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I just got a scanner and have scanned in some old photos. Most of these were taken in the early seventies in Rhode Island and nearby parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Some have interest as photographs, and some interesting boats as the subject. The prints are old and the color quality is poor.
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Let's start with a couple of black and white shots. This picture shows a couple of Beetle cats waiting for action, with a flock of volunteer crew. It could be hard to keep your boat clean in a situation like this. |
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I took this picture of two Raymond Hunt-designed 110 class sloops at a yacht club on the northwest shore of Narraganset Bay. The extrordinary geometry of the scene is accentuated by the high contrast and washed out sky. When I first got the print back from the photofinisher, I though perhaps it was a double exposure. |
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This picture was not taken in New England. It was taken in Hong Kong while I was on R&R from Vietnam in 1970. If you look carefully, you can make out a boatyard in the foreground. On the dock, closest to the camera, are piles of boatbuilding lumber. They partially obscure a junk that is out of the water 'in dry dock.' It is said that the residents of the floating city in the middle distance rarely go ashore. The Kowloon Peninsula is in the background. |
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Eddy & Duff of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts built quite a number of these little fiberglass cutters to Sam Crocker's Stone Horse design. I never quite understood why this boat is held is special esteem by so many knowledgeable people, but I attribute this failure to a lack of discernment on my part. The boat is the most attractive example of flush deck design to achieve any popularity or acceptence in the U.S., which is slightly ironic because the designer favored the cabin trunk version of the same boat. |
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I have always had a weakness for chine hulls. This sloop is a little unusual because the chine converges with the sheer at the stem, a feature that sets her apart from better known chine boats such as the Thunderbird. This boat is more like Sam Crocker's Five Ply. |
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Whether this fiberglass reproduction is a Friendship Sloop, or just a plastic copy, depends on your degree of idealogical purity. In any case, it's a very pretty boat. This cruising adaptation was photographed in Bristol, RI.
With fine forward sections and a low freeboard, the Friendship sloop hull doesn't make a compact cruising boat. This one is 30' on deck with a substantial bowsprit, and a boom that overhangs the transom. The accomdations below deck are about the same as modern boat of about 26' loa.
If you want a boat like this, go talk to the folks at Jarvis Newman Marine.
She has a tall topmast for a big main topsail. Do you suppose that the topsail would be allowed in the non-spinnaker racing classes? |
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The next three pictures are of boats designed by L. Francis Herreshoff. This first is the classic Rozinante canoe yawl. |
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I passed this H-28 ketch towing a dinghy while out sailing one day. |
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We encounted Ticonderoga in Boothbay Harbor, Maine while on vacation. At the time, I thought is was probably a once-in-a-lifetime chance, but I have happened upon a couple time since then. |
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You never know what you are going to encounter when you go down to the seashore. I took this picture of a picturesque power cruiser in Noank. |
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When I got this picture back from photofinisher, I thought it looked like I had photographed a diaorama. The boat is an Easport Pinky, designed by Ted Brewer. The picture was taken near Wakefield, RI. |
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The schooner Bill of Rights was in her first year when we encountered her in Fisher's Island Sound. I started taking pictures when she was a spot on the horizon, and was lucky enough to get a couple of perfectly framed shots. I'm not sure I have even seen a more magnificent vessel under sail. |
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My family vacationed for several years on MacMahan Island, in the Sheepscot River near Boothbay Harbor. Here is our GP14, moored in the lagoon. It's a foggy day, and the river is socked in. |
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Finally, I have two shots of a large schooner coming into Noank after a schooner race run by Mystic Seaport Museum. Each fall, I wanted to take my own boat out to see the schooner races, but they were run in the latter part of October and the weather was usually like that in the pictures: chilly, windy, and spitting rain. I think this boat is by John Alden.
I'm don't know how many regattas for schooners there are in New England these days, probably not enough to refer to it as the 'schooner race circuit.' But, if you include the regattas for wooden boats, its enough to keep a boat pretty busy over the summer..
If anyone wants to get up a syndicate to build and race a Bolger "Lion's Paw," drop me a line.
Peter Vanderwaart pvanderw@optonline.net
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