite familiar with all the professional spatial standards, and this galley would be judged “too small” by any modern pro.

But Dick Avery managed to scrounge an over-under, counter-level combination cook top and stove, which only extends out about sixteen inches from the bulkhead. Knowing the boat would be used in the tropics, he put his mass into the walls of the refrigerator-freezer box, which is heavily insulated. An Adler-Barber refrigerator unit was installed new in 1996— the wind generator runs it by keeping the batteries charged.

There’s a tiny chart table to port in the aft cabin, very handy to the lower pilothouse. Other features include a big fold-away dining table and a cozy little reading nook just ahead of the door to the afterdeck. The “bunk” is a downright frugal little love seat-sized hide-a-bed from Merrill’s Furniture in Ellsworth; it can sleep two and seat three in its livingroom configuration. (Though shoreside furniture is becoming commonplace in

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powerboats now, at the time the Gull was designed it would have been rare for a professional design office to eliminate a built-in berth.)

The after cabin’s roof was built by laying V-notch cedar planks over sawn mahogany beams, all varnished with two coats of satin. All around the after cabin are big sailboat hatches, five of them.

These are Bomar—just the “economy” inshore models—but, mounted on a vertical wall, they’re more than adequate at keeping out rain and spray.

The forward cabin has a high, builtin permanent double berth with a very comfortable mattress. It has its own head, of course. The sink was designed into the cabin itself—a practice now common with pros but avant-garde at the time this amateur designed it. There is a full-sized fiberglass shower stall of the familiar Home-Depot ilk, which is astutely snugged underneath the pilothouse dashboard.

The way the volume has been maximized in this hull, which is about a foot

shorter than that of a Grand Banks 42, results in a two-cabin boat that seems unbelievably spacious. I suppose there’s no magic going on here; rather it’s mostly the result of Avery’s allotting only enough space to the pilothouse to make it functional for piloting and not partying.

The best partying place in the boat is the flybridge. The boat can be steered from here as well as the pilothouse.

Steering isn’t hydraulic; rather, it’s mechanical—garden-variety sailboat cables and quadrant, gear that Avery trusts and knows how to maintain.

The upper cockpit is laid out with fore-and-aft seating and a central table, much like a sailboat. It’s spacious and comfortable, with bench seats that are long and wide enough to sleep on overnight.

The design of the flopper-stopper bases took advantage of the strength of the outboard box-coamings. Avery has enough of the seat-of-the pants design engineer in him to have beefed up the internals to take anticipated wave-

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induced compression. No quadratic equations were wasted during that process.

The stanchions, cranes, and booms for the flopper-stopper gear are recycled sailboat masts and booms. As Dick Avery was once a licensed dealer for Pearson Yachts, lots of parts and pieces of the boat are cast-off or scratch-and-dent elements of a Pearson sailboat. The head doors—out of a Pearson 42. The marine heads—sailboat stuff. Few professional designers are blessed with this old-fashioned practicality.

I love the look of Cranberry Gull, to some extent because I see elements of many nice types in the blend. I particularly love the aft “scuttle” by which one gains access from the aft cockpit to the cabin. It is surely sound and practical, with enough height for a full-sized Dutch door. The forward end of the pilothouse has a sheltering brow that wraps around in a way I find shipshape, with an outer bead (PVC pipe, I understand) reminiscent of a steel Moran tug.

Communication between the pilothouse and below is straightforward.

There are round, bronze, opening portholes in athe aft head and by the chart table that are not only functional but also reminiscent of Little Toot.

A boatload of Mainers—Merle Hallett of Handy Boat, Barbara Stainton out on Cranberry Isle, Lee Wilbur, and others—have enjoyed the Gull in its southern setting, and all of them, if asked, would sing its praises. In fact the boat so impressed various Mainers that at one point Lee Wilbur had a customer who wanted a copy, so Wilbur actually paid Avery for the right to replicate the design. The way the story goes, though,

at the urging of the customer, Wilbur hired a professional yacht designer to find the space for a bigger gen-set, chop the saloon into another sleeping cabin, and enclose the galley—among other minor changes. The result was nothing more than another garden variety trawler.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I feel this is a design that’s a harmonious whole worthy of a Rhodes, McInnis, or Hargreaves.

Contributing Editor Art Paine is a writer, artist, and photographer who lives in Bernard.

Open Mon-Thurs, 8:30AM–5PM Fri, 8:30AM-3PM 143 Maverick St, Rockland, Maine 207-594-3291 • www.fixturesme.com A DIVISION OF AM PLUMBING & HEATING, INC

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SALTWATER FOODWAYS

Jan Adkins

Cooking Under Pressure

The joys of a sealed pot that allows the cook to scoff at time.

BY SANDRA L. OLIVER

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P

RESSURE COOKERS ARE SCARY or at least, the older ones were. The hissing, the nervous jittering of the rocker weight on top, and the (probably undeserved) reputation for blowing up have frightened off lots of potential users. My mother once told me a story of a new bride who decided to boil eggs in her pressure cooker, a wedding gift, but something went wrong and a stream of scrambled egg was shot all over the ceiling. I don’t know if the story is apocryphal or not. The only bad thing a pressure cooker has ever done to me was to clamp up tight and refuse to open.

It went to the dump with its payload of pinto beans safely trapped inside.

Today’s pressure cookers are descended from a “digester” developed in 1679 by the French inventor Denis Papin. Papin’s cooker was basically a cook kettle with a screwon or clamp-on lid, heated by a furnace below. The precursor also of the autoclave,

it was first used only in institutions and in industry. It extracted all kinds of goodness from cheap or tough cuts of meat. Bones cooked in a digester were left brittle enough to be ground easily into bone meal. The device changed only a little into the mid1800s. It would take another hundred or so years before it would be found in home kitchens.

Beginning around 1900, valves, gaskets, and even pressure gauges were added to cookers and canners. Pressure cookers became more common and popular in the 1930s with the development of a cast-aluminum version. In the 1946 Joy of Cooking, Irma Rombauer enthusiastically reported about pressure cookers, “There is a gadget on the market that permits a cook to scoff at time.” For information about using them, she referred readers to the instruction booklet that came with each cooker. Fannie Farmer’s 1946 Boston Cooking School Cook Book, however, recommended using a pressure cooker for steaming vegetables, and described how to cook chicken fillets in five minutes.

Most pressure cookers now have dispensed with the jiggling rocker weight on top in favor of a small rubber plug that promises to blow and quickly reduce the pressure inside if it gets too high.

Newer models have built-in safety features that keep the lid locked on pretty much no matter what happens. The biggest problem these days comes when the gaskets get worn and leaky; then the cooker takes longer to get up to pressure or drips form around the edge of the lid—inconvenient and messy but hardly dangerous.

A pressure cooker is a handy item for boaters. Besides the advantages of fuel-conservation and speedy cooking, cooking under pressure typically requires less water.

You can have a homemade bean supper without having to soak the beans and cook them ahead. Beets, winter squash, and pumpkins are ready in jig time. For this reason pressure cookers have also won the hearts of vegetarians and frugal bean-eating back-to-the-landers.

On a boat, in only 60 minutes you can serve up chili from a bag of dry beans, water,

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and other ingredients. Rice, dried vegetables, and larger pieces of meat are also ideal for pressure cooker cuisine. People have reported to me that a pressurecooked soup tastes like one that had simmered all day.

Boaters who find their stove fuel running low can convert the pressure cooker into an almost fireless cooker. All you have to do is prepare your stew or soup, bring it up to temperature, and cook it under pressure for about five minutes; then, without letting the cooker lose its pressure, wrap it in pillows and

blankets, and tuck it away until mealtime.

A cruising friend uses the fireless technique for weekend getaways. Friday afternoon, at home, she brings her chili or stew up to pressure on her stove while packing to head out for the weekend.

Then she wraps the cooker in a couple of towels, puts it into a canvas carry bag, and carries it aboard. With the lid clamped on tightly, the contents weather even the roughest dinghy ride without spilling. By the time she and her husband reach their Friday night

Chili con Carne

This boat-worthy version is perfect for a cool-weather cruise, and it works whether you have a pressure cooker or not.

Since this is Maine, where many kinds of beans are readily available, don’t feel obliged to use kidney beans.

Try Jacob’s Cattle, Kings Early, or any one of those other rich, dark-colored beans.

1 cup dried kidney or other beans 3 cups water Cook the kidney beans for 30 minutes at 15 pounds of pressure, or however long your pressure cooker’s instruction booklet recommends. Drain and set aside. The beans may still be firm, which is a good thing since they will cook more when added to the chili.

3 slices of bacon, chopped, or a couple of tablespoons of oil 1 to 1.5 pounds ground beef 1 large onion, chopped 2 cloves of garlic, minced 2-3 tablespoons of chili powder (more or less, to taste) 1 tablespoon of ground cumin 2 teaspoons oregano 1 28-ounce can of peeled tomatoes in purée Brown the bacon in the pressure cooker or stew pot. Pour off excess fat.

Add the beef and onion, and brown them. Then add garlic, chili powder, cumin, and oregano, and stir to coat the meat. Add the tomatoes and beans.

If you are cooking your chili in a pressure cooker, tighten the lid, bring it up to pressure, and cook for about 30 minutes. Take the cooker off the heat and let the pressure drop or hasten cooling by running the cooker under cold water. Otherwise, simmer the chili for an hour. Taste, and correct the seasonings. Serve over cooked rice or crushed tortilla chips, topped with grated cheddar or jack cheese. Serves 4-6.

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THE SKY’S THE LIMIT! at the Owls Head Transportation Museum—home to an operating collection of antique aircraft, automobiles, motorcycles and more.

Our special events include vintage car rallies, antique airplane shows, free Model T rides, biplane ride auctions and children’s activities!

There’s fun for the whole family!

Owls Head Transportation Museum Open Every Day • Year Round

Call For Our Special Event Schedule Located on Rt. 73 in Owls Head, three miles south of Rockland, Maine

207-594-4418 www.owlshead.org

SALTWATER FOODWAYS anchorage, dinner usually just needs a bit of reheating.

New pressure cooker users will benefit from some advice. Read the manual—there are many kinds of cookers out there. Don’t fill any cooker more than half full. Don’t cook noodles or pasta, because they get foamy and block up the vent. Be careful with split peas for the same reason. You are supposed to be able to cook hot cereal in a pressure cooker by adding a little butter or

All you have to do is prepare your stew or soup, bring it up to temperature, and cook it under pressure for about five minutes; then, without letting the cooker lose its pressure, wrap it in pillows and blankets, and tuck it away until mealtime. vegetable oil to prevent frothing and clumping, but you wouldn’t catch me trying that. Don’t cook meat and tender vegetables together unless you are fond of mushy peas; cook the meat first, let the pressure off, add the vegetables, and simmer just until they are done.

One Internet site for boat cooks noted that a pressure cooker could be used as a weapon in an emergency.

Among the advantages mentioned were that it need not be reloaded after use, would not be seized by customs, and could be used even by a child. Of course, just pulling it out of the cupboard might scare some people, which is too bad. A good-quality, well-maintained pressure cooker is one handydandy tool.

Contributing Editor Sandra L. Oliver of Islesboro, is a cook, founder and editor of Food History News (www.foodhistorynews.com), and author of the book Saltwater Foodways.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Sailboat (and Sailor) Maintenance

S

AILBOATS ARE INDIVIDUALS. Each gains a kind of personality by virtue of its class, age, and condition, not unlike the sailors who sail them.

They—boat and boaters—come in many sizes. At our club, where all types of sailing craft are welcome, the fleet on race day looks like an elementary school playground at recess: diverse, chaotic, rambunctious.

Aside from size, the most distinguishing characteristic of a sailboat is beauty: the lines and how it moves in the water (or “commodity, firmness, and delight” as the Roman architect Vitruvius said). Catching sight of a pretty boat is an aesthetic and emotional experience, like falling in love, where a minor act of

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candid admiration leads suddenly— inexplicably, often wildly—to affection, regardless of reason, resolve, upbringing, or budget.

Keeping a sailboat is no less risky a pursuit, and just as intense. Its abundant needs become manifest when the craft is finally hauled ashore, naked, at season’s end. Lying on its trailer or cradle, the captive hull reveals an essential dependency on the sailor for maintenance, repair, refinishing, etc.; in short, for all the nurturing care it requires—and in the style and manner to which it is accustomed.

Truthfully, the relationship between boat and owner is tenuous. It is fraught with anxiety and misapprehension, arising notably from the advanced chemistry of modern boatbuilding, which tends to humble eager but ordinary minds. One’s understanding of the subject, not unlike quantum physics, requires an existential leap— over, say, the chasm separating “glue” from “epoxy.”

Yet today’s technology is like modern medicine to our own small sailboat, which, regrettably, suffers from an incurable disease. We view it on its trailer as a forlorn patient prone on a gurney, for it has “boat pox.” The underwater surface of the hull is covered with tiny pimples that feel like Braille (some call it “tapioca”), which are caused by moisture trapped within the subsurface layers of fiberglass.

Not merely a case of “blisters,” which can be surgically pierced like skin blisters, “pox is a systemic condition,” advises Don Casey in his Sailboat Hull & Deck Repair, one in a series of self-help guides from International Marine (McGraw-Hill).

“Curing boat pox requires the removal of all the gelcoat below the waterline because a hull with pox is saturated throughout and will not dry out unless the gelcoat is removed.”

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Replacing the gelcoat “skin” is no weekend exercise, evident from the several medieval options Casey proposes for removing it: grinding, sandblasting, or peeling it from the body, followed by scrubbing “the stripped surface with a stiff brush.” No flogging is required, apparently, but his next step of “allowing the hull to dry out” is an idea that turns out to be crucial regarding the overall health of our boat.

In fact, we now believe our 30-yearold craft is the victim of a second, related, and equally serious condition called a “wet core,” for which drying out is less a remedy than a life sentence. A wet core is the result of water leaking into the fiberglass shell, saturating any sandwiched “core” materials, such as foam (for flotation) or plywood (for strength).

The water rots the wood, facilitates blisters (or pox), delaminates fiberglass, and, if that were not enough, adds unwanted weight to the hull.

Weight, in truth, haunts the sailboat racer, almost as much as it does the sailboat designer. Today’s dinghies are lithe and inherently unstable, reflecting what columnist/yachtsman Dave Cox in The Sailing Handbook cites as “the breakthrough” in modern sailboat design. “Hitech construction in top-level sailing dinghies has allowed the development of flatter, faster hulls,” he writes. “Better power-to-weight ratios have been made possible by lighter hi-tech materials, and through better use of ballast, whether it be in the form of a bulb at the bottom of an ocean racer’s keel, or human ballast in the form of an entire dinghy crew out on trapeze.”

A “wet core” of captured water slows our otherwise lithe sailboat. It girds the hull with a layer of hidden flab, dulling its movements and confounding what native ability it may possess to “plane.”

One would not easily guess this impairment, however, as the aging boat retains its svelte appearance, composure, and charm (while, under the circumstances, its skipper at his age may not). continued on p. 96 95

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BOOK REVIEWS Health of the boat, health of the sailor. Generously, Cox, in the The Sailing Handbook, includes a final chapter on “Health,” which is rare in books on sailing. This is a good idea, judging from my experience, which, admittedly, is quite limited—we’ve only owned our 15-foot sailboat for five years.

Yet I have managed in this brief time to seek referral on its account to several medical sources, the most recent of which is a basic “symptom and treatment” guide titled Health at Home® Lifetime (5th edition) by Dr. Don R. Powell, a “self-care” reference for “mature adults.” The book is useful, even if kept at home, since all of my ailments have arisen on shore or while docking the boat. They include: rotator cuff tear

(right shoulder), plantaris tendon rupture (left lower leg), and inguinal hernia, plus bruised upper body (chest, both arms), bursitis (left knee), aggravated varicose veins (left leg) arthritis (hands), and toxic dust and chemical vapor inhalation.

Self-help, I’m afraid, extends only so far. We (both boat and I) have required specialized care for our maladies. Some of them, alas, are chronic (boat pox, hernia), for which a devoted regimen of preventative maintenance, low-fat diet, and exhilaration are the only cure.

John Andrews, a retired editor, lives in Bridgton, Maine, and is active in the Lake Region Sailing Club on Long Lake.

Sailboat Hull & Deck Repair

by Don Casey International Marine (McGraw-Hill), Rockport, Maine, 1996. Cloth, 128 pp., $21.95

The Sailing Handbook

by Dave Cox Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 2000. Softcover, 160 pp., $22.95

Health at Home® Lifetime (Fifth Edition)

by Don R. Powell, Ph.D. American Institute for Preventive Medicine,Farmington Hills, Michigan, 2007.

Softcover, 432 pp., $21.95

A Heated Battle Over Wind Energy

I

CAPE WIND: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the Battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound

By Wendy Williams and Robert Whitcomb Public Affairs/Perseus Books Hardcover, May 2007 Paperback, June 2008

96

T’S A SURPRISE when a book on environmental politics reads like a good “whodunit.”

In the hands of skillful authors Wendy Williams and Robert Whitcomb, Cape Wind—about a battle over a proposed wind farm—has a powerful plot reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz. The project’s opponents, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, maneuver behind the curtain, pull strings, and unexpectedly catalyze those who believe the democratic process should not be for sale.

Cape Wind, the first offshore wind farm proposed in the United States, is the “big idea” of alternative energy developer Jim Gordon, who wants to place 130 wind turbines in a 25-squaremile area of Nantucket Sound off Cape Cod, akin to offshore wind projects in Europe. But Gordon’s motivation to offer clean, large-scale renewable energy to New England’s overburdened power grid and to make a profit has met hurdle after hurdle since it was proposed in 2001, including coming up against Cape Cod’s power elite. Gordon never expected that he would be facing a tough opposition made up of old (and

new) money powerhouses, including members of the Mellon family, a myriad of wealthy homeowners on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket (many of whom are oil industry executives), Senator Ted Kennedy and his formidable political muscle, and a raft of politicians wielding power and influence.

In public meetings on the Cape, when talk of wind turbines first surfaced, the first reaction of the privileged was that they did not want the structures because they would obstruct the view from their homes, their yacht clubs, and their sailboats.

According to the authors, the thenpresident of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, former oil executive Doug Yearley, set in motion an enormous PR campaign to make it appear as if the opposition was a grass-roots effort more concerned about the environment than aesthetics; in other words, to ensure it was not perceived as an embarrassing form of NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard).

Wind developer Jim Gordon is described by the authors as steely and

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tenacious, never giving up the cause for innovative clean energy. His workingclass upbringing and lifelong career in energy-efficiency engineering and power generation (from gas to wood chips) add to his portrayed persona as a Rocky Balboa-like figure, never caving in to the opposition’s tactics.

According to the authors, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney played a key role for the opposition, some of whose members were his major financial supporters who owned expensive homes on Nantucket Sound. Touting his support for renewable energy projects on one hand, Romney denounced wind farms as “not pretty” and suggested placing them elsewhere— perhaps in the Berkshires or another part of Massachusetts. Ditto for Kennedy, who opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, yet was virulently against a renewable energy project that could supply 79 percent of the power needed for the daily energy demands of the Cape and islands without oil dependence and pollution. Cape Wind could reduce the demand for oil for power generation and lessen the number of oil barges (currently 600 per year) passing through nearby Buzzard’s

Bay, which got a taste of disaster in 2003 when a barge spilled about 100,000 gallons of toxic-grade oil into its waters.

Fed up with oil spills, the Coalition for Buzzard Bay’s president, John Bullard, pointed out, “Most political leaders only want to evaluate the project in comparison to a pristine environment….There is smoke coming out of stacks today. There is oil in the water and in the mud today because of fossil fuel as an energy source.”

The authors highlight some odd alliances made during what they call the “Seaside Civil War.” Greenpeace was talking to GE, the turbine manufacturers; conservative Republicans in Congress were listening to alternative energy advocates; labor worked with environmental leaders; and the Bush administration’s Under Secretary of Energy agreed with New England grid operators that offshore wind development was needed.

The players in this high drama were not just those invested in the fate of the proposed site, tony Nantucket Sound.

They included Gordon’s coalition of supporters, who were tired of dirty air from polluting power plants, and members of Congress, who were fueled by the

opposition’s deep pockets for lobbying and buying favors.

The authors know a thing or two about the project’s long controversy and about the players. Whitcomb, as vice president and editorial page editor of The Providence Journal, had published opinion pieces early on. As a science writer living on Cape Cod, Williams had written extensively about the project, wondering why opposition to this particular venture was so virulent.

Both say they were drawn to the story by the drama—a single entrepreneur meets fierce opposition from a cadre of elite players—a big story with national, rather than just regional, impact.

For Cape Wind’s supporters, the project has become a symbol for the issues of climate change and cleaner air, renewable energy, and the battle for good governance. Williams wrote, “In my 30 years as a journalist, I had never seen such a brazen attempt to obstruct the democratic process.”

In March 2007, Massachusetts gave the Cape Wind project environmental approval; the federal review process will render a decision some time between 2008 and 2010.

— Linda Hedman Beyus

Childhood Freedom SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS

(series)

by Arthur Ransome David R. Godine, Publisher Jaffrey, New Hampshire ©1980, 14th printing in 2005 Paperback. www.godine.com

R

EADING BEDTIME STORIES to your children is one of the best things you can do for them. It instills a love of language, reinforces the parent/child bond, and sets up the rhythms for sleep. For the parent this can be a blessed time and (depending on the book) an extraordinary bore. Far too many children’s books are just awful, even on the first run-through.

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Great children’s literature is hard to find. The story lines are too basic and the moral lessons too forced.

Great boat stories suitable for children are even less common. As far as I can tell, Arthur Ransome is one of the few to have pulled off this double whammy with his Swallows and Amazon series.

These books have entertained my family, children and adults alike, for the last year or so. The characters that Ransome crafted, and their exploits from three quarters of a century ago are real enough for my children to speak of them as friends. These books are magic, especially to those who are boat besotted.

Arthur Ransome, an Englishman, was born in 1884; he lived in interesting

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BOOK REVIEWS times. As a young writer he penned Bohemia in London and soon after that, published a biography of Oscar Wilde.

He was sued for libel over the latter. He covered the Russian Revolution as a journalist, and fell in love with Trotsky’s secretary, whom he subsequently married. Some say he was a spy. Roland Chambers will publish a book about this whole segment of Ransome’s life titled either Swallows, Amazons and Trotsky, or The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome.

Ransome summered a good part of his life in the Lakes district of England, and it is here that the first of his children’s stories, Swallows and Amazons, is set. Ransome can be a lyrical writer, and his description of the region is wonderful. The book is the story of the Walker family: the father a naval commander who is away much of the time (as he is through most of the books in the series), the mother with a new baby, and the four older children, Roger at age seven, Titty, Susan, and John, the oldest at about twelve or fourteen. The family is summering by the lake and has a small sailing dinghy named Swallow. They soon meet up with the Blackett girls with their dinghy, Amazon. The boat crews, pirates and explorers all, settle into a campsite on Wild Cat Island. The adults (or natives, as they are called in the books) are mostly invisible, mainly good for the cold milk they bring daily from the local farm.

Today, when nanny boats escort Optimist dinghies around the race course, this childhood freedom seems mythical.

It is this freedom that makes the stories work so well. The children are assumed to have some sense, the parents for the most part are pleased with the wisdom they’ve bestowed. The rest is life.

Ransome’s journalistic eye for the details of rural life in 1930s England paints without romance scenes that are long gone: charcoal burners working their trade, loggers and their horses, steam ferries, working Thames barges, daily milk from the local farmer. So few years ago, so far gone.

Ransome also works well the changing focal length of the lens of reality as 98

experienced by children, the merging of today and the imaginary.

As soon as they had watched Swallow’s brown sail disappear beyond the Look-out Point and the north end of the island, Able-seaman Titty and the boy [Roger] left the landing-place and went to the harbour.

“This isn’t a secret place,” said the boy.

“Any place is a secret place if nobody else is there,” said Titty.

“Besides, we’re going up on my rock, where I was when I saw the bird that bobbed and flew under the water.”

“Will the bird be there?”

“I don’t know. He may be.”

“Then it won’t be secret.”

“Yes it will, birds don’t count....”

I have overheard similar conversations, mixing the real and the surreal, between my sons.

For the most part the adventures in Ransome’s books are small—groundings, fog, and nighttime sails—although in the book We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea the Walker children sail across the North Sea to Holland after a broken anchor rode sets them adrift. The action is in keeping with the size of the heroes, but it was dramatic enough to keep young Jack, my son, twitching with excitement.

Much of the appeal of the books is that the heroes can just as likely be the girls as the boys. Nancy Blackett is a great character, and one with whom Ransome felt such a bond that he named his yacht after her. (The Nancy Blackett is still sailing and is a British maritime treasure.) The villains, when the books have villains, usually commit crimes against nature, stealing eggs from endangered species and the like.

The main characters are feminist and ecological heroes way before their time.

There are 12 books in the series, all in print in beautiful trade paperback editions published by David R. Godine.

Some of the books are set in the Norfolk Broads and have a different set of characters. My favorites, the Death and Glories, involve the working class sons of

boatbuilders (as enlightened as the books are, it is still the England of the 1930s with all those class distinctions).

Others are set at sea, some in the hills. All of the books have worked well as bedtime reading in my house, but not all are of the same caliber. The more boat in the book, the better, I say.

It is Ransome’s love and knowledge of boats that rings true in his writing.

The following passage comes from We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea: The chicken coop, with that soaking wisp of fur on it, was already astern of them when Roger suddenly shouted, “It’s alive!”

“It can’t be.”

“I saw its pink mouth.”

And then, as the chicken coop lurched away astern, all four of them saw that pink mouth open again, just a little, as if the kitten, too weak to shout, were whispering a cry for help that they could not hear.

“We must save it,” cried Titty.

John was already hauling in the main sheet. “When there is a man overboard always jibe.” He could see the printed sentence as he had read it in the book on how to sail. Gosh he was glad the sail was still reefed and that the wind had fallen light. “Now, then, Susan, bring her round.

No…No… To port… Come on… Round with her…I’ll look after the backstay.…

The boom swung over as the Goblin turned sharp on her heel and headed back, close-hauled into the wind. Frantically John made his backstay fast, let go one jib sheet, flung himself across the cockpit and hardened in the other.

Yes, they saved the kitten. Both the readers and those being read to shared a sense of relief after such a passage.

I have always thought that words and boats go well together, but few have ever done it as well as Arthur Ransome and his Swallows and Amazons series.

I recommend that you give the books a try even if you or your children are no longer of bedtime-story vintage.

—John K. Hanson, Jr.

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BOOK REVIEWS

A True Tale, Far Stranger than Fiction

BLOOD AND FIRE:

The Duke of Windsor and the Strange Murder of Sir Harry Oakes

by John Marquis LMH Publishing Limited, 2006 Softcover, illustrated with photographs

I

F EVER YOU WANTED PROOF that truth can be far more intriguing than fiction, then you ought to devour John Marquis’s Blood and Fire, the latest among several books written over the past 60 years about the murder of Sir Harry Oakes in Nassau, the Bahamas.

For those not familiar with the story, Harry Oakes was a nobody, born in Sangerville, Maine, and educated at Bowdoin College in Brunswick. Not content with intellectual pursuits, he attempted, with inexplicable yet unflagging support from his extended family, to search literally around the world for gold. After 20 years of hardscrabble, tireless effort, not without punctuation by rough-riders and double-dealers, he not only struck it rich in Canada but soon became the wealthiest person in the entire British Empire. With a pile of money and not a little charity, he purchased himself a

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title just prior to World War II. Thus, Sir Harry.

My personal interest in this would never have developed were it not for the fact that one of Oakes’s many mansions, “Atlantic Oakes” in Bar Harbor, was being razed in 1976. I’d just bought a tumbledown house lacking amenities on the more humble side of Mount Desert Island. Friends told me of a huge, beautiful, ornate bathtub in the Oakes house and some other nifty plumbing fixtures. For $50 and several days’ effort by five brutish beer buddies, we managed to place this extravagant, two-seated affair onto my driftwood foundation. The tub being an almost-immovable object, I built my bathroom around it; the tub resides there in splendor to this day.

Only two dozen years later, while in the Bahamas, did I hear anything whatsoever about Oakes, his life, and his gruesome death—his son-in-law was apparently “framed” for the murder. On the other hand, always lucky, I seem to be drawn to wonderful good fortune. In time, nobody was more shocked and bemused than I to discover that I had a golden touch with stock trading. At no point did it occur to me that this might be connected to my bathing in the same crockery as Maine’s Midas Man. Oakes hated taxation and thus was eventually drawn to tax-free Nassau. He soon owned half of New Providence Island. To his credit, he became a champion of fair treatment for the majority population, which consisted of poor black folk.

Sir Harry Oakes was murdered. His body was found oozing blood in indescribable ways; an attempt had been made to set fire to the scene. Who was responsible? Nobody knew. As if all this wasn’t already grist for a fine detective potboiler, onto stage right bounded none other than the Duke of Windsor, who had only a couple of years previously abdicated the throne of England, famously declaring, “I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of

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responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.”

At the time of Oakes’s murder, the duke was the governor of the Bahamas.

Enough? Hardly. The cast of characters included the duke and his friends, Nazi sympathizers, rum-runners, playboys, two gold-digging counts (one of whom—twice divorced—married good Sir Harry’s eldest daughter two days after her eighteenth birthday), corrupt cops, good cops, and a stool-pigeon or two.

The tale had more twists than anything Shakespeare or Stephen King could dream up, and although I’ve read several out-of-print “Who Killed Sir Harry Oakes?” tomes, Marquis’s is as plausible as any and better written than all.

Each version of this amazing detective intrigue points the finger of blame at a different culprit, and I’m not about to… oh, heck... I’ll do it. I’ll reveal that to this day nobody knows for certain who done the deed. I’ll also reveal that Sir Harry Oakes arrived in Nassau with $200,000,000 (that’s two hundred million dollars), by common reckoning.

When the lawyers divided up his legacy (according to Blood and Fire), a mere $12,000,000 was parceled out. And, in the following 16 years, 16 additional mysterious deaths befell persons connected to the principal characters and others who delved into the details.

I have formed strong friendships throughout the Bahamas and still, when I have attempted to unearth any theories, I’ve been met with stony silence or, worse yet, earnest warnings. There are rumors extant about Canadian gold spirited off to Mexico on a blacklisted Swedish industrialist’s yacht. People who eventually bought Oakes’s mansions on Eleuthera Island, and in England, Palm Beach, and, likely, Bar Harbor, are reported to have torn the landscape asunder in search of the missing millions.

As for me, I still have my massively heavy bathtub. I think I’ll have it assayed.

— Art Paine

99

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www.TCREAL.com/mbh

ELLSWORTH: This exquisite French Country Estatestyle home boasts 6,500 luxurious square feet with four bedrooms, five baths, a refreshing in-ground pool with pool house and glorious gardens surrounded by beautiful Branch Lake. #866647 $1,795,000 Russ 800-639-4905 RKH@tcreal.com

NORTHPORT: Quintessential Maine 5-BR seasonal cottage is nestled among bold cliffs in Saturday Cove.

Supreme sunrises and 103 feet of glorious Penobscot Bay views. A great place for family and friends to gather. #867478 $675,000 Pat 800-233-7250 patjones@tcreal.com

ROCKLAND: This elegant 1905 home is a John Calvin Stevens design, located on Broadway, within walking distance to harbor and downtown! Fireplace, unspoiled woodwork, beautifully landscaped. Overflowing with charm. #875125 $399,500 Lorrie 800-310-6371 lorriez@midcoast.com

BANGOR • BELFAST CAMDEN DOVER-FOXCROFT ELLSWORTH HAMPDEN PITTSFIELD

REAL ESTATE ✯ Fine Homes and Cottages

OWLS HEAD: Newly renovated 3-bedroom home with sparkling views of Rockland Harbor. Deeded access to the water is a minute away. Two-car garage, 1.75 baths, 0.3-acre lot, sunny deck. Two miles from downtown Rockland. #870864 $349,000 Lorrie 800-310-6371 lorriez@midcoast.com

,,.

visit

ROCKLAND SKOWHEGAN

www.camdenre.com f o r a l l M a i n e l i s t i n g s

Rockport Village~ Distinctive home overlooking the harbor. 5-BRs, period details, living rm FP & harbor view. $1,395,000

Coastal Rte. 1, Lincolnville~ Two buildings for the price of one. Near ferry terminal, great retail space & location! $595,000

Belfast Waterfront~ Stunning Shingle Style 4-BR home with small beach & gorgeous harbor & bay views. $1,150,000

Taking Real Estate to a Higher Level

Chestnut St., Camden~ 3-BR Colonial in need of updates, incl. separate cottage.

Near harbor and yacht club. $650,000

Camden REAL ESTATE C O M P A N Y

43 Elm Street, Camden, Maine 04843 102

Lincolnville~ A great water value! 2-BR Townhouse with great bay views, clubhouse, pool, tennis and pier. $335,000

207-236-6171

800-236-1920

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

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EAGLE ISLAND, NORTHEAST OF NORTH HAVEN: 18-acre saltwater farm on FOX ISLAND THOROFARE,VINALHAVEN: NORTH HAVEN: 26 acres with 1500' water- UPPER PULPIT HARBOR and the Mill Pond. 4-plus acres with 380' bold oceanfront. Dock front, pebble beach, 2 cottages and panoramic views over much of the eastern bay. $1,295,000

1830s Cape and 2 outbuildings. Rolling open fields with water views in almost every direction. $695,000 Great restoration project.

NORTH HAVEN: South Shore Road 55+ acres with 900' road frontage and 1200' waterfront on Fresh Pond. Two septic sites, survey pending. $495,000 Would make a great farm.

LANES ISLAND,VINALHAVEN: Waterfront VINALHAVEN: Overlooking Arey Cove and 4-season home next to 45-acre nature preserve.

Cedar siding, new windows. Five bedrooms, 2½ baths, with water views out most every window.

View all the way to South America. $1,495,000

designed. Boathouse/cabin in place. Can support 2 houses. Sunset view over Crabtree Point to the Camden Hills. A very special property. $799,000

East Penobscot Bay. Views to Isle au Haut and Brimstone islands.This 4-bedroom, 4-season home with separate guest quarters is special. $550,000 Deeded water access.

SANDS COVE, VINALHAVEN, WORKING CARVERS HARBOR, VINALHAVEN: VINALHAVEN: Overlooking Mill Stream WATERFRONT: 100' deep-water granite-faced 100-year-old storefront with living quarters Pond, 4-bedroom Contemporary Cape with 2 full wharf. One-bedroom house with seasonal water $350,000 & sewer. Mooring included.

upstairs. Granite-faced wharf. Wonderful view $295,000 down the harbor.

baths, wood floors, walk in basement, in sunny $395,000 location.

NORTH HAVEN: 203 Main Street, Victorian VINALHAVEN, VILLAGE VICTORIAN: NORTH HAVEN: Three-bedroom, seasonal Farmhouse. Four-bedroom year-round home “Hidden Treasure” 1888 home near 40-acre park, with attached shed. Many original built-in cabi- easy walk downtown. Cyprus woodwork, most $189,900 originality intact. $295,000 nets. New roof.

THE ISLAND GROUP Box 168, Vinalhaven, ME 04863-0168

www.maineboats.com

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MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

home with small barn on the outskirts of town.

Walking distance to ferry and downtown.

$149,900

WESLEY REED 207-863-2554 wreed@jaretcohn.com

103

REAL ESTATE ✯ Fine Homes and Cottages

N O RT H H AV E N * V I N A L H AV E N

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One Summit Road P.O. Box 367 Northeast Harbor, ME 04662 207.276.3322 info@knowlesco.com

www.knowlesco.com

!

sting

Li New

Fairweather Northeast Harbor - This stunning shingle-style resi-

Distinctive island and oceanfront properties

REAL ESTATE ✯ Fine Homes and Cottages

dence offers a waterfront location in Northeast Harbor.

It boasts well-landscaped 2.82+/- acres with 208+/- feet of shore and a separate carriage house with apartment. $7,900,000

Fairwinds Northeast Harbor - Fabulous views of Islesford and Little Cranberry are enjoyed from the many vantage points of this classic Northeast-style home. Cutting gardens accentuate this sun-filled 6-bedroom, 5-bath home. $2,500,000

Fern Rock

Mountain View Farm

94 Shore Road

Northeast Harbor - Built in 2000, FernRock sits gracefully on 2.10+/- acres of naturally landscaped land. This 3-bedroom custom built home is close to the village and abuts Acadia National Park. $1,950,000

Bar Harbor - Offering captivating mountain views, the property features 92+/- acres of pristine beauty.

The vintage 1850’s barn has had some structural renovation, and is set amoung meadow pasture, apple trees and lilacs. $1,750,000

Manset - Set on .35+/- acres, this 4-bedroom and 3-bath home enjoys views of Southwest Harbor and the mountains of Acadia National Park. Conviently located close to the village center and all that Mount Desert Island area has to offer. $1,175,000

Coolidge Cottage

Lighthouse View Lodge

Sand Point Cottage

Trenton - Enjoy the best of Maine coast living at this charming Trenton retreat. Coolidge Cottage sits on 140+/- feet of shorefront. House and guest house consist of 4 bedrooms & 3 baths. $925,000

Swans Island - Magnificent views of Hockamock Head Lighthouse are enjoyed from this property with 3 bedrooms. Towering granite fireplace; large deck; great loft area; lots of living space. $799,900

Bar Harbor - Offering .49+/- acres, 115+/- feet of shore and a shared dock, this 2-bedroom cottage is newly renovated and there is an additional guest cabin. Wonderful views of Frenchman Bay. $799,000

!

sting

Li New

Nicholson Cottage

Cedar Knoll

Seamarks

Northeast Harbor - Offering a private setting within the seaside village of Northeast Harbor, this 4-bedroom home is close to all village amenities, protected harbor and Acadia National Park attractions. $765,000

Bar Harbor - Cedar Knoll enjoys a private setting on 5.2+/- acres with views of Western Bay. Home consists of 3 bedrooms, 3 baths and a 2-car garage with storage. $695,000

Little Cranberry Island - Once an inn, this seasonal 12-bedroom, 4-bathroom home on 1+/- acre, has views over Eastern Way and Bunker’s Ledge to Acadia, and a right-of-way to a pebble beach. $650,000

Professional Service in Real Estate, Property Management and Vacation Rentals Since 1898

104

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

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Winter Harbor, Maine

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Story LitchямБeld 207-276-3840

John Saint-Amour 207-874-6160

John Saint-Amour 207-874-6160

East Boothbay, Maine

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South Bristol, Maine

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John Saint-Amour 207-874-6160

John Saint-Amour 207-874-6160

John Saint-Amour 207-874-6160

Harpswell, Maine

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Owls Head, Maine

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John Saint-Amour 207-874-6160

Terry Sortwell 207-236-3543

Terry Sortwell 207-236-3543

Exclusive Affiliate of

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HISTORIC CASTINE Immaculate property privately situated on 8.5 acres with 1,400 feet of shorefront on the beautiful Mill Pond leading to Penobscot Bay. Two-stall barn/studio and fenced paddock make this a perfect spot for a horse or two. The main residence includes hardwood floors, gourmet kitchen with soapstone counters, master-bedroom suite, and a full, heated walkout basement. For guests there is a complete two-bedroom apartment over a full 3-bay heated garage. Beautifully landscaped with a large vegetable garden, broad lawns to the shore, and a floating dock for swimming, canoeing, or kayaking.

Located minutes from Castine’s postcard village and harbor. $1,495,000

Endicott Real Estate Agency 21 Main St., Castine, ME 04421 • 207-326-8741• www.endicottagency.com

FREEPORT: Spacious 3-BR, 2.5-BA colonial with perennial gardens, granite walls & brick patios on 2.5 acres.

Close to the harbor. $461,600

Steve Drake, KELLER WILLIAMS REALTY 207.553.1307 or 207.671.7190 www.stevedrake.us

Residence and Workshop: Kittery Point 15' x 31' Boat Shop plus charming updated, readyto-move-into 2-BR 1890s Maine cottage with small building renovated for office/studio. Walking distance to water.

Perennial gardens. $400K

REAL ESTATE ✯ Fine Homes and Cottages

207.451.9420 • email boatshopkp@gmail.com

COMPASS POINT real estate 75 Main St. • P.O. Box 52 • Blue Hill, ME 04614 207-374-5300 • Fax 374-8836 info@compasspointrealestate.com • www.compasspointrealestate.com East Blue Hill: Open, light, and welcoming describes this recently built home complete with custom finishes, a living room with fireplace, wood floors throughout and well-chosen light fixtures.

Nestled into a new subdivision this house offers 3 bedrooms and views of the pond. $455,000 Sedgwick: Waterfront property with an excellent village location offers beautiful views of the Benjamin River. First floor could be a gallery, shop, store, or home.

Have a business and live in the 2bedroom apartment above. Lots of potential! $359,000 Cape Rosier: Sea Glass, a stunning shinglestyle home with deep-water frontage and views overlooking Islesboro and the Camden Hills. A fabulous property boasting dramatic banks of windows, ocean views, incredible sunsets, 4 bedrooms, gourmet kitchen, lovely gardens, gravel beach, and potential for a fair-weather mooring. $1,890,000

Virtual tours on website 106

If you’re looking to buy a new boat or have a boat to donate, don’t miss this auction. For more information, call 207-236-3375 or visit www.penbayymca.org

Island of Islesboro, Penobscot Bay Homer Cottage: A Boater’s Dream First built in 1892 and renovated 1990-92 and 2006-07, this beautifully restored winterized cottage contains 3500± square feet and features 5 bedrooms, 4½ baths, and 3 fireplaces. The property consists of 2½± acres of newly and extensively landscaped lawn and field with 100± feet of prime frontage on Ames Cove, Gilkey Harbor. A 110' dock and privately owned mooring are included in the sale. $2,250,000

Classic Salt Water Farm This property is truly a rare find on Islesboro. A very private salt water farm on 22½± acres with 550'± of beach frontage on West Penobscot Bay. The year-round residence (3000± sq. ft.) includes a front parlor with bay window, den/music room, dining room with built-ins, large, eat-in kitchen, laundry, full bath, and very large master bedroom all on the first floor. The second floor contains three bedrooms and one full bath, plus a large office space over the master bedroom. There are front and back stairwells, and closet and storage space is generous throughout the house. A separate dwelling will serve, when finished on the interior, as a fine guest house. $1,695,000 William S. Warren, Broker P.O. Box 38, Islesboro, ME 04848 email wwarren@midcoast.com www.warrenrealtyme.com

Tel (207) 734-8857 • Fax (207) 734-8883 • Cell (207) 230-4040 MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

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April / May 2008

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BROKERAGE ✯ Fine Yachts ✯ Power and Sail

30' Channel Cutter by Sam Devlin, 1985. A perfect coastal cruiser and more. Meticulous owner has bought a larger boat. Exceptionally well equipped including 2 rigs (one in-mast furling).

An offering without equal in its class.

Motivated seller. $89,000

124 Horseshoe Cove Road Harborside, Maine 04642

207-326-4411 Located at Seal Cove Boatyard, Inc.

207-326-4422

30' Atkin gaff-rigged cutter, 1991.

Finished above and below to a Bristol standard. Professionally maintained.

Varnished teak brightwork. Exceptional design in near mint condition. $59,000 26' Francis by Morris Yachts, 1977.

A very stable sailer for coastwise or more ambitious passage. Good condition and well equipped. Very reasonably priced at $19,500.

2003 Herreshoff Alerion 26 daysailer. Classic, beautiful, full keel, fiberglass hull w/teak trim. Flag blue. Cuddy cabin, v-berth, sink, head, large cockpit.

Roller furl, self-tacking jib.Yanmar diesel. $72,500

New2008 Harbor 20 daysailer.Classic lines w/modern underbody and rig. Fast, easy handling. Self-tacking/roller furling jib. Huge cockpit, full battened main w/lazy jacks.Electric motor option.From $26,000

New 2008 Harbor 25 cruiser/daysailer. Stunning new design combines classic looks, performance hull shape, roomy cockpit, cabin w/4 bunks, head compartment, inboard. Standard Boat $74,995

1948,Kettenburg PCC 46' fractional rig sloop.Recent refit 2005-07.New deck,mast,rigging,Doyle main & jib.

Fast,gorgeous classic,ready for ERR & MOY regattas.

Galley, 4 berths. Affordable, big daysailer. $49,000

40 Mac’s Harbor, Stratford, CT 06615 • 203-380-2227 • info@proper-yachts.com

Demo Sale 207-236-3149 Fax 207-236-9641

bill@rocknaks.com www.rocknaks.com

Gray & Gray, Inc. 36 York Street York, Maine 03909

Tel: 207-363-7997 Fax: 207-363-7807

E-mail: graygray@gwi.net

32' Wittholz “Chinook” trawler, 2007 $198,000

www.grayandgrayyachts.com

41' Carroll Lowell/Kass cruiser, 1991 $285,000

36' Sabre 362, 1994. Shoal draft, very clean. $159,000

J/46, 2002. Best equipment for offshore. $475,000

45' Wauquiez Centurian, 1993. Quality performance cruiser. $220,000

34' Sea Ray 340, 2006. As new, low hours. $199,000

New Listings:

38' Wilbur FB cruiser, 1981 $229,000

43' Caroll Lowell HT, 2002 $499,000

46' Hidden Harbor 46, 1976/2004. Offshore veteran. Value at $99,500 43' New York Thirty, 1905/2002. Herreshoff classics (2). From $250,000 40' Hinckley 40, 1964. Fully upgraded, nice condition. $123,000 40' C&C 121, 2001. Refined performance cruiser in excellent condition. $210,000 38' Hinckley, 1969. Fast, upgraded Sparkman & Stephens design. $89,000 36' Grand Banks 36, 1982. Very well maintained/upgrades. $129,900 36' Sabre 362, 1994. Very clean, upgraded, shoal draft. $159,000 34' Weber’s Cove flybridge, 1985. Volvo diesel, 15-16 knot cruise. $99,500 33' Buzzards Bay 25, 1999. Cold-molded, excellent condition. $125,000 31' Island Packet, 1987. One owner, clean and simple. $59,000 30' Catalina 30, 1989. Well-maintained. $34,900 30' Cape Dory 30, 1984. Original owner. $49,900 28' Custom Peterson cutter, 2004. Exceptional. $195,000

KINGMAN YACHT BROKERAGE 40' Hinckley B-40 MK III yawl, 1979 $239,000

www.maineboats.com

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36' Newman FB $169,500

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

GED DELANEY & DOUG WEBER, BROKERS One Shipyard Lane – Cataumet (Cape Cod), MA 02534

508-563-7136 • Fax: 508-563-6493 www.kingmanyachtcenter.com

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LAWRENCE L. WARNER YACHT BROKERS F/V Angler is a state-of-the-art, USCG-certified charter fishing vessel.

Custom built in 2003 this 65' vessel is jet driven w/three series 60 Detroits rated at 740-hp each. Equipped with two generators, full electronics, and safety equipment. Offers welcome. $740,000

36 Jarvis Newman, 1978. One-owner boat. 22' Marshall Catboat. Comfortable, elegant Many upgrades. Best price on the market. shoal-draft cruising. Boating made more fun Located in S.E. MA. Reduced to $85,000 and affordable. Several available. Call for location and pricing.

Custom hardtop cruiser is a fine example of a Duffy 35 that has been finished to an exceptional level. Varnished cedar and mahogany details on the decks and throughout the interior. New engine. The configuration and equipment allow for enjoyable overnights as well as comfortable day trips. $139,000

POWER 46' Egg Harbor sportfisherman, 1977.....$64,000 38' Carver Santego, 1988......................... $79,500 36' Monk trawler, 2006...........................$310,000 35' Duffy hardtop cruiser, 1990.............$139,000 34' Silverton convertible, 1978 ............... $23,500 33' Compton Marine Compton, 2005...$317,000 33' Sea Ray Sundancer, 1996 ...................$84,500 32' Ocean convertible, 1989 ....................$80,000

26' General Marine bass boat, 1990........$45,000 23' Mako cabin w/fish pac, 1979.............$14,500 22' Aquasport cuddy, 2004.......................$47,000 22' C-dory cruiser, 2003 ...........................$39,900 22' Eastern cabin, 1988 ............................$15,000 16' Penn Yann strip tight, 1951.....................$900

SAIL 40' Crocker gaff rigged, 1939 ...................$29,000

BROKERAGE ✯ Fine Yachts ✯ Power and Sail

65 Kensington St. • Portland, ME 04103 207-347-4237 207-347-4238 FAX • 207-653-3773 MOBILE www.mycsales.com • sales@maineyacht.com

53 S&S Abeking Rasmussen aluminum yawl. New sails, complete Awlgrip, electronics, and brightwork are some of the last 2 years’ total renovation. Truly must see. Located in S.E. MA. $450,000

33 Cape Dory, 1985. This is the newer Mark 2 design. Clean, neat and well cared for. The owner is transitioning to power. Located in S.E. MA. Asking $58,500

Ph: (508) 748-3115 P.O. Box 235 Fax: (508) 748-3117 Marion, MA 02738 www.lawrencewarneryachts.com warneryachts@verizon.net

K_\ )''/ 8ile[\c ).

Fne X [`jk`eZk`m\# DX`e\$Yl`ck YfXkÆfecp knf XmX`cXYc\ XeelXccp% Fuel-efficient Volvo outdrive with low emissions • Easily maintained composite hull • Well-equipped galley and comfortable V-berth

nnn%cXe[`e^jZ_ffc%\[l

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WAYFARER MARINE

LOWER FALLS LANDING

1 Wayfarer Drive, Suite #1 Camden, Maine 04843 207-236-8656 • Fax 207-236-4402

106 Lafayette Street Yarmouth, Maine 04096 207-846-4545 • Fax 207-846-6088

NEW ENGLAND BOATWORKS

MacDOUGALLS’ CAPE COD MARINE

One Lagoon Road Portsmouth, Rhode Island 02871 401-682-2010 • Fax 401-682-2080

145 Falmouth Heights Road Falmouth, Massachusetts 02540 508-457-5353 • Fax 508-457-9191

NEW GRAND BANKS 47 HERITAGE EUROPA “Extended Deck” – The NEW GRAND BANKS 55SX EASTBAY — This all-NEW Eastbay expands NEW the opportunity for owners and their guests to cruise in comfort and luxury.

Accommodations include two guest cabins, each featuring a queen berth and ensuite head w/full shower. Space on the helm deck is equally generous, with more room and light that spills in through a power sunroof. Hull #2 has just arrived.

Sparkman & Stephens design looks like a traditional GB, but offers more volume & more speed w/ the usual Grand Banks quality. She cruises at 18–19 knots. Call us for a free CD or better yet, come and see for yourself what a magnificent boat this is.

NEW GRAND BANKS 45 EASTBAY – Blending a J/100 – This hot 33' performance daysailer has been a huge success. There has never been a boat that was so much fun to sail, not to mention easy and comfortable. Give us a call for all of the details on this fabulous boat or to arrange to see or sea trial her.

GRAND BANKS 47 EASTBAY – We have a new 47 demo sitting in our heated showroom in Yarmouth, ME. She’s available at the old base price with a dealer demo incentive. Call us to find out more or to request a free CD with dozens of high resolution photos.

refined nautical style with performance, the new Eastbay 45SX by Grand Banks continues a long tradition of igniting the spirit of today’s discerning yachtsman. 30+ knot top speeds, breathtaking performance and handling characteristics, modified deep-V hull designed by C. Raymond Hunt Associates. The refined luxury of the Eastbay Series’ pristine, teak-filled interiors, unequalled elegance and exhilaration will turn heads, at whatever speed you choose to cruise. On display in our heated showroom.

MJM 29z – What an awesome new design. Fast, quiet, and a great handling boat. Cruises at 27 knots with Volvo 260 diesel with a twin prop outdrive. Look at the cockpit design with comfortable seating for up to 10 adults! Let us get you to the builder in Boston. Hull #24 is available. Call for an appointment to see her.

J/BOATS • GRAND BANKS – HERITAGE, EASTBAY & ALEUTIAN SERIES • MJM 34Z • ALBIN Please call us about any of the above models, other new boats, or about a used vessel.

Our eight full-time professional brokers sold more than 140 boats last year.

Visit our website for a full list of our used offerings.

www.ecys.com • yachts@ecys.com

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SOUTH PORT MARINE “The most family-focused, full-service marine facility in Maine.”

14 Ocean Street, South Portland, Maine 04106 • 207-799-8191

SOUTHPORT BOAT-WORKS The “sports car” of fishing boats.

Designed for twin 4-stroke outboards.

SCOUT BOATS A more fuel-efficient hull requiring less horsepower for top performance.

ECHO ROWING The most advanced open-water rowing shell available.

THE YACHT CONNECTION at

SOUTH PORT MARINE 207-799-3600

2006, 25' Northern Bay downeast. Set up for fishing and appointed for pleasure. $128,000

POWER 1949, 15' Lyman $2,800 1996, 24' Mako 243 walkaround $22,000 1986, 29' Silverton sport cruiser $24,000 1997, 30' Pro-line walkaround $49,500 1989, 30' Paul Luke aluminum fishing $30,000 1964, 33' wooden lobsterboat $12,500 1974, 33' Egg Harbor $28,000 1988, 35' Luhrs Alura $41,000 1972, 36' Novi downeast style $26,000

1987, 40' Silverton aft cabin $62,000 1979, 43' Viking double cabin $75,000

2006, Southport Boat-Works 26' CC. Low hours on twin 250-HP Mercury Verados.

Full electronics. $97,000

SAIL 1974, 22' Tanzer $2,800 1975, 26' Bristol sloop $5,500 1974, 30' Scampi sloop $8,500 1972, 49' Hinckley ketch $220,000

BROKERAGE ✯ Fine Yachts ✯ Power and Sail

www.southportmarine.com • www.theyachtconnection.com

C U S TO M BU I L D I N G

★

DESIGN

★

★

R E S TO R AT I O N

★

B RO K E R AG E

★

★

“GOSHAWK”

“LYRA”

2005, Bob Stephens / Brooklin Boat Yard sloop, 76' Located in ME. Reduced $1,800,000

2004, Bridges Point 24 sloop, 24' Lightly used and in near new condition. Located in ME. Asking $75,000

“PERSISTENCE”

“TRACY KATE”

“PIP”

2005, Sakonnet 23 sloop, 23'

1989, Bridges Point 24 sloop, 24'

2004, Joel White-designed Haven 121/2 2007, Camden Class sloop, 28'

“NO NAME”

Joel White design, cold-molded construction. Located in NH. Asking $29,500

Built by Eric Dow of Brooklin, ME. Only Cold-molded construction by Eric Dow. wooden version of this Joel White design. Gaff rigged version, trailer included.

Located in MA. Asking $47,000 Located in ME. Asking $45,000

Modern daysailer designed by BBY. Located in WI. Asking $195,000

DESIGN

NEW CONSTRUCTION, SERVICE & RESTORATION

BROKERAGE

207-359-2236 design@brooklinboatyard.com

207-359-2236 swhite@brooklinboatyard.com

207-359-2193 brokerage@brooklinboatyard.com

P.O. Box 143, Center Harbor • Brooklin, ME 04616 USA • www.brooklinboatyard.com 110

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BROKERAGE ✯ Fine Yachts ✯ Power and Sail

Compare the quality, & value29 of Sabre’s 2006performance BACK COVE handcrafted yachts and you will agree they are HARDTOP second to none. Join Sabre’s great success, contact our office for price & availability of all models.

Since inception in 2004, Back Cove has earned the respect of building one of the finest single diesel downeast-style yachts available. In-Stock, 26 Open, 29 Hardtop & 33 Hardtop.

Sabre 42 Hardtop Express

Back Cove 33 Hardtop

Pioneering quality boat construction and design since 1977, spawning innovations that have become industry standards, Ocean Yachts manufactures high performance sport-fishing boats and motor yachts. All models available.

Ocean 37 Billfish 423 US Route 1 Freeport, Maine 04032 (207) 865-0432

Quality and innovation ensure that Chris-Craft boats are unique and have been the hallmarks for more than 130 years. Chris-Craft is simply the best in its class. All models available, call today.

One Long Wharf Portland, Maine 04101 (207) 773-7632

Chris-Craft 29 Catalina

116 Woodcleft Ave. Freeport, New York 11520 (516) 623-6256

One Star Island Rd. Montauk, New York 11954 (516) 623-6256

www.dimillos.com or email us at info@dimillos.com www.maineboats.com

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MaritimeProfessionals GEMINI MARINE CANVAS

PARTS & SERVICE DIESEL ENGINE SALES WARRANTY REPAIRS RE-POWER SPECIALIST GENERATORS Factory Authorized Dealer THOMASTON BOAT & ENGINE WORKS, INC.

Innovat ive canvas desig ns Gemlock collapsible struts • DropTop Dodgers • Strapless Biminis Rugged four-strut support, greater versatility and ease of use For a complete look at our advanced designs for sail or power visit our website or call for a free brochure. We also provide a full line of interior & exterior canvas products.

MARITIME PROFESSIONALS ✯ Artisans, Craftsmen and Designers

9 Beechwood Street, Thomaston, Maine 04861 207-354-0200, pricci@mindspring.com

www.geminicanvas.com • 1-888-767-7705

Custom Coatings Inc. Quality finishes, marine restorations, repair, and construction. Specializing in finishes.

Full Service Boat Yard • Marine Systems • Restorations/Refits • Storage • Custom Electrical Panels • Moorings 75 Front St. • Rockland, ME • 207-596-7357

38 Water St. Thomaston, Maine 04861 207-354-0713 • Fax 207-354-2575 • CuCo0713@aol.com

www.oceanpursuits.com

WoodenBoat School Idyllic surroundings, the finest instructors. An exhilarating experience for amateurs and professionals alike. In session from June to October, offering a wide variety of one- and two-week courses in boatbuilding, seamanship and related crafts. Off-site winter courses also offered. For a complete catalog:

WoodenBoat School • P.O. Box 78 • Brooklin, ME 04616 207-359-4651 (Mon. - Thurs.) • www.woodenboat.com

Andrew Jacobson Marine Antiques www.marineantiques.com

Custom Boat Mattresses at Comfortable Prices! portlandboatmattress.com

800-244-3311 SURVEYORS TO THE MARINE COMMUNITY SINCE 1976 14 Hampton Road Cape Elizabeth, ME 04107 207.799.2020 • 866.571.0550 (toll free) 207.799.0550 (fax)

Qualified appraisals and auction consultation.

Collections established and brokered. Fine marine art, scrimshaw, vintage photography, log books, journals, half-models, ship models. Gallery by appointment.

www.amsurveyors.com

P.O. Box 437, Ipswich, MA 01938 • 978-356-5583 • andrew@marineantiques.com

REDFERN BOAT Fiberglass Boats For Wooden Boat Lovers

e Marine Canvas Co l i b ON-SITE MARINE CANVAS .

Mo CUSTOM & STAINLESS SERVICES seth@mobilecanvas.com • 207-833-5400 • Mobile: 207-329-3140

207-266-0270 • sales@redfernboat.com • www.redfernboat.com

w w Sou t h Harp swell , M aine m o w. m o b ilecanvas.c

COASTAL BOATWORKS, INC.

Locus Weather

Next available hull 2009.

1155 U.S. Route 1, Newcastle, ME 04553

Drive-Thru & Mobile Shrinkwrapping Boat Storage & Maintenance Shrinkwrap Supplies • Boat Transport 207-563-5955 FALMOUTH

www.locusweather.com

x

Weather Forecast Services for All Marine Interests

Ocean Voyage Forecasts • Forecasts for Coastal Locations Routing yachts from Maine harbors and worldwide since 1991 P.O. Box 804 Camden, ME 04843-0804

(207) 236-3935 locuswx@midcoast.com

1-800-639-9907

IT ALL!!

FROM SAIL T O POWER WE COVER www.hallettcanvasandsails.com 112

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SINCE 1870

US RTE 1 • PO BOX 628 ROCKPORT, MAINE 04856

T 207 236 3549 • F 207 236 3560

A full service marina featuring BOAT TRANSPORT SALES & SERVICE 120 Tillson Avenue, Rockland, ME 04841 207-594-4444•fax 207-594-0407•oharajem@midcoast.com

Marine Surveying Consulting/Instruction Stephen I. Bunnell, NAMS-CMS 21 Elm Street, PO Box 734, Camden, ME 04843 • 207-236-9700 Fax: 207-236-6665 • e-mail: sbunnell@bunnellmarineconsulting.com

BOATBUILDING & CUSTOM JOINERY 21 Front Street, Belfast, Maine 04915 207-338-6706 • Fax 207-338-6709 www.frenchwebb.com

FRENCH W E B B & C O M PA N Y, I N C .

Aurora Sails & Canvas Full service sail and canvas loft.

Outfitting your boat both inside and out. Highest quality design, workmanship and friendly service.

255 Molyneaux Road • Camden, ME 04843 • 207-230-0288

Mobile Marine Electrical Services, Inc. We build custom electrical & instrument panels—Yacht electrical systems—High-quality yacht lighting—Inverter/charging systems—Wholesale/retail bulk wire sales—Established 1992 www.wewireboats.com 5 Perry Way, Unit 11, Newburyport, MA • 978-462-0470

Six

Custom Boatbuilding

Chautauqua

TEL: 207 846-6675

River Marine

FAX: 207 846-6191

160 Royal Road North Yarmouth, ME

• • • •

New Construction Major Restorations Repairs Storage

WEB: www.sixrivermarine.com

ART PAINE YACHT DESIGN CONSULTANT & PROJECT MANAGER Specializing in Purchase Inspection + Evaluation At-Sea Instruction, Outfitting Advice artpaine@acadia.net • 207-244-5845

SOUTH PORT MARINE

Full service • Storage • Repairs • Certified mechanics • Parts dept.

Hauling up to 70' & 36 tons • 170 slips • New boat & engine sales

207-799-8191 14 Ocean Street South • Portland, Maine 04106

GEORGE HENRY JENNINGS ILLUSTRATOR P.O. BOX 262 CAMDEN, ME 04843 207-542-4096

W W W. S O U T H P O R T M A R I N E . C O M www.maineboats.com

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MARITIME PROFESSIONALS ✯ Artisans, Craftsmen and Designers

BOHNDELL SAILS & RIGGING

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Good People • Good Food Good Drinks Full Menu Served 11am – Midnight Best Steamers in Town!

Overlooking DiMillo’s Marina Wireless Internet Available

5 Portland Pier, Portland, Maine • 207-772-4828

VACATION RESOURCES ✯ Recreation, Dining and Lodging

Enjoy Coastal Beauty Year-Round

Experience the Gardens in Every Season!

Lovely landscapes, exciting programs and events.

Barters Island Road In Boothbay (207) 633-4333

Open daily: weekdays 9–5; weekends 9–6 (Closed Thanksgiving and Christmas) Admission: Members free; all free January–March

mainegardens.org

T H E WAT E R F R O N T Harborside Dining on Camden’s Waterfront

CRUISE MAINE’S PENOBSCOT BAY Docking available for our patrons

In our Beautiful Grand Banks Trawlers & Sailboats Bareboat Charters with personalized Cruise Plans & Service

Bay View Street, Camden, Maine 207-236-3747

BUCK’S HARBOR MARINE CHARTERS (207) 348-5253

www.bucksharbor.com

EXCLUSIVE PRIVATE DOCKAGE ROCKLAND HARBOR The Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors docks offer 400' side-to dockage adjacent to Rockland Public Landing.

Vessels 20' to 60' with deep draft spots (15' @ mlw) available. Security gate, night lights, shore power and water provided.

Call Dave 207-236-8622 114

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Architecture

Boatbuilders

North Brooklin Boats “OLD SHIP’S BOTTOM ROOF HOUSE” and custom designs

RUSSELL SWINTON OATMAN DESIGN ASSOCIATES, INC. PRINCETON, MA TEL: 978-464-2360 www.reproductionhouseplans.com

Building “Sunshine” 10' 6" Lapstrake Dinghy Rowing & Sailing Models Traditional Construction Visit Website for Photos & Inventory 704 Bay Road • Brooklin, ME 04616 207-359-6550 www.northbrooklinboats.com eric@northbrooklinboats.com

CONSTRUCTION RESTORATION • REPAIR 220 Stagecoach Road Atkinson, ME 04426 207-564-7612 (days) 207-564-3454 (evenings) www.maineboats.com/jc-minott-boat

Boatbuilders

FOR SALE 30' Trunk cabin cruiser

Boats for Sale

FARRIN’S BOATSHOP 19 Sproul Rd. Walpole, Maine 04573

ROCKPORT STEEL 17 Rockville St. Rockport, ME 04856 Ph: 207-236-8644 Fax: 207-236-8395 www.rockportsteel.com

207-563-5510

Oak Frame Marine Ply Finished or unfinished available Sailing+ photos online CLASSIC BOATWORKS of MAINE 207-422-9180 www.classicboatworksofmaine.com

978-465-0312

MYSTIC RIVER BOATHOUSE 55 Spicer Ave., Noank, CT 06340

860-536-6930

www.mysticriverboathouse.com

www.maineboats.com

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We stock COM-PAC PRECISION Sunfish, Zuma, Laser

Rt. 1 A, Newbury, MA 01951 Trinka Dinghies Alden & Maas Rowing Shells AB Inflatables Honda Outboard Motors

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

One owner. COI, 21 + 2.

Cat 3126 – 4500 hr top end just completed. New head turbo, dry stack, etc. Hull black, Awlgripped. Vessel maintained to high standards.

Survey done in 2005.

Asking $120,000.

Greyfield Marine (904) 261-6408

SAILBOATS

FERNALD’S

Traditional 8' Pram

36' Duffy, 1993.

40' Little Harbor

Hunt/Hood, custom built, T-300 Cummins. Cruise at 25/top 33.

Great electronics, PC/flatscreen/nav., dual helm seats, centerline queen berth, Corian. Immaculate condition. Includes 3 years storage. $299,000 207-633-5462

44' French & Webb/Chuck Paine custom “Spirit of Tradition” cruiser racer.

Built in 2002 to the highest standards and maintained to Bristol condition.

Gusto is fast and able...and easy to single hand.

Impressive in concept and in the details. $645,000 207-326-4411

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www.maineboats.com

1930 by Richardson Call for information

Boats for Sale

CLASSIFIEDS To Order Classified Space Call (800)565-4951

ClassifiedAdvertising

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Boats for Sale

We sell family fun.

Here’s why.

Marshall Catboats are easy to sail, roomy, strong and stable. Simply a great boat to daysail, race or cruise.

Available in 15, 18, and 22 feet. Proven designs for over 40 years.

Visit our website, call for a brochure or stop by the shop for a tour.

Charters

Books & Publications The Mariner’s Book of Days 2008

By Peter H. Spectre “The most entertaining nautical desk diary and calendar in print!”

MARSHALL CATBOATS.

www.marshallcat.com

Hope Town, Bahamas

Enjoy the well-protected Sea of Abaco waters in an open bridgedeck cruising catamaran under the shade of our unique hardtop with great ventilation, a huge cockpit and the best visibility.

A great gift! Get one for every salty person you know!

508-994-0414 • Box P-266 • South Dartmouth, MA 02748

$13.95 plus s&h To order: 800-565-4951

Boat Hardware

Business Opportunities

www.maineboats.com

MAINE CAT 30 & 41 BAREBOAT CHARTER

Fully equipped and easy to handle.

Visit: www.mecat.com www.mainecatcharters.com Email: info@mecat.com Or call 888-832-2287 to reserve your vacation.

Clothing 36' Classic Sloop Seeking Partner(s) To learn more about this 1962 British-built, fully restored, 2007 Eggemoggin Reach trophy winner, go to www.slooploosestrife.com

Personalize Your Boat Gear! jackets, ball caps, sweatshirts, canvas bags, blankets, aprons, denim & golf shirts and more, all at factory prices

CAMDEN CUSTOM EMBROIDERY

CLASSIFIEDS To Order Classified Space Call (800)565-4951

2 Main St. • Camden, ME 04843

RAYNES MARINE Yachts Worldwide A Full Service Yardby are Protected Handling Boats up to 50' Currently restoring a 1956 Gulf Stream 30' sloop.

For progress pictures, visit us at

www.raynesmarine.com Head of Blue Hill Bay

(207) 374-2877

World’s #1 Line and Net Cutter Call for FREE Brochure:

1-800-824-5372 www.spursmarine.com

Books & Publications AgreatgiftfortheArmchairAdventurer: “ World

Voyagers” the true story of Phil, Amy, and Stewart the cat. “...a cut above most cruising books.”

— Maynard Bray “...a must read for anyone who dreams of sailing around the world... a witty travelogue with attitude.”

—W.H. Bunting WOODENBOAT Available through bookstores, on the web at: www.bookorchard.com, or call: 1-888-478-4999.

Hardcover, 432 pp, 32 color pp, $29.95. www.worldvoyagers.com

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Charters

Home Builders

NorthPoint Yacht Charter Co. Owner managed Power & Sail Boats for charter Larrain Slaymaker P.O. Box 252 Rockport, Maine 04856 207-785-2465 info@northpointyachtcharters.com www.northpointyachtcharters.com

Available for bareboat charter mid-June through October.

37' bright hull, GPS, sleeps 5.

Located on M.D.I.

Northeast Boat

www.northeastboat.com

www.camdenembroidery.com custom logos small orders welcome quantity discounts available

MICHAEL OGDEN Carpentry Contractor Camden, Maine 207-230-0878 (phone & fax)

Fine Carpentry, Renovations, and New Construction

Classic Wooden Yawl

Boat Storage/Repair Northeast Boat specializes in wooden boat repairs, maintenance, and storage.

We can meet your needs at your facility or ours. We are fully insured, with many references. Northeast Boat, Camden, ME. 207-322-7014

207-236-8626

Business for Sale Yacht Charter, Boat Rental, Sailing School (A.S.A.). Located in mid-coast Maine for 25 years. Phone: 207-542-9594 Email: info@sailme.com

NEW!

Read Editor Peter H. Spectre’s

207-288-9045 www.elkspar.com

Let Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors Classifieds work for you!

Call 800-565-4951 or Fax 207-236-0811 www.maineboats.com

Compass Rose Review at compassrosereview.blogspot.com MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

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April / May 2008

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Issue 99

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Marine Gutters

Real Estate & Rentals

Live Wisely • Live Warm

Live

THE ISLAND GROUP Jaret & Cohn Real Estate Island Properties

Marine Services

Box 168 Vinalhaven, ME 04863-0168

TENANTS HARBOR

Yacht Brokers

WESLEY REED (207) 863-2554 e-mail: wreed@jaretcohn.com

207-745-7748 dickcampbellllc@yahoo.com 35 years of green design/build concepts

House & Garden

Sail at LINEKIN BAY RESORT A seacoast resort with activities for the whole family.

Lodges, cabins, heated saltwater pool and a fleet of sailboats available. Rates include sailing, swimming, boating, tennis, shuffleboard, TV, kids activities and 3 meals daily.

Boothbay Harbor, Maine 866-847-2103 www.linekinbayresort.com

NORTH HAVEN • VINALHAVEN the energy of warm

Vacation Resorts

Classic Shorefront Cottage

WILBUR YACHTS BROKERAGE

John Morin 207-691-1637 jmorin@wilburyachts.com

Professionals in Energy Efficiency 24-hour service Plumbing • Heating • Electrical Sales • Installation • Maintenance Route 1, Damariscotta, ME 04543 207-563-5147 • 800-890-7196

Masts & Spars

True Hall

SHAW & TENNEY Orono, Maine

REAL ESTATE 207-372-8952 www.truehall.com

Traditionally handcrafted spruce masts and spars since 1858.

Nautical Gear Nautical Mats & Fenders Storage Sheds • Small Barns Custom Cottages • Storage Boxes Overflow Cottages Dock Master Sheds Sail Storage and Lofts

Cozy ship-captain’s house for surf-and-turf vacation BYOBoat Weekly/monthly 207-338-3755 • www.bellore.com

Built On Site or DIY Kits Delivered

800-690-2377 • 508-833-1000 Shellback Cottage Co. – Cape Cod

www.ShellbackCottages.com

AUGUST8~10, 2008 Camden Shorefront Inner Harbor Private Pier

Send for free brochure with self-addressed stamped envelope to:

MAINEBOATS.COM

SUBSCRIBE NOW!

Young’s Maritime Services P.O. Box 540 East Wakefield, NH 03830

Kayaks

HARBOR PARK, ROCKLAND, ME

Bass Harbor

Two-story, beach-front cottage with full kitchen, bath, cable, high speed internet, gas grill, beach, large lawn. Queen size bed upstairs and queen futon in living room. Oceanfront deck over hanging the beach. No smoking, mild mannered dogs with deposit. Weekly rentals May-October $850-$1000. cjohnson077@adelphia.net • 207-266-0270

STONINGTON/ OCEANVILLE Post & Beam Barn on 14± acres.

One and 1/2 story, 18' x 24' saltbox, 1989. $250,000

207-967-2606 www.maineboats.com

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MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

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www.maineboats.com

800-240-4867 www.shawandtenney.com

CLASSIFIEDS To Order Classified Space Call (800)565-4951

Home Builders

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MAINELY GOURMET

©Nance Trueworthy(2)

Vignola, the Old Port, Portland

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PRING HAD COME TO PORTLAND. The city’s crab apple trees were about to bloom and shower some streets with their white, pale-pink, and carmine blossoms. The historic Old Port was starting to regain its nightlife after a Dickensian winter during which city dwellers negotiated the steep snow drifts that bordered the sidewalks and scuttled about the icy cobblestone streets and dark alleyways.

At the corner of Dana and Wharf streets, a red-brick building with granite dressing its tall windows caught the eye.

The facade was illuminated, revealing a lacy vine wreathing the exterior. It was only 5:00 p.m., but working folk were flowing through the front door, lured by the thought of wrapping their hands around a glass of Primitivo Puglia Luccarelli ($5.50), an Italian red wine similar to an American Zinfandel, or splitting an artisanal Belgian beer like Nice Chouffe ($16) to toast the end of winter.

Loosely translated as “little vine” in Italian, Vignola is the latest “happening” place in Portland’s dining and drinking scene. It was named after the village of Vignola in Italy’s northeastern province of Modena. Its sister restaurant, Cinque Terre, housed in a former ship’s chandlery a door away on Wharf Street, has won high marks for its northern Italian cooking from Gourmet magazine and the James Beard

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Foundation. (Cinque Terre is named after the rugged, mountainous stretch of coastline comprised of five ancient fishing villages in Italy’s eastern province of Liguria.)

Opened in 2006, Vignola was inspired by the osteria, an Italian institution where wine is the focus, but where one can also get a savory meal in a casual setting without fuss. It also is an enoteca, or wine bar, where one can sample from an extensive wine collection and get

BY LETITIA BALDWIN

a bite to eat that complements the vintage or varietal being tasted.

Lee Skawinski, who is executive chef at Vignola, was a chef for six years at Cinque Terre; previously he was at Boston’s Four Seasons Hotel and the Harraseeket Inn in Freeport. He coowns both venues—Cinque Terre and Vignola—with Dan Kary and Michele Mazur-Kary. The three had enjoyed the unpretentious air of osterias while traveling in northern Italy and thought the relaxed dining style would fit well in Maine. They also saw a niche for a late-night restaurant in Portland.

Provisioning for two restaurants instead of just one, Skawinski and the Karys can afford to purchase whole cows, calves, pigs, lambs, goats, and fowl, enabling the kitchen staff to produce custom cuts of meat and make use of the entire animal. Through the seasons, Cinque Terre and Vignola also share the harvest of fresh fruit and vegetables from the restaurant-owned Grandview Farm north of Portland. The rest of their larder largely comes from farms elsewhere in Maine, including Rock, Harris,

Grilled Scallops with Parsnips and Microgreens Salad 4 large parsnips, peeled and diced 1/2 onion, julienned 2 cups milk 1 Yukon gold potato 8 large sea scallops 3 Tbsp. olive oil, divided 1/2 lemon, juiced 4 oz. microgreens (or the smallest mesclun available) 1 tsp. balsamic vinegar salt, pepper

Gently simmer parsnips, onion, and milk until tender, purée. Boil and purée potato. Fold two purées together and season with salt and pepper.

Heat grill (or sauté pan) for 20 minutes to a medium-high temperature. Season scallops with salt and pepper, and dress with 2 tablespoons olive oil. Cook evenly on all sides until firm.

Dress microgreens with a dash of olive oil and juice of 1/2 lemon.

Place purée in center of plate, place scallops to each side, and finish with microgreens.

Drizzle olive oil on plate and add 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar on top of oil. Serve.

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

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Stone Heart, Sunset Acres, and Laughing Stock farms.

On a recent late night, people were happily dining and drinking alone at the mesquite-wood-topped bar where a youngish male bartender was talking animatedly about having been downhill skiing in Europe. Other diners were scattered about the big, airy dining room. The oversized windows, exposed brick walls, and raw granite casings made for striking decor. Chandeliers made from crudely cut-off green wine bottles hung like upside-down bouquets above the tables.

The dining room was a little drafty when we visited, but the fine wine and food warmed us up. One could make a meal of a steaming bowl of creamy cauliflower soup, made with potatoes and root vegetables, and served with crostini and extra-virgin olive oil ($7), and roasted Maine rabbit served on a bed of greens and organic carrots,and topped with crispy ricotta cheese ($11). Among the other light offerings are prosecco and sweet onion soup with Asiago-cheese crostini ($6.50),and organic spinach with herb mustard vinaigrette, a sunny-side egg and duck rillette on brioche ($9).

Vignola also serves Neopolitan-style pizzas cooked in the restaurant’s own stone oven. All the pizzas are made from Italian flour, San Marzano, artisanal cheeses, and Sicilian oregano. Sample the Vignola ($10), made with Italian buffalo mozzarella and basil, with an exotic microbrew like Lion’s Stout from Sri Lanka ($16) or Douchese de Bourgogne ($16).

For a more substantive meal, the veal Milanese made with Harris Farm veal and served with arugula salad and pepperonata relish ($19) or grilled scallops with truffled lentils, pancetta, greens, and balsamic aioli ($22) would be good choices. Entrée portions appear small, but side dishes are meant to be ordered separately. The latter are $6 each and range from roasted fingerling potatoes with pancetta and rosemary butter to grilled polenta with Porcini mushrooms, thyme, and Reggiano cheese.

Letitia Baldwin, a freelance writer, lives in Gouldsboro, Maine.

Vignola, 10 Dana St., Portland, Maine. 207772-1330. Open seven days a week for dinner, 5 p.m. to midnight. Lunch is 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Thursday-Saturday. Sunday brunch is 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Entrées (without side dishes) $16-$28. For more details, visit www.vignolamaine.com. www.maineboats.com

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DISPLAY ADVERTISER INDEX Adirondack Guideboat..................36 Alden Rowing.................................65 Bruce Alderson............................113 Alexseal ............................................9 Allen Agency Insurance ..............42 American Marine Model Gallery...........................54 Apprenticeshop .............................24 Associated Marine Surveyors ..112 Atlantic Boat Company ................20 Aurora Sails & Canvas ...............113 Bay of Maine Boats ......................20 Billings Diesel & Marine ..............34 BlueJacket Shipcrafters ..............36 Bohndell Sails & Rigging ...........113 Boothbay Region Boatyard .........32 Bowden Marine.............................77 Bray Prints......................................70 Brooklin Boat Yard ......................110 Brooklin Inn ..................................114 Buck’s Harbor Marine ................114 Bunnell Marine ............................113 Camden Real Estate Co..............102 Cape Cod Shipbuilding .................76 Classic Boat Shop .........................55 Coastal Boatworks......................112 Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.................114 Compass Point Real Estate........106 Compass Project ...........................90 Cranberry Island Boatyard ..........42 Camden-Rockport-Lincolnville Chamber of Commerce.....89, 94 Cummins .........................................83 Custom Coatings..........................112 Custom Float Services..................81 Dark Harbor Boatyard ..................64 DiMillo’s Old Port Yacht Sales...111 Dockworks......................................44 Downeast Energy & Building Supply........................................37 Downeast Peapods.......................17 Steve Drake, Keller Williams.....106 East Coast Yacht Sales...............109 Eastern Boats.................................63 Eastsail Yachts...............................36 Echo Rowing ..................................56 Edgecomb Boatworks ..................91 Ellis Boat Company .......................45 Endicott Real Estate Agency.....106 Epifanes ..........................................15 Farrin’s Boatshop ..........................57 Fine Lines........................................93 Fixtures............................................91 Flanders Bay Boats.......................28 Fortune ............................................70 Freeport Community Services.....53 French & Webb............................113 Freshwater Stone............................4 Gemini Marine Canvas ...............112 General Marine..............................14 Michael Good Gallery...................51 Gowen Marine ...............................80 Gowen Power ..................................6 Gray & Gray..................................107 Great Island Boat Yard .................14 Grey Barn Boatworks ...................71

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

Hallett Canvas & Sails................112 Hamilton Marine ...........................C3 Hansen Marine ..............................57 Harbor Technologies ....................84 Hinckley Crewed Yacht Charters ..........52 Hinckley Yacht Charters........................114 Holland’s Boat Shop......................30 Houses & Barns

by John Libby ...........................49 Hunt Yachts ....................................23 Island Teak .....................................22 J’s Oyster ......................................114 Jacobson Antiques .....................112 Jaret & Cohn Island Group........103 Jeff’s Marine ..................................68 George Jennings .........................113 Johanson Boatworks....................28 Jonesport Shipyard.......................28 Journey’s End Marina.................113 Kennebec Company......................30 Kingman Yachts ...........................107 Kittery Point Yacht Yard................22 Rick Klepfer ....................................64 Knowles Company.......................104 Lake & Sea Boatworks.................86 Landing School ............................108 Landvest........................................105 Little River Marine.........................84 Locus Weather ............................112 Longleaf Lumber............................54 Lucia’s Little Houses .....................65 Lyman-Morse Boatbuilding Co..........................6 Lyman-Morse Yacht Brokerage ....................111 Maine Built Boats .........................18 Maine Coast Construction...........42 Maine Coast Heritage Trust ........70 Maine Cottage Furniture................4 Maine Cottage Properties ...........24 Maine Sailing Partners ................68 Maine Spiral Staircase ................56 Maine Yacht Center ......................16 Maloney Marine Rigging ...........113 Marine Restoration & Salvage................................113 Maritime Marine............................52 MBH&H Docks.............................114 MBH&H Online ...77, 81, 83, 89, 100 MBH&H Show .........................12, 13 MBH&H Subscriptions ...............101 McCormick & Assoc.....................68 Damian McLaughlin......................64 Metinic Yachts .............................107 MJM Yachts .....................................7 Mobile Marine Canvas ...............112 Mobile Marine Electrical ...........113 Morris Service ...............................31 Morris Yachts...................................1 MYC Yacht Sales .........................108 Nature Conservancy.....................84 Nauset Marine...............................37 Ocean Point Marina......................89 Ocean Pursuits ............................112 Outward Bound..............................69

Owls Head Transportation Museum .........94 Padebco Custom Boats................80 Art Paine .......................................113 C.W. Paine Yacht Design............113 Pearson Composites ....................C2 Pendleton Yacht Yard ...................90 Penobscot Bay Regional Chamber of Commerce...........10 Penobscot Bay YMCA ................106 Penobscot Marine Museum........26 Pierce Yacht Company ...................5 Pirie Marine....................................82 Pope Sails.......................................71 Michael Porter Marine Design..........................86 Portland Mattress Makers ........112 Portland Museum of Art...............49 Proper Yachts...............................107 Pulsifer Hampton...........................65 Redfern Boat ................................112 Richardson’s Boat Yard ................56 Robinhood Marine Center ...........41 Rocknak’s Yacht Sales................107 Rockport Marine............................82 Rockport Post & Beam...................5 Rumery’s Boatyard........................76 Sabre Yachts..................................C4 Samoset Boatworks......................55 A.E. Sampson .................................50 Seal Cove Boatyard ......................57 Seaway Boats................................69 Sebago Furniture...........................55 Shaw & Tenney..............................86 Six River Marine ..........................113 Smith & May ..................................54 Solo Bistro– Design Connection ..................51 South Port Marine...............110, 113 Southport Island Marine..............24 Ralph W. Stanley ...........................64 Stanley Scooters ...........................65 Stur-Dee Boat ..............................107 Thomaston Boat & Engine Works .....................112 Town & Country Realtors ...........102 U.S. Bells.........................................28 Van Dam Architecture..................43 Viking ...............................................43 Lawrence Warner Yachts ..........108 Warren Realty..............................106 Waterfront Restaurant ...............114 Waterman Marine.........................91 WBACH ...........................................57 WERU ............................................114 Whitehall Reproductions .............71 Wilbur Yachts...................................8 John Williams Boat Company.....33 Nathaniel S. Wilson, Sailmaker ..................................86 WoodenBoat School...................112 Kelsey Woodward.......................106 Yachting Solutions.........................53 Yankee Marina...............................69 Y-Landing Marina ..........................90 York Marine ....................................50 Zurn Yacht Design .......................112

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GUNKHOLING WITH GIZMO

BY BEN ELLISON

Ben Ellison

Port Clyde

SMALL ADVENTURES ON THE COAST OF MAINE

The general store is the focal point of Port Clyde, near the end of the St. George peninsula.

T

HERE’S A LOT of summertime life in the village of Port Clyde, and summertime traffic too.

Indeed, it can be an almost comical comeuppance to glide merrily down sedate Route 131; get excited about the intensity of people, color, art, and boats apparent at its terminus; and then realize that the final sidestreets are dead ends, the parking spots are filled, and behind you is a string of similarly cornered gawkers. Arriving by boat is apt to be a calmer process, but a good sense of what’s what, and where, will make any first visit richer. Which is why I’ve used

Google Earth’s splendid satellite photography to create the locator maps below, which are also available at www.maineboats.com along with appropriate links and a full-page cruising printout.

On the photo maps, Port Clyde’s downtown congestion is vivid. It’s a tiny peninsula that serves not only a very active local fishery but also handles traffic to Monhegan and many private islands, including big Hupper across the harbor. There is some room for cars (and dinghies) at the public landing (1), but if you want to ensure a space, call or visit the Monhegan Boat office (2; 207-3728848). The company runs the harbor’s major pier (3), and puts such joy into its 120

ferry service that some make the round trip to Monhegan just for breakfast.

Cruisers can anchor at either end of the big harbor or rent a mooring from the Port Clyde General Store (4; 207372-6543), which also offers fuel, showers, provisions, and hot meals starting at 6 a.m. daily. Save room for the Dip Net Restaurant (5; 207-372-6691), which— under the inspired ownership of chef Scott Yakovenko—has evolved from fabulously funky clam shack to funky fine dining. Oh, the Fry-O-Lator’s still working, but I had tuna tartar one evening.

When I asked about the fish’s origins, the server pointed to a longliner leaving the dock right in front of our table.

Also downtown are an ice cream shop and numerous galleries, starting with the cooperative just across from the store. You can wander eastward out to the famous Marshall Point Lighthouse and its companion museum (6; 207372-6450), with a stop along the way to visit the Herring Gut Learning Center (7; 207-372-8677), or perhaps a detour to check out the Harpoon Restaurant (8;

207-372-6304). If touring the harbor, don’t miss the passage north of Raspberry Island (9), which is deep and was marked with a private stake when I visited. Boredom is highly unlikely in lively Port Clyde, but should it happen, you can always watch the newbies scramble for parking.

E-mail Ben (gizmo@benetech.net) about restaurants, parks, and the like that he can visit aboard M/V Gizmo.

MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS

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April / May 2008

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Aerial views based on imagery from Google Earth and Maine GeoLibrary, adapted by Ben Ellison.

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Beautiful Details Will Capture Your Senses. Twin 865 hp Diesels Will Set Them Free Again.

The Sabre 52.

The Sabre 52 Hard Top Express

Her lavish interior will pamper you. Her sophisticated systems will thrill you.

Her Sabre pedigree tells you that no other yacht even comes close.

Sabre 42 Sedan

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