Spring 2021
Number 30
Lewis R. French turns 150! Designing a Rig for Ernestina The Sailing School Vessel Act The Pleasure of Sailmaking Living the Dream
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MICHAEL RUTSTEIN
People People Tall Ships America’s first — and hopefully last — virtual conference is in the books. Not that it wasn’t worthwhile! There was a lot of good content, and the convenience and low cost of the virtual event brought in folks who normally would not spend the money. But the conference is one of my favorite events of the year because of the people, not the presentations — a sentiment echoed by everyone, including the organizers. “It’s not something I want to do every year. It’s not the same. We’ll just say that right out there,” said Tall Ships America’s Erin Short in March. “But I was pleasantly surprised by how we were still able to maintain the community. There was a ton of conversation going on and we were able to reach so many people that normally couldn’t afford coming to the conference. That was something we saw during crew resource days — both days, the attendance was about 50 to 60 professional crew, both younger, up-and-coming, and also more established crew. “The community boards were super active. I saw some people creating meetings at 1:00 AM. That’s cool!” The takeway, Short said, was that there’s value to having a virtual component, and future conferences may well bend over backwards to allow people to participate remotely. “I do think we learned a lot and going forward, we would love to incorporate more online opportunities for people. We’re not going to do away with it being an in-person conference — we’re people people, we like being around each other! But we are trying to figure out a way to make it more of a hybrid. That’s something that we can certainly explore.”
MARLINSPIKE MAGAZINE Spring 2021 • Number 30 Michael Rutstein, Publisher Marlinspike is published quarterly for $25 by Pennant Publications, Inc., 98 Washington Square #1 Salem, MA 01970 Cover Photo: Fred LeBlanc Postmaster: send address changes to Marlinspike 98 Washington Square #1, Salem, MA 01970 Copyright 2021 by Pennant Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Fair Winds,
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Michael Rutstein, Publisher
4 b Midcoast Methuselah
28 b Living the Dream?
Garth & Jenny Wells dish on Maine Windjamming
Sailing down city streets each night? We got you.
12 b A Rig for ERNESTINA
32 b 38 b 44 b 46 b
And who better to design it than Capt. Dan Moreland?
16 b Inflection Point Forty years ago, the SSVA changed everything
22 b The Pleasure of Sailmaking ‘Pleasant and comfortable work’ for an Essex winter
Boats, Bars & Beaches Boatyards Name That Boat Show Us Your Spike / Tattoo
And for hopefully the last time — no calendar and no job listings, courtesy of the pandemic!
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Midcoast Methuselah Now an amazing 150 years old, the schooner Lewis R. French has survived pandemics before. Owners Garth & Jenny Wells talk about the current state of the windjammer industry and their plans for a bounce-back birthday season
M. RUTSTEIN
Marlinspike: Out of the thousands and thousands of schooners built in Maine in the 19th century, the French is the last survivor. What was it that enabled her to last so long?
was 100 years old at that point. And she’d gotten work done, of course, to have lasted 100 years, but that was by far the most extensive rebuild. John Foss tore her all the way down and built her back up.
Garth Wells: We’ve thought about that a lot. I think there’s a couple factors. The first one is luck. So many boats just went up on the rocks during storms and were abandoned. The fact that that never happened probably speaks to the way that she was built, that she was strong enough to withstand that, that she had the captain and the gear to get through the storms and to be anchored in the right place. But the other part... she’s changed her living through the years, in order to keep herself viable as a business. She began sailing in 1871, carrying cargo, and then in the 1920s, they took out the mast and added an engine. She was a sardine carrier from the ‘20s up to the ‘70s. And then in the ‘70s, when the sardine business was going down in Maine, and the windjammer business was becoming more popular, she transformed back into a schooner. She had 50 years of sailing cargo, 50 years of motoring cargo, and now 50 years of taking passengers out. So, amazingly, she’s been a viable business for 150 years.
MS: Now, the French has come full circle. She started out with no engine, and once again, you’re operating her with no engine. I assume that means you have to pay a more attention to weather and route planning than some of the other windjammers, but I guess it also means that there’s more room for cargo, whether it’s bricks or people. Are there other aspects to running an engineless windjammer?
MS: I saw that she was substantially rebuilt in 1929 after a fire. I guess if she had been carrying a flammable cargo, that might have been the end of her story right there. Garth: Right — that’s the luck part. That fire actually occurred in Belfast at the dock while they were filling up fuel, probably for the yawl boat or for the docking engine, and they were, of course, smoking while they did that… anyway she sunk there at the dock. But the owners, the Gray family, they saw that she was still a viable vessel even after that explosion, so they’re the ones who put the engine in her. They said that really saved her, because then she was running bricks up the river into Bangor. She could do three trips a week motoring, where she could only do one trip a week sailing with a yawl boat. So it kept her economically viable through that transition where all the old schooners, a lot of them, were lost, because they were just too slow. The world was speeding up. MS: Now, you say she was converted into a windjammer back in the early ‘70s. Who owned her at that point? How extensive was that rebuild? Garth: Massive. She was owned by the Seaport Navigation Company, which transported sardines, canned sardines, up in Lubec, Maine, the furthest downeast you can get. They sold her to a young man by the name of John Foss, who now owns the American Eagle. He rebuilt her over three years, very extensively, probably 80% of the frames and the whole deck, all the deck structures, and he had to put the rig back into her, so that was a massive undertaking. She
Garth: It’s an entire mindset, running a yawl boat-powered schooner. Just what you can do and what you can’t do, power-wise. You can’t really back down very well; some things like that, you just get used to. There are advantages, too. I can spin in my length very easily by putting that boat perpendicular to our stern and pushing. But when we’re sailing and the boat’s hauled in the davits, you do not have a quick fallback plan if you suddenly need a push with an engine. The way that you sail the boat has to be altered slightly to know that you have to be able to sail out of whatever you sail into. You can’t just flip that engine on and pump her in forward for 100 yards. So it’s definitely a challenge, but once you’re in that mindset and you think that way, then you just adjust. The other nice thing is to work on the engine in the yawl boat is a lot easier than most engine rooms I’ve been in. You can get all the way around the boat and all the way around the engine. MS: And do you have to train a mate to be in the yawl boat each season? Garth: Oh, yeah. That’s another factor, that it is a twoperson operation. It’s not just your own self, so you do lose a crew member. But we train all the crew members to use it. For many years, the cook ran the yawl boat, and it just... It’s like being in an engine room in a submarine. I tell them, “You just watch me. You don’t really make any decisions on your own down there. So even if you think what we’re doing is wrong, you just keep looking at me.” MS: Jenny, I know you had a lot of sailing experience before you came to Maine, and were sailing as a mate on a windjammer. Can you talk about your path to Maine and to windjamming? Jenny Wells: The first windjammer that I worked on was the Angelique. I had previously worked on the Spirit of Massachusetts, and on the Amistad. I did that on and off for about five years. I also worked on the Isaac H. Evans as a mate. That was maybe in 2001 or 2002? And then Garth bought the French, and so then I switched my allegiance
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over to the Lewis R. French.
Garth: Great question. I’ve seen a move to shorter trips. My first year, I’d say three-quarters of our trips were six days, and now, maybe one-third of our trips are six days long, so that has been a change.
MS: And how did you fall in with Garth? Jenny: The Angelique and the Lewis R. French dock right next to each other in Camden, so all those schooner bums know each other. MS: You guys have been married now since 2007, and you have two kids.
Jenny: I feel like it’s kind of bouncing back now, where our longer trips now suddenly will be sold out before the shorter ones. It’s almost like a pendulum swinging back more toward the longer trips. I don’t know what would account for that.
Jenny: That’s correct. I run the office now, so I don’t get out on the boat quite as much as I used to. But I did cook on the French for a year before we had kids, so I was the yawl boat driver also. Now, I just get out off and on, and our kids go sailing too, sometimes.
MS: I noticed, looking at your schedule, that the fourday trip seems to be your sweet spot.
Garth: We feel like that is long enough that they get a good experience on the boat, but short enough that they can carve out that time among their Maine vacation. MS: Do you ever swap off But like Jenny said, the The LEWIS R. FRENCH and take a trip as captain? six-day trips do get a lot of in an earlier life (top); the galley today repeat sailors, who sign up Jenny: I have never been earlier. Perhaps people are the actual captain of the ready to not have a vacation Lewis R. French! I do have a where they’re jumping from license; I need to renew it. one thing to the next the But I just decided that for whole time. myself, I didn’t want to be the Certainly the internet has actual captain. I did all the changed not only how people other positions. I’ve been the learn about us, but even what cook. I’ve been the mate. I’ve we do on the boat, in some been the mess mate. ways. It sounds silly, but ten years ago, I was really the MS: That must be helpful only one who knew what the in running the business end, weather was like on a daily having worked in every role basis by listening to the radio, on board. or whoever was around me when I listened to the radio, and now everyone knows what Jenny: Yeah. Actually, it’s interesting to do all the differthe forecast is, even more so than I do sometimes. Every ent positions and put yourself in those crew members’ shoes, passenger has checked their phone in the morning and and know what the mess mate is really going through and knows exactly what’s going to happen, so there’s no way I what the mate is really going through. So yeah, that has can get away with saying it’s not going to rain today. No helped a lot. way! That is a thing. I’ll see a video of a trip, an old video from the ‘60s or MS: And Garth, you’ve been on the boat for over 20 ‘70s, and it’s so the same, what we’re doing and what the years now, right? experience really is — so the same. It’s getting away, and seeing how this old boat sails, and seeing a bit of the Maine Garth: My first year as the mate was 1998. coast. In some ways, the windjamming experience is exactly the same — just some of the outside stuff is different. But MS: Amazing. How has the windjammer business you can almost go on a trip now and it feels very much like changed since you guys signed on for the first time? a trip from 30 years ago.
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The FRENCH tearing across Penobscot Bay
Authentic Tarred Hemp Marline
MS: Getting back to what Jenny was saying about the swing back towards longer trips, is the profile of your passengers changing at all? Garth: I don’t think so. I do feel like the shorter trips are younger people now. On the shorter trips, we get a lot of young parents who are getting away for the first time, and their kids are with the grandparents and stuff like that. The longer trips are for more of our hardcore, and I would say there’s a slightly older crowd on the longer trips. Jenny: Yeah, they just have more time. MS: And there are no kids on the French.
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Garth: Our rule is that no one under 16 comes out, except for our own kids, who are younger than that. I tell the passengers that they can come because I can actually yell at them. I can’t yell at your kids. No, that’s not proper. I don’t think the demographics have really changed that much. Do you agree, Jenny? Jenny: We’ve added some things, like sailing and hiking and kayaking, to try to attract some younger people who want to do several things on their vacation, and now they can do it all on the French. I guess our marketing, in that sense, has changed a little bit. I don’t know that it’s necessary to add those things, but from a marketing standpoint, I think it works.
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