“Variety” is the word for the BoatBuilder’s Festival celebrated in East Boothbay on August 6. The day was not long enough to visit every craft in this festival and limited space prevents listing each here, but we can illustrate the variety.
To start with the big vessels, we saw Washburn & Doughty’s big steel tug, APRIL MORAN. She has a powerful engine with Z-drive. Besides towing, salvage and assisting big vessels in docking, she is equipped as a fire boat. Her builders are starting a new tug, even larger than APRIL MORAN, that will fit into a slot in the stern of a big barge and push her. The new tug will have a raised pilot house so the pilot can look over the top of the barge and a communication system so he can talk with the barge’s crew.
By contrast, we saw the old wooden BOWDOIN built in 1921 at the Hodgdon yard here in East Boothbay for the arctic explorer Donald MacMillan. He made many trips north in her with Bowdoin College students, and during World War II she was employed by the Navy patrolling Greenland waters. She is now owned by the Maine Maritime Academy as an educational vessel, but she still carries the ice barrel at the head of her foremast to shelter the lookout conning a way for her through ice flows. She is rigged fisherman style without varnish, chrome, or winches although she does have an anchor windlass.
In a nearby slip lies WINDCREST, a 98-foot ketch also built by Hodgdon and launched earlier in the week, a sea-going yacht for the new century. Her tall, white carbon fiber masts dominate the waterfront. One can see his reflection in her shiny black topsides. She sparkles with chrome and with powerful stainless steel winches. There is a comfortable cockpit for guests and a wheel situated where the owner can see the luff of the mainsail and steer his yacht in pleasant weather. There is also a pilot house for power cruising. We were not allowed aboard but were told that her accommodations were elegant indeed.
Smaller boats were equally interesting. Several working lobster boats lay alongside. Visitors marveled at the sophistication of some of their electronics and at the speed and power of their design.
Luke’s yard had on a trailer the 34-foot wooden yacht CARINA II, built by Paul Luke in 1957 and being restored by his son Frank, present owner of the yard. All her paint had been sanded off and a number of 3-inch holes bored in her topsides to accommodate clamps to hold the new frames as they were steamed and bent in. Of course she will later be re-planked. She already has a new stem. She is definitely a work in progress.
The former ferry NELLIE G. II, the elegant launch OLIVE, the first boat built by Goudy & Stevens in the 1920s, and the speedboat ROOSTER were among the antiques. By contrast, Atlantic Challenge had brought a very modern iceboat. Perhaps the newest boat was a little flat bottom red skiff constructed with great precision by Jim McQuaide in his garage. He tells me he actually made scale models of the garage and the skiff to be sure he could get her out.
There was a lot more to the working waterfront on display but I cannot omit Nat Wilson’s sail loft. With modern sewing machines he makes heavy sails in the old way for Windjammers and for replicas of historic vessels like USS CONSTITUTION, PRIDE OF BALTIMORE, and DISCOVERY, the latter now under construction in Boothbay Harbor Shipyard. He also builds sails for Friendship sloops, for modern racing yachts and even for Turnabouts. There is a great deal of hand work in sails of whatever period.
By way of history, Jim Hunt, John Dodge and Colin Woodward gave informal talks on shipbuilding history in the Boothbay region and on the past and probable future of lobstering.
Forty artists each contributed numerous paintings to an overwhelming art show.
Of course there was the carnival aspect to the day too. Chowders, lobster rolls, clams, hot dogs and lots of ice cream were always near at hand. Individual musicians, including two bagpipers, performed, and two bands played enthusiastically. You could print your own T-shirt. Children could put together little boats or get a clown to paint faces. Altogether, the Boothbay Region Land Trust, which planned and brought it all off, judged the day a great success. q
Roger F. Duncan is co-author of A Cruising Guide to the New England Coast and author of Eastward, Dorothy Elizabeth, The Reluctant Patriot and other books.