There are fiberglass boats in Maine and there are also mass produced fiberglass boats, as mass produced as possible at any rate by large companies that count a hundred hills as a production en masse. Then there are the boats Maine is famous for, singly and in very small numbers, the beauties.
Maine has this rugged vibe on land and on the water. The boats used for lobstering are simple and seaworthy, so much so incomers with money want boats shaped just like the workboats but with all the comforts of home and the builders oblige and haul the checks away in wheelbarrows. Brooklin (sic) boatyard is famous in some boating circles.
Jonathan my guide to an afternoon of looking at boats has sailed aboard Rascal the boat resting between buildings above. 50 feet in length designed by Jim Taylor and built at Brooklin. Jonathan whistled at the expense of the boat that has been hauled by ship even to England to race. Jonathan had a successful career as a merchant banker in New York and when he says something is out-of-reach expensive you’d better be ready to cry.
The trouble with Jonathan is that he is a down’easter through and through. Like they say he wasn’t born in Maine but he got here as soon as he could. When he finally cut ties with Wall Street he took three years to sail around the world and went canoeing around Fort Kent, no really, by himself carrying hi canoe and his backpack around obstacles and paddling alone for weeks at a time. Why is this trouble?
Because he’s reticent and would rather put a nail in his eye than discuss his life. He’s not a writer or a communicator as I would like but when he took me on a tour of boats and yards his granite Maine reticence slipped, just a little. Above I made pictures of his boat a Rozinante, a Herreshoff classic which is being put away for the winter. He is garrulously proud of his little boat, one of possibly two dozen sailing in Maine, half the worldwide fleet.
Jonathan is tall and has a long stride and you can picture Don Quixote striding through the boat yards his arms flung out apparently at random pointing out boats like windmills and spouting statistics and owners and races like the lists of a medieval tournament. Behind him trots short stout little Sancho Panza fiddling with his apparatus and listening and trying to remember and wondering and following the flights of memories of glories past.
A boat, a C&C Jonathan bought for nothing and struggled to restore to life but which is too far gone and will sit here parked for $100 a year until the eccentric old boat yard owner dies and all is swept away. Jonathan the craggy granite man from Maine has a heart in there somewhere and it doesn’t let go of boats. Or women but that door barely cracked at all during our tour. The mystery of Cathy’s fondness for this strange man was starting to come clear.
Up next: a truck a weird submerged trailer, salt water and a boat. Of course a boat.
Jonathan puts his Rozinante in the hands of a boat yard owner who is a one man operation, a Maine stereotype and extremely capable boat fitter. He builds, repairs, and replaces parts as needed in the fleet of boats moored in this basin that is the background to these pictures.
It took two goes with some minor adjustments but the classic you see here was winched onto the submerged hydraulic trailer built by Bill the man by the truck in a baseball cap. He stood with an Xbox in his hands and tweaked the sailboat remotely into his home made adjustable trailer cradle. The sailing season is over and Jonathan wanted me to see this Maine original.
Bill has an immobile truck parked in the weeds by the public boat ramp. With a few deft rigs at the controls, the diesel roaring loudly he pulled the masts and the boat was ready to find its spot deep in one of those vast sheds that protect the fleet from winter.
There is a school tucked away in the woods started forty years ago as an adjunct to a magazine devoted to the subject of wooden boats.
A few years ago Jonathan and his sister took a course and built a boat together. He says he would rather have lived a 19th century life as he loves working with his hands. He got dreamy eyed thinking about that boat build.
Back at home Cathy asked him how the boat they built sailed. “Like shit” Jonathan replied laconically then laughed. The gluing and taping was the thing.
Jonathan bought us sandwiches, my favorite tuna fish in little cardboard to go boxes. I thought I sit at a bench outside the grocery store but he shook his head. I know a better spot he said absentmindedly. His brain was already there.
We walked past the now empty school, past the finished products, the drying sails, the mooring balls and anchors hanging to dry in the sun…
…and we ate and looked at the water and the islands which seemed a world away but we could just barely see from his home. I want to go back and sail Maine.
Jonathan is an impatient driver but he pulled over to allow a princess to pass. Which didn’t stop him grumbling how slowly the trailer came wobbling on the dirt road as we waited.
It wasn’t all boats, there was some gardening with Cathy, I helped haul the mulch while she did the delicate work.
We had dinner out in a heated tent at a place I feared my lumberjack outfit might be too dressed down; it wasn’t. Lucky too because I carry no dress up clothes on this journey through my life.
I struggled to capture the serenity of the home, the conversation…
I was too shy to photograph our five star dinner but Jonathan bought lobster our first night and boiled them in a pot with seawater and seaweed. We ravaged the carcasses.
Cathy failed to completely polish off the blueberry pie before we arrived so there was some left for us. I drank far too much and went to sleep smiling and woke up parched.
It is a small house stuck on a point in the woods with a beach on three sides. Beaches in Maine are private. Weird state. Nice if you own one!
Canoes fit to portage if you decide to paddle the Far North.
It’s nice too if your friend owns a Maine beach and has a guest apartment above the garage with a hot shower and an east facing window to wake you at dawn to walk your dog alone, in solitary splendor on that beach in the crisp cold air with a warm serape to wrap you up. Glorious days.
And then we had to leave. Layne’s leg needs attention where the skin cancer was removed and her sister the doctor wants her in Asheville so we hurry south to get this annoyance fixed in North Carolina. The life of the nomad, what started in Tucson ends 3,000 miles away.
Pack the van. Think of all that flooding and mud and destruction in Florida and look around at the serenity and wilderness and wonder at the wonder of van life. None of this would have been possible without GANNET2.
Memories. Cathy shook her head in bemusement when we arrived. We knew her from years in Sugarloaf Key where she raised her children. From years in the classroom next to Layne in Key West. “I can’t believe you’re here,” she said. Neither could we.
So much to see. Stuff I’d read about in sailing magazines. Places I’d heard of.
Places Rusty did not want to leave any more than we did.
Jonathan the dog curmudgeon fell under Rusty’s spell.
And now it’s all in the mirrors with a wet ride ahead as post tropical storm Ian dumps some rain on us as we hurry south. Much better to be vanning than sailing I am afraid to admit. I am far from Maine tough.
