EAGLE has Flown

After several years on the market, one of the highliners of the Maine windjammer fleet has changed hands. Captain John Foss has passed the torch to Tyler King, who grew up in a boatyard and has been keeping tabs on Foss and the Eagle since he was a boy.

Marlinspike spoke to King in November.

Marlinspike: Should I even congratulate you? I mean, it’s not easy, replacing a legend like John Foss.

Tyler King: No, it is not easy — he is a force. But it’s an exciting thing.

MS: You grew up in a boatyard in Gloucester; that sounds like a pretty good background for running a windjammer. But how did you get involved with John and American Eagle?

TK: Growing up in Gloucester, there are signs of schooners everywhere and growing up in a boatyard, history and tradition are even more a part of what you do. History really exudes from everywhere, if you know where to look — especially in this yard that I grew up in, which started in 1904.

I started sailing on my parents’ 1922 62’ Alden schooner Ellida when I was, really little. My parents owned her from 1990 to 2000 and she was a wonderful vessel. We would sail her to Penobscot Bay in the summers as well as race against John in the Esperanto Cup from time to time. There was a great picture in the Gloucester Daily Times of the two of them charging to windward in a good sea.

My parents sold Ellida and bought back our 1939 Alden cutter, and that was the boat that I grew up sailing with the most. We continued going to Maine most summers, and every year John would come down for the schooner races, so I knew of the American Eagle at a very young age, she was always around and always my favorite.

Back then my grandparents also had a house in Bucks Harbor, in South Brooksville, Maine, so I always saw the rest of the windjammers when we’d all go up to visit them by land or sea. Then my grandparents moved to Camden, of all places, where I spent a lot of time sailing Optis and 420s in the harbor, watching all the schooners come and go and getting in everyone’s way.

So in short it was always just ingrained in my life. Eventually I couldn’t stand it anymore — I just wanted to be a part of it and work on one of these schooners as crew. But it turned out I was too young — I was 10 — so I waited and waited and finally when I was a junior in high school, I started applying to try and get work on one of the schooners up in Maine. I applied to work on the American Eagle first, but the entire crew was coming back that year. I was eventually hired on the schooner Timberwind. I worked on her for the summer of 2013 as the apprentice/messcook/deckhand and then went back to high school, and then 11 days after I graduated high school, I left for the season on the schooner Stephen Taber with Captain Noah Barnes.

I did two years on the Taber, which was great fun. Then after getting my Electrical, Diesel and Systems certificates I was a part of the Ladona rebuild, as an electrician and a carpenter. And then I was her mate, for her inaugural season. And after that season, John finally had an opening, and so that next year was my first season with John.

MS: What year was that?

TK: 2017. But I had met him four weeks into my first season on the Timberwind in 2013. So throughout my whole time windjamming, we’ve always known each other.

Despite her simple rig, AMERICAN EAGLE is a formidable competitor

Photo by Len Burgess

MS: By that summer, we were already listing American Eagle for sale. After several years on the market, with John looking for the right person, what enabled you to close that deal? What was it that he saw in you that made him think, ‘Yeah, this is the guy I can hand over the American Eagle to?’

TK: Well, I hate to speak for myself. This is more a question for John. But like I said, it’s kind of just part of the fabric of what I do. It’s been such a part of my life. I truly love what I do. I have learned lots of the skills needed to care for and operate a vessel like this because they were always a part of my day-to-day, growing up with a boatbuilder as your dad, just on a different scale.

Also growing up, fishing schooners were and remain my passion. I read every scrap of anything about them I could get my hands on, they always captivated my imagination, especially growing up with the backdrop of Gloucester.

And these vessels — and the American Eagle specifically — are a tangible connection between the present and the past. I have no illusions of going dory trawling again, but I understand the whole of it. What it was and what it is. I also love taking people sailing and I love showing people all the things that I find so fascinating about these big old wooden boats, and the coasts they sailed by. And that’s really something I want to preserve.

MS: John always keeps her in fine trim, but there’s no getting around the fact that American Eagle is over 90 years old. What kind of shape is the boat in structurally? She certainly looks great from across the harbor every Labor Day.

TK: She’s in wonderful shape considering the hard lives she’s had, through both her working careers. John has done a very good job meticulously keeping up with all the niggles. Deck leaks are treated just as ferociously as spongy spots, and he does a very good job of tackling things when they need to be tackled.

The boat’s in very good shape and there’s quite a bit of her hull that’s original. And it gets checked on every time we pull a plank or do our inspections. The list sure doesn’t get any shorter to keep up with, but she is in very good shape.

MS: I seem to recall that she was repowered in the last few years.

TK: She was. Yeah, she had a V671 put in her when John rebuilt her, which replaced the big old Caterpillar that she had at the end of her fishing days. And after many years of service we had to repower with the John Deere, which was certainly was a step up, but the timing left something to be desired.

MS: In what sense? You mean doing the repowering in the middle of the season?

TK: Yeah. It cut our season short, which was too bad. But these things happen, as much as we try to avoid it.

MS: Is anybody in the fleet still running one of those old 671 engines?

TK: The Angelique has two 471s that are from the ‘50s, and they’re in great shape. I was just talking to Captain Dennis [Gallant] a couple days ago about them and he has rebuilt one of them and he bought plenty of parts from farther downeast. So they are going to be running happily for quite a while now.

A good friend said to me once, “You can’t kill ‘em, you have to put ‘em down.”

MS: So what happened to American Eagle’s 671?

TK: There’s a clean vessel engine initiative. If you participate in it, one of the stipulations is you have to make the previous engine ‘untenable’ as they say. So, they took a sledgehammer to Ladona’s old engine, and I don’t think Eagle’s was in any better shape. It was just time.

MS: So now you’ve got one of those newfangled Tier 3 John Deeres.

TK: Yep. It’s a big four cylinder, 200-and-something horse.

MS: Is that the same horsepower that she had previously? I mean, in the same ballpark?

TK: Yes, that is very similar to the output of the old engine. But the two engines have different power bands and torque curves. The Detroit produced more power low down in the rev range and these smaller four cylinders, which have bigger pistons and a big turbocharger with an aftercooler, create their power higher up in the rev range where those turbos are happiest. So they act a little bit different.

MS: What, if anything, will you be doing differently than Captain Foss?

TK: Well, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. John has done an incredible job of creating a unique experience for all of our guests, and everybody really enjoys how things are done on the American Eagle. I do not see any seismic shifts coming down the pike.

I also really just want to make sure that we utilize all the tools we have at our disposal to reach more people who want to come sailing, and broaden our scope to welcome more people who don’t know about us yet. We want to keep the same core values so that we don’t alienate the people who have come to enjoy what we do and have been sailing with us for, gosh, so, so long.

MS: You belong to a different generation than John Foss, and marketing these businesses has changed enormously over the time that John’s been running the boat. Will there be changes in the way that you do your marketing?

TK: Yeah. Obviously, social media has really come more and more into the scope of usability, and into the mainstream consciousness. We have our newsletters that we put out, which people really enjoy. And we have our social media accounts. Instagram is one we’re going to utilize a little bit better. I think there’s ways we can grow healthily in good directions, and ways that we really need to maintain.

MS: Looking at your website, it seems like we’ll continue to see American Eagle come to Gloucester for the festival.

TK: I’m from Gloucester. If I didn’t bring her back here, I think that would be... just not right.

MS: Plus, American Eagle has had quite a run of success in the Mayor’s Cup race over the years.

TK: Indeed. Well, we’ll see if we can keep that going.

MS: What makes her such a great competitor? Her bald-headed rig is deceptively simple-looking — there’s not a lot to it — but that is a very big mainsail!

TK: It is very big. We spend a lot of time, when we are racing, shifting those draft centers around in the main, and also the fore too, with the sheets and the jiggers to make sure our slots and transitions are right were they need to be.

But yes, it’s a very big sail. We really just spend a lot of time trimming and trimming some more. Interestingly, though, she’s a bit narrow, 19 foot at the beam, which is three or four feet thinner than she kind of should be. So that helps her slip along a bit easier. A big part of her success of course is John, and part of it is she’s just a very good sailing hull.

It’s really interesting to look at her hull through the lens of the progression of fishing schooners of that final era, because they were inevitably moving towards power, and the vessels kept getting fuller and fuller running forward for hold space and to make room for the bigger engines. She is unique in that she holds onto her run way back aft, but midships, she’s starting to look more and more like the Eastern rig draggers of the following decade.

Competing for the Mayor's Cup

Photo by George Bekris

MS: Tyler, the North End Shipyard is an important component in the continued success of the fleet, a critical resource for everybody up there. John Foss stepping aside from the American Eagle, Doug and Linda Lee stepping aside from Heritage — how does that change things at the Shipyard? What does the future look like there?

TK: Well, that’s a very good question. It is a very special resource to have to take care of all these amazing vessels and it has created so many talented people and given them the tools to do very amazing things. It’s doesn’t seem like the Lees or John are disappearing in the immediate future; they still seemingly love to be a part of it, in many ways. The future looks very bright. With all the skilled people that are taking over these vessels, alongside the generation that took their vessels over, 10, 15 years ago, we have really made wonderful strides in keeping this business alive and doing so well. So I think there’s plenty of will and reason to keep things going just the way they should be going.

MS: Most of the boats in the fleet have changed hands since we started publishing the magazine eight years ago, which is pretty amazing. And now Capt. Ray Williamson is looking to sell his boats. But it’s not like outsiders bought their way into the windjammer fleet. The new owners are people who were captains and mates and had previously worked on the boats, and are now moving up into ownership roles. And you all know each other.

TK: Yeah, we certainly do.

MS: I’m sure not everybody is best friends with everybody else, but for cooperative projects like the Maine Windjammer Association or the North End Shipyard, how important is it that you know each other, that you all understand the business, that you grew up in the business?

TK: Well, I think it’s invaluable, because we’re all the same passionate people who love this way of life. So there is no sense in really butting heads or arguing, because we’re all on the same team. And we are much stronger together than we would be apart, because there’s only a handful of these boats left. So we have to stick together.

MS: When you guys do have disagreements, what is there to disagree about?

TK: There’s different models to what we do. There’s different levels of excellence. There’s different levels of service that we offer to our guests. If you took a look at the history of this industry, it started very, very differently. It was hammocks and very, very simple food, and the lifestyle onboard was more akin to the real coastermen that worked them 100 or so years ago.

And since then everyone’s kind of come up with their own niche to bring people onto their own vessels in their own specific ways, which is wonderful. But I think some people don’t want that trueness of the original recipe to be lost, and they don’t want that to become the expectation. So there’s plenty of stuff people can grumble about, but it is not louder than the intrinsic goodness of what we all do.

MS: In the spectrum between the more rustic boats and the Ladona, which is marketed as a more upscale option, where does American Eagle fit in?

TK: I think that we are firmly in the middle. We have our niche, which is the longer trips that we do. We go up to Canada, we come down to Gloucester, and everywhere in between. And a little more adventure-oriented, because with our inboard engine and with our short rig, we can get to places in a timely fashion and get farther away than people who have other types of power can. We’re not trying to be high-end and we’re not trying to be the economy option. I think we have a very nice placement in the spectrum of this industry.

MS: So, is John planning to ghost you guys, or is there still a chance that we might see him stepping on as a relief skipper now and then?

TK: If you look at our schedule closely, there’s asterisks next to about five trips this coming season. Those are trips that Capt. John will be joining us on.

MS: Brilliant! And will he be sailing as the captain, or is he just coming to spend time with passengers who relate to him personally?

TK: I think he can do whatever he pleases.

MS: Yeah. He’s John Foss, right?

TK: He most certainly is. ❂