Marlinspike #34

Spring 2022

Number 34

A BOLD DECISION Lake Champlain Maritime Museum announces plans to retire their canal schooner replica MYSTIC WHALER arrives on the West Coast PRIDE II crushes the internet $7.95 (about the cost of a Rum Punch)

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MICHAEL RUTSTEIN

Not Forever When the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum announced this month that they plan to “retire” their replica canal schooner, the Lois McClure, I could almost hear the howling. Boats are forever! They need to be restored, not retired!

But we must admit, our industry always includes a number of boats for which the cost of maintenance exceeds the potential for revenue, and we have generally not done a good job of recognizing this or acting to mitigate it.

Pilgrim sank at her dock. Hawaiian Chieftain had to be laid up, uncertifiable, needing more in repairs than she was worth. Insurers pulled the plug on Spirit of Dana Point after the Coast Guard insisted on long-overdue repairs.

Here in Salem, the Park Service is stuck with Friendship, a cold-molded replica of a full-rigged ship that hasn’t sailed, or even been fully rigged, in six years due to cascading maintenance and repair issues.

There is, of course, a distinction between original vessels and replicas. If the Lois McClure were an original 19th-century canal boat, the LCMM would have gritted their teeth, raised a few million bucks, and done the full rebuild. With original vessels, the boat is the mission. But as LCMM Executive Director Susan McClure says in the interview beginning on page 26, “replicas are teaching tools, tools to use to meet your mission.”

Original or replica, boats which are not aggressively maintained will become a problem. The longer you wait, the longer they drag you down, the more it costs to maintain them, and the more difficult it becomes to raise the funds to bring them back from the edge of oblivion.

Does your organization have a long-term plan for its vessels? Is it realistic?

Do you regularly review it with stakeholders? Don’t be the next to get blindsided by the most obvious fact of our industry: many of our boats are not forever.

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4 b The Whaler Goes West Christine Healy talks about the delivery & the future

10 b No Child Left Ashore Greg Gorga shares programming plans for the Whaler

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The WHALER goes WEST Capt. Christine Healy talks about the delivery to the West Coast and the schooner’s future with Central Coast Ocean Adventures

PHOTO: JEFFREY MORGAN

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Longtime owner Capt. John Eginton at the wheel of MYSTIC WHALER during the delivery to Fort Lauderdale this fall

PHOTO: JEFFREY MORGAN

kid, and I used to race against this boat in the Chesapeake race on the Woodwinds, and Pride of Baltimore and a couple others.

I moved to the West Coast in 2008 to sail on board the Lynx, and then just stayed out West because it’s gorgeous out here. I just happened to be working in Santa Barbara when the Chrismans purchased her, and they needed a captain, so I sent in my resume and they hired me.

MS: They shipped you to the East Coast to be their representative on the delivery?

Captain Christine Healy has sailed on the Clipper City, the Liberty Fleet, the Woodwinds, Lynx, Pride II, and America, among others, and is now at the wheel of the Mystic Cruzar, formerly the Mystic Whaler.

The Whaler was purchased from former owners John and Pat Eginton this fall by Roger and Sarah Chrisman, with the intention of offering educational programming on the California Coast through their new non-profit, Central Coast Ocean Adventures. The Whaler arrived in Channel Islands Harbor in January, and her crew is currently preparing her to show the flag this spring and summer and begin programming in the fall.

Marlinspike: So you took over for the delivery from Ensenada, the West Coast part of the delivery?

Christine Healy: I actually picked the boat up at Mystic with Capt. John Eginton.

MS: Who got stuck with the food bill for all those folks?

CH: That would’ve been the Chrismans, the new owners.

MS: It sounds like you’re used to fast boats — the Woodwinds and Lynx and Pride. I don’t expect that Mystic Cruzar really falls into that category, does she?

CH: No. She sails well, though! There were points when we were hitting eight, nine knots with her! She’s not a Ferrari, but she definitely will move.

MS: You took her down to Fort Lauderdale, and you put her on one of those ships that ship ships?

MS: You did the whole trip? Tell us about it!

CH: It was pretty cool. I’m from the East Coast originally, and was really familiar because I’m a Chesapeake Bay 6

CH: The Chrismans also own a large motor yacht, so one of their crew from the motor yacht, myself and then two other crew that are not so much traditional boat sailors, but extremely experienced, joined up, and we were the West Coast contingent.

It was probably one of the most unique and fantastic crews I could have sailed with. I’d known John for a long time, pretty much my whole career, but I never actually got to sail with Captain Eginton, or Pat, and so it was really nice to get to sail down the coast with him. We also had Captain Nicholas Alley on board, so it was the three of us captains, 14 on board total, and we had this amazing, really wonderful trip down the East Coast. I couldn’t ask for better, it was such a great crew and a good dynamic on board.

CH: The yacht transport that we were on, the Cerulean, is owned by Seven Seas. I wasn’t involved in

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organizing that part of the movement, they just told me to show up: “Here’s the contacts for the ship; put it onto the tanker.”

MS: So they delivered Mystic Whaler to Ensenada, and then you put that West Coast crew back together, and brought the boat up to Channel Islands Harbor?

CH: Actually, we sat in Fort Lauderdale for three weeks waiting for the PHOTO: ship. JEFFREY So I went down to a skeleton MORGAN crew, myself and two others, just enough hands to move the boat, and everybody else dispersed. We prepared the ship: myself, Quincy and Zodea and then just did small projects while we were waiting.

I did head down to Key West and got to connect with some old friends that I used to sail with out of there. I worked on the Libertys in the early 2000s, and some of my old friends are still hanging out down there. It’s amazing how much it’s changed in 15 years. It’s really built up, so much new construction, it’s crazy.

before season, so I know a lot of the boats heading south hadn’t arrived there yet. America 2.0 was down there, and Appledore, but it had a different feel to it from when I was working down there.

MS: Well, Hindu is being rebuilt, and Liberty Clipper is being used for Windjammer cruises in the Bahamas.

Anyway, I saw quite a few articles about your arrival at Channel Islands Harbor. Can you tell us a little bit about why the Chrismans wanted to acquire this boat, and how they plan to use it?

CH: They’ve always been boaters, first off, and they’ve done well in life and they like to give back to the community. Roger used to sit on the board of the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, and he was very instrumental in getting the Spirit of Dana Point to Santa Barbara for doing history programs and getting kids on the water. Their motto is “No child left on shore.”

MS: Catchy!

MS: How do you think the waterfront scene has changed? The schooners running out of Key West?

CH: In all honesty, it seemed somewhat empty to me.

But I wasn’t there at the height of the season, it was just

CH: And I don’t know if you know much about the Ocean Institute, but — MS: We’ve covered the problems they’ve had with the

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“The Chrismans wanted for years to bring a ship to the Central Coast. And then when Mystic Whaler became available and the Chrismans were put in contact through the broker and everything, they sent some of their other crew out and they just were like, ‘This is the perfect ship, she sleeps a lot of people, we can do a lot of things, we can get kids back out on the water.’

“Channel Islands Harbor is going to be our new home port, we are going to be bringing her to Santa Barbara quite a bit, and possibly visiting down into the San Diego area.

We definitely want to get out to the Channel Islands.

We are just redoing our COI now, so depending on how our inspection comes out, but hopefully our COI will be able to include Catalina and Santa Cruz.”

— Capt. Christine Healy

PHOTO: JEFFREY MORGAN

Pilgrim and the Spirit.

CH: Yeah. So with Pilgrim gone, Lynx on the East Coast, and Tole Mour sent off to the Caribbean… and without the use of Spirit of Dana Point… there’s really a lack of boats on this coast. And then COVID messed everything up. The Maritime Museum of San Diego, who I used to work for, they keep more locally now. They don’t do as many long trips with San Salvador or Californian.

Anyway, the Chrismans wanted for years to bring a ship to the Central Coast. And then when Mystic Whaler became available and the Chrismans were put in contact through the broker and everything, they sent some of their other crew out and they just were like, “This is the perfect ship, she sleeps a lot of people, we can do a lot of things, we can get kids back out on the water.”

And that is part of very much Sarah’s dream and part of their legacy that they’re setting up for the Central Coast of California.

MS: Central Coast Ocean Adventures: I assume that’s a new organization?

CH: I’d say we’re still in our infancy, and our website, hopefully, we’ll have something up by next week. After my phone call with you, I was going to call our designer to say, “Hey, do you have something up yet?”

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MS: You mentioned the overnight capacity of the boat.

Do you contemplate doing a lot of overnight programs? Or a mix of everything? It sounds like there are plans to base the boat in Channel Islands Harbor, but to take her to other ports to run programs, is that right?

CH: Channel Islands Harbor is going to be our new home port, we are going to be bringing her to Santa Barbara quite a bit, and possibly San Diego for the Schooner Cup once a year, at least visiting down into the San Diego area. We definitely want to get out to the Channel Islands. We are just redoing our COI now, so depending on how our inspection comes out, but hopefully our COI will be able to include Catalina and Santa Cruz.

MS: What kind of COI did the Whaler have when she was operating from Connecticut?

CH: Her COI was for coastwise, partially-protected waters, 20 miles from a safe harbor.

MS: Some of the articles mentioned that the public tours might be available as soon as the late spring. Are you guys still on track for that?

CH: I’m hoping late spring, early summer. Quite honestly, our inspection is on the 30th, so we’ll see how that

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turns out. I know there’s a lot of excitement here, I know Santa Barbara wants us up there for events this summer, it’s the 150th anniversary of Stearns Wharf.

And then education programs will begin in the fall.

CH: Exactly. Yeah. She’s a great boat. Captain Eginton, and Captain Pat, she was well loved, well maintained and she’s a great ship.

MS: Tell us briefly how you came to work on tall ships.

MS: What’s your experience with steel boats?

CH: I sailed on the Clipper City when she was still in Baltimore, and I also used to work on big steel research vessels. I have quite a bit of experience on steel boats.

MS: When the boat was for sale, some people expressed reservations about a mild steel hull that was built in the ‘60s, and wondered what the life expectancy of a boat like that was.

CH: They sounded the hull, a lot of her plating was replaced in 1995, and I think she’s good to go. We have to haul every two years, and you have to get it gauged, so that’s the beauty about steel is that, if it’s bad, just cut it out, weld a new piece in. I’ve never had too much of an issue with steel.

I found it one of the easier materials. It’s a lot easier than a wooden boat.

MS: Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just measure the thickness of an oak plank and go “Yep. Still two inches.

Good to go.”

CH: I came to tall ships a long time ago when I was very young and at home in Annapolis. I was doing deliveries, and then I was hired onto the Woodwinds, and I was very fortunate that my captain from the Woodwinds had sailed on Pride I, and encouraged me to apply for Pride II when I was 20. And I absolutely fell in love with it.

That was the beginning of my career, sailing the Chesapeake, and I would see Pride sailing up and down the Chesapeake, and then actually when I was sailing on the Woodwinds was the last time that Californian was on the East Coast, and I saw her cruising up the Bay. I was like, “What a cool thing.” And that’s what brought me to traditional boats.

I sailed them for a number of years before I took a little bit of a hiatus and ran off to motor yachts…

MS: …to make real money…

CH: Yeah. That’s crazy thing with tall ships: I love them, but it’s very hard to financially survive them.

MS: You must have been sailing the Woodwinds when they were still a very new operation.

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CH: Woodwind Two was probably a year or two old.

MS: Why did we fall into this hole, with the lack of boats in Southern California? In addition to the ones you mentioned, Amazing Grace went to Puerto Rico… Hawaiian Chieftain is headed to Hawaii…

Bay Lady left San Francisco for Seattle…

CH: That’s a good question. There’s a lot of people out here that are interested in it. There are fewer harbors out here, but still I feel like there’s a long maritime history out here, so I don’t really understand why they don’t stay, or why they’re not supported or sustained out here. A few programs are, but it’s definitely much harder.

I suspect that access to the water is also an issue out here. It’s amazing how many kids on this Coast that live maybe 15 minutes from the harbor have never been to the beach. I’m still trying to figure that one out. ❂ For more info, search online for Central Coast Ocean Adventures, or visit the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum (sbmm.org) or Channel Islands Maritime Museum (cimmvc.org).

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‘No Child Left A With the arrival of Mystic Whaler on the Central Coast, sailing opportunities for kids are on the upswing

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Ashore’ The Mystic Whaler arrived in Channel Islands Harbor in January (see page 4) where as Mystic Cruzar she will serve as the flagship of Roger and Sarah Chrisman’s newly-formed Central Coast Ocean Adventures.

We recently spoke to Greg Gorga, Executive Director of the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, which along with the Channel Islands Maritime Museum will be organizing school programs on the Cruzar as soon as this fall.

Marlinspike: What kind of impact can Mystic Cruzar have on your programming in Santa Barbara?

Greg Gorga: Nothing’s set in stone yet, but we hope to continue with our “Before the Mast” program based on Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast. We had been working with the Ocean Institute for about 20 years on that program. It’s been a very, very successful program here in Santa Barbara. We’ve put 10,000 kids on board over 20 years, county-wide. For many of them, it’s their very first night on a tall ship. For some, it’s their first night away from home. And it’s just been an amazingly successful program here.

MS: What happens during those programs? How long are they? What are the ages?

GG: California fourth graders are studying their state history. Dana’s book really pertinent to Santa Barbara because Dana’s very first stop was here, before they were supposed to check into Monterey. He talks about some traditions that are still going on here. We have what’s called Old Spanish Days, where everybody gets egg stuffed with confet-

ti and smacks people over the head with them. Confetti all over State Street. Dana wrote about that back in the 1830s, at a wedding that he attended. So that tradition actually is still going on. I think it’s the first written record of that tradition.

The kids show up here at two o’clock on a weekday afternoon. They do a tour of the Maritime Museum with our docents. Specifically, they cover the Richard Henry Dana exhibit and talk about that, but see other parts of the museum as well. Then they get a 15-minute break on our front patio, after which the crew shows up — usually four characters from that book. The captain, who’s kind of aloof; the first mate, who’s very hard on the kids; second mate; and then a cook who’s goofy and tries to get the kids to sneak off the boat and go into town.

The first mate musters the kids and gets them lined up and five kids are picked as first mates. They’re going to give all the orders to the rest of the crew, so these kids are learning leadership skills.

They learn listening skills. They don’t even move from our patio until they’re listening to that first mate and following all the orders properly. Then they march a long way, about 15 minutes to the end of the harbor to where the boat is docked, and then they are on that boat until nine the next morning.

The boat doesn’t leave the dock, but six of the crew go out on a dinghy to look for hides and tallow the crew has hidden in the harbor. There are five different groups. They all have different roles. One crew has to raise a barrel of water onto the deck, and it’s the hardest thing they’ve ever done. It takes them 20, 30 minutes using block and tackle, so they’re learning mechanical advantage. They finally get that

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barrel on the deck and they’re exhausted.

And the second mate’s like, okay, that’s one barrel. Every time we’re in the harbor, you got to bring 70 of those on board. Let’s do it again. So they realize how hard they have to work.

Another crew is at the beck and call of the captain.

Another crew has to cook dinner and breakfast for everybody, so they have galley duty. That crew does not have to do night watch, but all the other crews have to do two hours during the night doing night watch. And for these 10-yearold kids to be up on a deck in the middle of the harbor where there’s seagulls squawking and seals barking, and the smell of the salty air… I mean, that’s a special thing that most kids will never forget in their lives.

MS: Just to be up and about at three in the morning is probably a big deal!

GG: Exactly. Without their parents around. There are six or seven parents on board as safety officers, but really they don’t interfere with anything.

And then they’ll read stories. They’ll get letters from home from their parents, based on the fact that they’ve been away for a year or so. So those are pretty fun. And then, they’ll sing sea chanteys. They raise each other up on the bosun’s chair. So they’re learning teamwork. It’s really a great program for kids with language and learning challenges,

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because it’s all hands-on. We put a lot of low-income families, schools on board that would normally not have this opportunity. It’s a one-day program, so it’s hard to follow up.

You don’t know how this affects kids, but we had one young lady who, five years later, spent I think 10 days on the East Coast with her dad on a boat that had no engine, a tall ship, learned the names and uses of 150 different lines and spars. And at 16 she self-published a novel based on an English sea captain during the time of Lord Nelson. Who knows if any of that would’ve happened without her experience on the tall ship?

MS: Before the Mystic Cruzar came into your life, you were running this program on the Spirit of Dana Point. Do you have to modify the program to suit the new vessel?

GG: I mean, it’s all so new, but we have been down to the vessel, our education director, board chair, education committee chair, and we are in talks with [Captain] Christine [Healy] to see how it’s going to be adapted. The nice thing is, the schooner does have space below where you could hold classes and things like that.

So there’ll be adaptations. To be honest, there’s adaptations ever since the Conception disaster. We didn’t even get to do the overnight programs the last year before COVID, because that changed things here.

But we’re hoping to get back to where we can do the overnight program. This vessel is better setup for overnighting, for the most part.

MS: It has more bunks.

GG: It has more bunks. The problem is, they’re separate, so there’s a little bit of an issue overseeing those bunks at night, but the idea is, there’ll be some adaptations to this.

MS: You’d rather have a big bunk-house, dorm-room space than have all those private cabins.

GG: It’s a little bit easier to monitor what’s going on in those cabins. But you could leave the doors open. Or take the doors right off.

MS: Have you been on board yet?

GG: Yes. Just walked it though, for an hour or so.

MS: What was your impression?

GG: It’s a beautiful ship and it’s in really good shape, so I’m very happy. The deck configuration’s very different, and that’ll take some adapting to for this program and other programs that we want to do, but it was awesome. I thought the ship looks great.

MS: The new non-profit that the Chrismans are creat-

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ing, Central Coast Ocean Adventures: will they be the owners and operators of the schooner?

GG: Yeah, which is great for us, because we have no financial liability. They’re assuming all that financial liability.

Roger Chrisman is on my board. He’s actually the reason I’m here! He got me this job. He introduced me to the Museum, and I’ve been here for 15 years. He and Sarah, as a team, have been very supportive of the Maritime Museum and they’ve always wanted to get kids onto ships. I joke around that their motto is “no child left ashore.”

on this ship.

And again, they have that classroom space, where Christine has a projector. They could be showing phytoplankton, all sorts of things. Then there’s other trips to the islands for students, and adults that we could be working on as well, along with just fun events on a tall ship. Here in the harbor, on other tall ships, we’ve done Pirates of Penzance pieces and things like that. The Chrismans are very connected with the Santa Barbara Opera.

MS: The Channel Islands, I assume that those would also be overnight programs.

MS: I heard that from Christine. That’s a good line.

GG: Oh, did she credit me, stealing my line? All right.

All right. [Laughs] Roger has a boating background, he was Commodore at the yacht club here in Santa Barbara. They’re happiest when they’re getting kids out on the water. They’ve been looking for a boat for quite a few years. They’ve talked about it, and the timing is great, because the Ocean Institute has more challenges now that they’ve lost one of their ships. So it’s nice for us to have more opportunities to work with a tall ship.

The other program we hope to do is the Marine Science Program. We’ve been using a local fishing boat, and again, nothing’s set in stone, but we could do some of that program

GG: Absolutely. You could sail all the way down to Catalina. Roger’s also connected with Catalina Island. I believe he’s on the Catalina Island Conservancy Board. It’s not just the four northern Channel Islands. We could do trips down to Catalina as well.

MS: I see the Park Service is going to put $4 million into upgrading the dock on Anacapa.

GG: Right. So again, good timing.

MS: When do you think that you might see the Mystic Cruzar in Santa Barbara for the first time?

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GG: We’re hoping by May, and we would love to get it up here a few times over the summer. I know that there’s lots of work to do.

MS: Do your school programs break down evenly between spring, winter, and fall?

GG: We generally do that overnight program, the Before the Mast program, is in October. And we’ve been doing the Marine Science Program in January and February because of the break that the fishing boats we use have with fishing trips. But this would give us much more flexibility, time-wise, to do that program, because even here there are weather challenges doing it in winter. And we can expand that program beyond what was available to us before, too.

MS: Talking to Christine Healy, we both were wondering why the West Coast — and I realize the harbors are fewer and farther between — why this coast doesn’t support the volume of tall ships and traditional vessels that the East Coast does.

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GG: That is a very good question. The harbors are one reason, and fewer harbors means higher slip fees and mooring fees. I’m not sure what slip fees are like on the East Coast. Certainly here in Santa Barbara, it’s expensive, and there’s really not even a permanent slip in Santa Barbara that they could bring that boat to. It’s a guest dock where they’re limited to how many days they can be here by the waterfront department.

MS: Anything else we should talk about in terms of how the boat’s going to be utilized on the West Coast?

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GG: We are looking forward to using it! I know the Chrismans really want it to be used by everybody. I am so thankful to Roger and Sarah Chrisman for providing this opportunity to so many kids that might never get the opportunity to get out on the water, and they will make that happen with this purchase.

MS: Is there a cost to you for using the boat?

GG: We haven’t gone into all the details, but Roger and Sarah Chrisman are extremely generous to the Maritime Museum and they will, I’m sure, continue to be very generous to the Museum. They have made possible a lot of the work that we’re doing in education, and we couldn’t have done it without their support. ❂ For more info, search online for Central Coast Ocean Adventures, or visit the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum (sbmm.org) or Channel Islands Maritime Museum (cimmvc.org).

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Pride of the Internet It’s not enough that Pride II is drop-dead gorgeous and has a widely-known and deeply-respected captain.

She also kills it on social media, thanks to the efforts of Patrick Smith When a planned Tall Ships America conference session on best social media practices was abandoned after the event went virtual, it left us no choice but to talk directly with Pride II Programming Coordinator Patrick Smith.

Marlinspike: Patrick, your title of “programming coordinator” obviously encompasses a lot of different responsibilities.

Patrick Smith: It’s really a catchall. I change the light bulbs, I change the air filters in the office, and then I coordinate our guest crew program. I’m coordinating the upcoming ‘Deeper Dive’ virtual lecture series. As Jan would say, I wear a lot of hats!

MS: How’d you get the hat that says “social media” on it?

PS: I got into the fleet in the beginning of 2014 as a deckhand, but I’ve always taken an interest in the office side.

I started to learn our [customer relationship management software] Salesforce, and I knew one of the people that had this job at the time, so even as a deckhand I would email her photos.

Then in 2016 we were in the Great Lakes, in Chicago, it was just easier for the ship to take over the Instagram. And so I started doing the Instagram. It was pretty funny because I had to go to Captain [ Jan] Miles for every post to have him look it over, to make sure it was okay. Trying to explain some of the quotes or captions to Cap was always a fun experience.

So I started with the Instagram, and then I got an internship with the office that fall. That was the trial by fire.

I was suddenly working with all the channels, Twitter, Facebook, trying to figure out our YouTube channel, get that started. And now, zoom, it’s 2022 and I am coordinating our social media.

MS: Over those five or six years, you have built a reputa16

tion for doing a great job with Pride II’s social media. Can you talk a bit about the organization’s media strategy? Who develops it? Who implements it? What are its goals?

PS: We as an organization work together to create quality content. I am responsible for implementing our social strategy it but it’s kind of a project-to-project thing. Our social media content falls into a handful of categories.

There’s the simple, ‘post a pretty picture of the boat’ and that’s something I can do any day of the week. And then there’s the more informative posts, where we talk about caulking, points of sail, different things like that. And for that, I usually double back to the ship’s officers just to make sure everything I’m saying is correct. We’ve really built a pretty cool system, a cohesive team, when it comes to our social media.

Jan and Chief Jeff Crosby have been really good about getting content to the office for me to work with. I can always reach them for clarification or caption help.

When it comes to marketing things like day sails, deck tours, guest crew opportunities, that falls on me to just get the word out.

We’re really lucky in that we’ve got a beautiful boat that’s got a 40-plus-year reputation, going back to [the original Pride, launched in 1977]. The boat’s no stranger to a lot of people, and social media plays a good role putting the pieces together on that. I can’t tell you how many times somebody will comment, “Oh, my father used to take me down to the shipyard to watch the boat be built,” and then they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize I could do guest crew!”

So we’re lucky in that the boat has a reputation, and our social media just kind of helps us tell more of that story and get it out to people.

Ninety-nine percent of our social media is organic. We don’t do any ads, or targeted ads. We just don’t have the budget for it. And a lot of it is posted real time, and that’s a personal thing for me. I’m not a big fan of Hootsuite or any of those scheduling apps.

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Captain Jan Miles is comfortable providing content for Pride II’s social media In terms of our goals, reaching new fans and growing our following is one. We also strive to keep producing quality content that our followers enjoy.

MS: That puts pressure on you to be available 24/7.

PS: Yeah. But if I manage my time correctly, I’m able to do it, a little post here and there.

If there’s a Coffee with the Captain tomorrow — which I believe there is — it only takes five minutes. The organization early on built a pretty comprehensive digital archive.

We’ve got a lot of potential content filed away, and the folks that came before me did a really good job organizing it by year and location and with all sorts of details. We’re set up for the kind of original content we produce.

And then there are times where we schedule things out,

and Facebook Business Suite has made that really awesome.

You don’t really need Hootsuite anymore. You can schedule things a lot easier from Business Suite, which is really great.

And it crosses over to Instagram, if you want to have it do that.

For fundraising, our annual appeal, Giving Tuesday — that stuff ’s all scheduled out. But anything else is, for the most part, real time.

MS: Do you sit down at the beginning of the year and say, “OK, we want to focus on hiring seasonal crew in early spring, and then start promoting the guest crew opportunities when we get to mid-spring, and then we have a fundraiser that we want to focus on…” Is there scheduling at that level?

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PS: Sort of. The social media just kind of follows whatever scheduling we’re already talking about for the ship itself.

We’ve committed to the Mustang Survival Annapolis to Bermuda Race, so that guest crew leg was posted. Now, there’s a waiting list with 10 people on top of the 6 people that already have spots.

As things are scheduled, we start telling people about them, but we’re still in this pandemic, which is proving to be a pretty big challenge. For instance, we’re still trying to lock in our Great Lakes schedule. We can tell people we’re going, but until things are locked in, we can’t really do much more than that. Once things are locked in, we can start rolling out announcements.

Fundraising — that’s pretty consistent year to year. A couple months out from Giving Tuesday, we start letting people know it’s on the horizon. And then we’re counting down to Giving Tuesday.

Annual appeal stuff, we don’t really hype that up as much until it’s end of December. Then we just start cranking out content for that, announcements for that, email campaigns for that. Social media just really falls into the greater toolbox of communications and marketing strategy. We rely also on our email lists, direct mail. Our annual appeal envelopes that go out to folks, and letters. There’s folks that have been following our boats for 40 years, and that means a portion of our fans are not on social media, which means we need to

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reach them through different avenues.

MS: Understood. Different social media are associated with different markets. Boomers are more likely to be on facebook than tiktok, for example. So how do you decide how much effort to put into each of the various social media outlets?

PS: On facebook, we can pretty much put any content we want. It can be a sassy post with a fun picture of the boat offshore, or it can be an informative picture of the boat next to a historic lighthouse, and that gets eaten up. Anybody of any age can appreciate that.

Our Instagram, generally, is more heavy visuals with a little less information, until people reply with, “Hey, can you elaborate on this?” And then our Twitter is one of our workhorses, so to speak. That’s where we make announcements and things like that.

Our YouTube channel’s been a fun thing to grow over the last pandemic year. I think at the start of the pandemic, we had maybe 110 subscribers. Now we’ve got 410, which isn’t a lot to write home about, but that’s growth! And there are a lot of people that have kind of fallen out with facebook, over some of facebook’s policies. So YouTube has been a nice place to start putting some content for folks that are trying to get away from social media.

And then you’re going to think I’m crazy, but we do presentations at things like senior centers, which is not quite social media, but it’s part of that communications and marketing toolbox. Jan and I partnered up and we gave three lectures to senior centers in Baltimore County at the end of last year, and that helps us reach folks that might not be able to make it to the ship during the pandemic or might not be interested in social media.

We don’t have an official TikTok yet. Jeff Crosby and I both have personal TikToks where we have some fun with Pride content, but I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next year or two Pride’s got a TikTok. It’s pretty new in the tall ship world. I think only a few tall ships probably have them.

Clearwater, who comes out with some really good content, has a TikTok. It’s kind of funny, but in this industry it seems like we’re always a little behind the curve. My understanding is that most tall ships created facebook accounts around 2009, 2010, about three years after Facebook went public for anybody with an email address in 2006. So there’s a little bit of a learning curve, but each platform kind of has a style and we try to cater the content to that.

MS: Looking at your YouTube channel, I see little clips that might be a minute long, and then you’ve got the entirety of your Coffee with the Captain episodes, running close to an hour each. You’re all over the map!

PS: A lot of people don’t like watching Coffee with the Captain live on facebook, so we try to keep up with upload-

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ing the episodes to YouTube. Also, YouTube has a handful of more informative-style videos from our volunteer historian, Pierre Henkart. It’s also where our old traditional Tuesday video series lives. So YouTube’s kind of like a catchall where you can find our longer video content. It’s something that we’re still trying to figure out, because we’ve got Smith started Instagram for the flashy, fun stuff. as a deckhand Just showing how and later landed quickly the world moves, an office three years ago you wouldn’t be caught dead internship filming a video holding your phone in a vertical portrait style. That was a faux pas, and now with TikTok and Instagram Reels, and even Facebook Mobile... phone screens are huge, they up the whole device now. And so you film vertical, for the most part.

MS: Before you start filming, you’ve got to think, “How am I going to use this footage? Am I going to make a YouTube video?” Because then you’re going horizontal, probably.

PS: It’s kind of funny how that works. I’m constantly reminded of an expression from an old photography mentor of mine. “You got to shoot to edit.”

I’m not a professional photographer, and neither are our crew. They’re sailors. Jeff Crosby, who films a lot of our content, is a watch leader. So he’s going up on deck on his time off to do some filming and sometimes I’m like... I feel like such a jerk. I’m like, “Jeff, you should have turned the camera the other direction,” and things like that. I’m armchair directing, so to speak. But we’re really lucky. We’ve got a consistent stream of content coming from the ship, and it’s really cool what’s been created.

There’s a lot of ship watchers groups popping up all over Facebook, so anytime the boat moves, somebody’s watching.

And our crew’s been really good about taking pictures. Jeff Crosby, even Jan Miles. He’s got a good eye. We’re spoiled with content, so it’s just a matter of packaging it up, putting a little bow on it, and getting it out to the world.

MS: Like a lot of people during these COVID times, I’ve been bingeing videos by cruising sailors, and by boatbuilders

like Leo Goolden, who’s rebuilding the yacht Tally Ho. Some of the people who’ve invested in creating high-quality YouTube videos are actually generating significant revenue.

Is there a possibility for a well-known, sexy vessel like Pride to generate revenue through its social media? Through YouTube?

PS: That’s definitely a dream! I can only do so much social media a week.

I’ve got a lot of other responsibilities. But that’s definitely something that I’ve daydreamed about, personally.

It’s kind of an all-or-nothing thing. This is a personal opinion. You’ve really got to make a go for it.

Is it a possibility? Yeah, but it’s a daydream, as of right now. The ship also wears a lot of hats. We’re the official ambassador vessel of Maryland and Baltimore.

We’re a traveling attraction vessel almost, so there’s a lot going on. To also become a full-time content creator is a big jump.

I follow [Sailing SV Delos], and Andy Schell of 59 North… there’s a lot of stuff that’s on the backside that... a lot of editing, a lot of shooting, that just consumes a lot of time. And that’s time we don’t have as a small nonprofit at the moment.

MS: Tell us more about your Coffee with the Captain videos. That’s been one of your signature efforts during COVID times, and you’re doing these — is it every other week?

PS: As of right now, it’s every other week. Coffee with the Captain’s kind of a funny story. We were in Midland, Ontario during the Tall Ships Challenge in 2019. And we were trying to think of some way to get people down to the ship, and do something fun, do something different. And it was like, “Hey, Midland! Come down to Pride and have a literal cup of coffee on deck, and talk with Captain Miles and he’ll tell sea stories.”

And I don’t remember what exactly happened. I think we had to cancel, or it didn’t go down, but that concept always kind of sat with a few of us.

Fast forward to the pandemic, April of 2020, we’re like, “Hey, we need a way...” The boat’s rigged and sailing and

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we’re like, “But we can’t have any people on board.” I couldn’t even go on the ship. And I think it was actually Jeff Crosby’s idea. He’s like, “Let’s do a Facebook question-andanswer livestream.”

And so the first couple episodes were kind of funny. It was just Captain Miles answering questions as they were coming in and telling stories. Since then, it’s grown into this Saturday morning interview, almost.

Sometimes we’ve got special guests, which is really great.

When when we’re touring the Chesapeake with the Star Spangled Banner National Historic Trail, it’s a great way to spotlight our local partners or heritage area or whoever we’re working with at each port. It’s just turned into this great tool to interact with our followers. And there’s a really loyal following to it. They’re pretty passionate about it. When we don’t have an episode, they’re not happy, and that’s as good as it gets, in my opinion. That’s a great thing to see people excited about.

MS: Do you brainstorm with Jan about what your topic is going to be? Is it that actually you holding the phone?

PS: No, I’m rarely involved. Jeff, Jan, and I usually talk about it in our staff meeting, or we talk about it sometime the week before. Nine times out of ten, it’s Jeff Crosby and Jan who film. Occasionally, they’ll loop me in. We’ve done a few Coffee with the Captains with special guests via Zoom, so that’s when I’ll get involved. I’ll create a slide show or add visuals. We had Peter Boudreau, the shipwright of the second boat and of the schooner Virginia. He came on as a special guest. We had Captain Phil from Bluenose II and I think we had Dan Moreland, as well.

When we go to the Great Lakes this year, it’ll be Jeff Crosby and Jan Miles running the show.

MS: Do Jeff and Jan enjoy doing this, or are they like, “Oh my God, we got to do another one of these episodes”?

PS: I think they enjoy it. There are definitely episodes where it’s just an update from the ship — “Hey, we don’t have a ton to talk about” —and they’re bummed out. So then we’ll be like, “All right, well, what can we do to mix this up?”

I guess the funniest Coffee with the Captain snafu was when we attempted to do one via zoom, where Captain Miles watched sailing scenes from movies and rated them.

What happened is, we got a DCMA complaint. The music got flagged by Facebook. But a number of people got to see Captain Miles review Pirates of the Caribbean, In the Heart of the Sea, and I think something else, and they were going nuts. It was amazing! And then it got taken down.

PS: Right. It’s another project that takes a lot of time though. Every one of these video projects means that we’re not doing something else. It’s a trade off, but people really seem to enjoy our content.

MS: We’ve talked about generating content, sending your posts out into the world, but at the same time, you’re getting feedback — likes, comments, whatever. Are you guys pleased with the engagement you get? How much time do you spend interacting with people via social media?

PS: We love engagement. When you’re looking at the analytics, Facebook gives you “reach”, which is the number of people that have seen your content, and it’s a big number.

That’s a great number. We had a video on Facebook last year get 2 million views, which is huge! That’s unreal! I jump out of my seat when I think about 2 million people seeing Pride of Baltimore II. Reach is a cool number to tell people about, but to me, it’s not as real as the engagements. You can have 50,000 likes, fine, but then even 100 comments, that’s awesome!

I’m happy with one comment, as long as it’s positive. Or shares... Anytime I see shares, it’s really great to see.

We definitely love that engagement and love interaction with our followers because there’s always a lot of questions.

It’s tough to produce quality content that is comprehensive and packaged in a way that’s informative and interesting.

We’ve actually seen a big spike on our Instagram engagement, we’ve been seeing a lot of comments and questions, and we’ve been posting a little more of our winter maintenance projects, some deck caulking and hull caulking, which people find interesting.

And that’s something that I have to keep reminding myself: just because it’s normal to us in the industry, something that we see every day, doesn’t mean that it’s not cool to somebody on the outside looking in. The simplest things can be interesting to people. Isn’t there an expression in sailing, “You got to get your head out of the chart”? You’ve got to look around.

Social media, it’s kind of similar. It’s so easy to get tunnel vision and be like, “Pretty picture, pretty picture, pretty pic-

MS: Privateers of the internet!

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ture,” and then you’re missing out on somebody who’s just interested on how you cook and eat dinner on a boat.

next couple years. Now people are buying meta real estate, so it’s like, “Oh, man, what do we do with that?”

MS: As you said earlier, Pride II is fortunate in several ways — in being a very well-known and beautiful vessel, with a long history, and a rock-star captain in Jan Miles.

What advice do you have for those who are creating content for more pedestrian organizations?

MS: Twenty-five years ago, everybody was rushing out to buy domain names, and then that turned out to be a waste of time, in most cases, because it turns there’s lots of virtual real estate out there! In fact, there’s an infinite amount.

PS: Just keep creating content! I help volunteer manage a couple other social media accounts for few other organizations. I don’t see anywhere near the success that I see with some of my Pride content, but you just got to keep trying.

You got to keep creating content. You got to kind of find your rhythm.

And the perfect examples of that are other ships in the fleet. There’s great content coming out of Sloop Clearwater, and it’s always informative. It’s woke. It’s totally different than what we’re doing, but it’s awesome. So you just got to find your niche and go for it.

PS: That’s a good comparison.

One thing I could get my soapbox about, is tall ships.

Tall ships have a great community. You experience that firsthand at the conferences. It’s an incredible group of people, from a ton of different backgrounds, with a ton of different perspectives, and it’d be really cool to see that grow on social media.

We’re promoting our “Deeper Dive” lecture series, and so I reached out to you to ask if you could let people know. I also reached out to Picton Castle, Bluenose, and a few other contacts, and they shared our stuff, which is really cool. I’m a big fan of being like, “Hey, if you share my stuff, I’ll share your stuff.” And I’d love to see that kind of relationship grow across the fleet.

Grays Harbor, another great social media content producer — there’s no reason we can’t share their stuff! If they have a cool post? It saves me time. And anytime I can share somebody else’s content means I can spend more time on getting our guest crew program finalized for the year, because I’m not sitting on Facebook trying to come up with content.

MS: You’ve mentioned Clearwater a couple times. Are there other boats that you look to for inspiration?

PS: Oh, yeah. For just really cool content internationally, Barque Europa always comes in hot with some really cool content.

Another international ship I always keep an eye on is Statsraad Lehmkuhl. They do really good voyage updates, just keeping people posted on what’s happening on the ship.

And then, of course, definitely a powerhouse in this area is Bluenose II. They’re really similar to us in terms of being an ambassador. They’re an incredibly beautiful vessel, and they do a really good job with their content.

And then I’m a history buff, so I follow Niagara, and they’ve come out of their shell recently. They’ve got some really fun content and they’re really good about interacting on social. I bet you’ve seen them. They’ll comment on other people’s posts. And that’s really cool to see. That’s one of my favorite things, is when tall ship organization socials take on a little bit of a personality. It’s really good to see the interaction there.

MS: What’s next with social media? Where are we going with this, as a society, as an industry?

PS: I was daydreaming about that yesterday… there’s the metaverse, there’s NFTs, there’s these non-fungible kind of blockchain-backed things that are kind of wild.

At some point, somebody sent us a picture of a Pride of Baltimore they made in Minecraft. and it’s like, “Wait a second. Whoa!” There’s a total world over there that I’m not super in-the-know about.

We don’t have a TikTok, but that’s something we are considering. It’s an active discussion, just keeping up with the times, and it’s going to be interesting to see over the

MS: Because even for Pride — even for an organization that does it well — social media is not a full-time job at this point.

PS: Bingo. And I think that’s true for 90% of tall ships we can’t devote a full-time position to social media. We’ve got to do what we can with the resources we have. Which makes the presence of the fleet in general across social media really impressive, if you think about it. It’s people that are wearing a lot of hats, just like us, producing really awesome stuff. So it’d be cool to kind of see that community grow into social media, almost like a networking group, because in my opinion, it’s beneficial to everybody. We have a former Pride guest crew, who did two or three trips over the past couple years, who’s now on Europa doing the crazy Arctic expedition. That’s so great to see.

Yeah, it’s fun to see people throughout the fleet grow.

Another example is people that have worked on Pride at some point in their career — we look at where they are now.

So there’s Captain Sarah Armour, now the skipper of Brilliant. She’s a former Pride boatswain. That’s epic. So that’s great content for us. We’re happy to share that kind of news. Halee Grimes, former officer on Pride, is Senior Chief Mate with Grays Harbor. We’re all connected professionally, so it’s just a matter of spreading the word virtually.

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MS: Since you mentioned it: the metaverse. Should we, providers of in-person, real-time experiences, feel threatened by virtual reality? Are we being swept towards the rocks of virtual reality, where people literally don’t go outside anymore, because the metaverse is so compelling and infinite?

PS: I think there’ll always be room for both. There’s that movie, Ready Player DAVID SITES One, where everybody kind of lives in the video games world, but at the end the sky clears and they end up closing down the video game universe one day a week to get people out.

You, as a sailor, know there’s nothing quite... I mean, you can sit front of a giant flat-screen TV and have somebody spray a water bottle at you, but nothing’s going to compare to being offshore at night and there’s bioluminescence going by the boat and the briny air, and then you go to bed fully clothed… [laughs] nothing’s going to compare to that.

MS: Will we get into the business of making that experience available through virtual reality?

PS: If the technology continues to advance, yeah, I think that’d definitely be really awesome.

stadium anymore. But that turned out not to be true.

PS: I think at the end of the day, if anything, it would potentially increase demand. Somebody gets to drive the boat offshore in a gale with everything up in the metaverse, and then they get out in the real thing and feel the wind on their face. To me that seems like the perfect way to do it.

PRIDE II

PS: Yeah, that’s no joke.

If you were to dig into our wishlist... we haven’t quite gotten to the Oculus or any of those kind of virtualreality things… but we’ve definitely daydreamed about an IMAX experience of Pride.

MS: Pride II in IMAX? I’d buy a ticket for that! b Be sure to check out Pride of Baltimore II on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube — but not TikTok, as yet. And give ‘Coffee with the Captain’ a listen!

MS: I want to put on my headset and find myself at the wheel of Pride in a gale.

PS: That sounds pretty awesome, but I’m also a sucker for the real experience, as well.

MS: If we provide that experience, in the ultra-realistic way that the virtual reality people are promising, do we decrease demand for the real experience?

Back in the 20th century, as radio and TV became commonplace, professional sports teams worried that if they allowed their games to be broadcast, or televised, fans wouldn’t come to the 22

MS: To complete my analogy to the sports franchises: not only did fans still come to the games, but nowadays those sports franchises make just as much money from their media contracts as they do from selling tickets and beer and hot dogs at the stadium. More, in some cases.

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CALIFORNIAN is a replica of the 1847 Revenue Cutter C.W. LAWRENCE, which patrolled the coast of California enforcing federal law during the gold rush. The Revenue Cutter Service was consolidated into the US Coast Guard in 1915.

The new CALIFORNIAN was built in 1984 in San Diego and launched with great fanfare for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

Californian is the official tall ship of the State of California.

Since her launching, the ship has made voyages to Hawaii, Mexico and the East Coast of the US. CALIFORNIAN was acquired by the Maritime Museum of San Diego in 2002 and underwent a complete overhaul in 2003.

The Museum uses her for a variety of dockside and at-sea educational programs along with public adventure sails ranging from a half-day to more than a week.

Photo by Jerry Soto

LAKE CHAMPLAIN MARITIME MUSEUM

A Bold Decision The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum announces they will allow their replica canal schooner, the LOIS MCCLURE, to die with dignity after her 20th season in 2023 In March, the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum announced that it would “retire” its replica canal schooner Lois McClure in 2023.

The McClure was launched in 2004 with the goal of understanding the canal schooners, how they were built and operated, and the impact of the canal system. Over the ensuing two decades, the Lois McClure proved to be an effective teaching tool, touring Lake Champlain and the connecting waterways and bringing this history to local communities.

But the replica now requires “increasingly extensive repairs that push beyond the goals of this replica project. With that in mind, the Board of Directors voted unanimously to retire the replica… and conclude the replica project.”

After October 2023, the Lois McClure will be disassembled.

Parts of the boat will anchor a new exhibit at the Museum, opening in 2024.

The Museum has invited the public to share memories, stories, and photos to become a part of the Archiving Project. The Museum will also be conducting oral history interviews with members of the replica building project, volunteers, and staff.

Marlinspike spoke with Susan Evans McClure (no relation) the Museum’s Executive Director, shortly after the announcement.

Marlinspike: Susan, I’m sure you expect us to be foaming at the mouth about this decision. But I believe this is an important issue for our industry to address.

Our boats don’t “retire”. They get sold, they get repossessed, they get abandoned, they get broken up, they sink at their docks — generally, it doesn’t end well. Retirement sounds like a civilized outcome, compared to some of those options. We do a terrible job in this industry of moving on from vessels.

Susan McClure: We’ve actually been working on this for two years, just to tell the public about it now. But when we first started thinking about it, two years ago, I started reaching out to other organizations with replicas, because I believe

we should all be learning together, and I thought, man, maybe we don’t know how to do this, but somebody else must have figured this out! I talked to so many smart, committed, amazing, talented people who care about the public and care about their boats — and no one had a perfect way of doing this.

MS: Tell us what got you started down this path. You said “two years ago” and of course that sets off the COVID bell in my head.

SM: Actually, I would say this is probably the only thing that we’ve done in the past few years that was not impacted

by COVID. Of course, we were impacted — but the decision was not.

We’ve been thinking about this for several years. I’ve been at the museum for about three years and it was really two years ago, just pre-pandemic, when we started thinking, what is the long-term plan for this boat? And reflecting on what is most important about this project to the Museum and to our public. We talked a lot internally, with our volunteers and supporters and crew members.

I wasn’t involved in the build, but I lived in Burlington the summer the Lois was being built — it was my first summer in Burlington. I would go down to the waterfront and see them building this amazing boat. And when I came back to Burlington the next summer, I said, “Okay, what boat are they building this year?” I thought that’s just what they did in Burlington, every year. But it’s not — it was a once-in-ageneration thing.

So we’ve been looking at the long-term plan for a while, thinking about the maintenance of the boat, and where the boat has traveled and what the boat has accomplished. The boat had over 300,000 visitors in the past 20 years! But at the same time, the average lifespan of a 19th century canal boat was 15 years. And we were already past that.

Of course, we were not moving tons of logs and freight

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and iron on the boat every year, like the boat would’ve been MS: You could do it. But you were looking at a major doing in the 19th century, but we still had traveled consisstructural rebuild. tently and put a lot of miles on the boat.

You could also say we were having a historically accurate SM: Yes. And having to plan to do that over and over problem. These canal boats never wintered on Lake again, every ten years, and the cost incurred with that. So we Champlain because the Lake is so rough in the winter. They took that into account and we said, “Can we make a shorter would take them to New York, to the Hudson River, into the term plan?” And then we brought in a shipwright last sumcanals. And they would raft up a bunch of these canal boats mer to assess the boat, and he did say that it needed some together and the families who lived on them would send significant, immediate work to stay seaworthy. their kids to school together, they’d live this communal And in addition to the regular rebuilding work, these boats are incredibly expensive to maintain. We have full-time lifestyle in the winter months. And the boats would actually staff who work on that. In freeze into those harbors. addition to these major But we had been keeping “He said — and this really stuck with me — haulouts, they’re rebuilding it on Lake Champlain.

‘What I have seen at other locations is that and fixing as they go. And About three years ago, we no one wants to make a plan and no one it’s very expensive every year did have to move the locawants to talk about it.’ to just keep the boat in the tion of our winter storage, So people just let these boats, these amazing water. and it got us to thinking boats with amazing stories, they just kind about the lifespan of the of let them fall apart. And it's really sad.

MS: Our industry always boat.

Nobody wants to see that. So his plea was: includes a number of boats In 2019, we hauled the please make a plan that honors this boat for which the necessary boat out of the water and and what it's accomplished.” maintenance is more than did work below the waterthe potential for bringing in line with these really amazrevenue. Did you have solid ing shipwrights. And one of numbers on what the schooner cost to maintain, as opposed them pulled me aside and he said — and again, this is my to what its contribution was to your bottom line? first position as director of a maritime museum. He pulled me aside and he said, “Look, I work on these boats everySM: Yes, we did. I don’t want to make it sound, in this where on the East Coast, and no one has a plan for this.” case, like it was completely about money. Because yes, it’s a He said — and this really stuck with me — “What I very expensive endeavor, but lots of amazing things in this have seen at other locations is that no one wants to make a world are expensive, and that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do plan and no one wants to talk about it.” them. Partially it’s expensive, and partially the audience for So people just let these boats, these amazing boats with amazing stories, they just kind of let them fall apart. And it’s funding projects like this is very different than it was 20 years ago. really sad. Nobody wants to see that. So his plea was: please make a plan that honors this boat and what it’s accomplished.

MS: If he was looking at the boat and thinking about the end of her lifespan, then I take it she wasn’t structurally in terrific condition.

SM: I mean, the USS Constitution exists, right? You can keep a wooden boat around forever.

You just have to rebuild it constantly.

MS: Sure, if you’re the United States Navy and you have that kind of budget.

SM: Exactly. And that was kind of what he was getting at. He said, “You could do it…”

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There are a lot of boats that were built 20 years ago, because it was kind of the thing to do. It was what maritime museums were doing, building these big replica boats. And they’re amazing. Nowadays, not as many places are doing it anymore.

There are a few of course, but the ways that those projects got funded has changed dramatically over the past 20 years.

At the same time, we have been thinking about how we tell this story in a way that gets even more people connected to it. We’re really focused on accessibility in everything we do.

Access to the water. How do people get to be on Lake Champlain as private property spreads around the lakefront and it’s harder for regular people to get to the water?

We try to get people access to the lake, but also access to our facilities for people with disabilities. Replica boats are inherently not accessible. Everybody does their best, and it’s not for lack of trying. But one of the things we were excited about was the opportunity to rethink the experience of a replica boat through a universal design and accessibility lens.

So our plan is to run the next two years with the boat on the water, back in our museum. We won’t be traveling, but it’ll be on the water. And I don’t want to make it sound unsafe, it’s perfectly sound and totally safe. But after that, the plan is to develop a new exhibit, that is fully accessible, about canal boats. Nothing will ever be the same as standing on the deck of that boat and feeling the wind from the lake. That’s the real thing, you can’t change that. But we are hoping to recreate some of those feelings in a way that is accessible to everyone.

MS: You make a distinction between restoring original vessels — in this country we have USS Constitution, Charles Morgan, Elissa, and any number of original fishing schooners, pilot boats, and yachts — and restoring replica vessels, like the Lois McClure. That line got blurred in the last couple years, when Plimoth Patuxet came out and said that their Mayflower replica, built in the 1950s, is herself a historic vessel and worthy of recognition as a historic landmark. And they spent many millions of dollars rebuilding her.

Did the status of the McClure as a replica vessel carry a lot of weight in your debate over what to do with her?

SM: Absolutely! If this boat were an original 1862 canal schooner, we would not be talking about it this way.

Replicas are teaching tools, tools to use to meet your mis-

LOIS MCCLURE was launched in 2004

LAKE CHAMPLAIN MARITIME MUSEUM

sion. That was the intent twenty years ago, going into this project. The thing that led us to developing the archiving project that we announced this week, was to attempt to capture what has grown up around the boat during those twenty years.

The boat is a replica, but the thing that happened when we built this replica — bringing a community together, connecting with real people — that’s a real thing. That’s something we want to quantify and qualify.

One of my early phone calls was with some longtime partners in this project with us, the New York State Canal Corporation. One of their staff told me a lot of these cities on the Erie Canal grew up with their backs to the water.

When the Lois McClure visited port cities along the canal, that was one of the first times that something had happened to draw people to the waterfront of these canal communities.

She said, “The experience of the Lois visiting actually changed the way these towns saw themselves in relation to the water.

“It would start with the Lois visiting. And then next summer, a group of people would say, ‘Maybe we should have a festival on the water.’ And then the next summer, someone would say, ‘Remember last year we got all those people together on the water? We should do that again.’

And then the next summer, they were like, “We should build a bike path on the water, this is great way to connect with it.” And then the next summer, there’d be a restaurant that popped up, right on the canal.

It is bigger than just building a boat. That’s something we want to make sure we’re capturing and documenting, taking the time over the next two years to document that. I think will be a helpful project both for us, but also just to kind of write down how awesome it was.

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LAKE CHAMPLAIN MARITIME MUSEUM

LOIS MCCLURE leaving Burlington under tow MS: Did you encounter a lot of resistance to the idea of retiring the vessel?

SM: No. But I don’t want to make it seem like it was an easy decision at all. For many of our staff, including me, there is a sense of loss, and it’s sad and it’s hard. It has been a process with many of our staff to get there, and not every single person thinks it’s the best idea in the world. But the vast majority of people on our staff — actually, now I would say all the people on our staff — are fully on board with the plan.

And honestly the plan came from them. It wasn’t that our board came in and said, “Hey, we should do this.” It wasn’t that I came in and said, “Hey, this is what we’re going to do.”

It was through talking with our staff and coming together to make a plan that we brought it to the board said, “Hey, this is the recommendation from the staff, based on the research we’ve been doing, what we’ve been experiencing. Here’s what we think we should do next.”

And our board saying, “Yeah, we think that’s a great idea.

We’re listening to what you’re doing.”

MS: Now, do you face a rebranding issue? For a lot of us, our boat is the most visible and recognizable symbol of our organization. Maybe it has stopped pulling its weight — maybe it’s dragging us down — but it’s been featured on our 30

signage and our mailings and our website for decades! And now we have to distance ourselves from it. Is that a rebranding challenge for the Museum?

SM: Our plan is still to have an exhibit and have the story of canal boats as a centerpiece of our museum. So that won’t change. I think for us, because the boat was a touring project and it was often away… it was kind of the flagship for the museum.

In our region, we’re still connected to a lot of people through the other programming that we do. We have an archeology team and we do exhibits and we have a boatbuilding program and we’re in every school. So it is key to our museum, but it’s one of many, many, things that we do.

And we’re not going to stop talking about canal boats because the schooner is off the water.

MS: Getting back to your discussion with that boatbuilder. Why don’t we talk about these things? Why is it so difficult for organizations to plan for the eventual obsolescence of their vessels?

SM: Not to get too large-minded here, but it’s our society’s inability to talk about death and change. Boats are objects, but both have a spirit about them and they feel alive and they all have a personality and an identity. And it’s hard.

MarlinspikeMagazine.com

We humans personify maritime vessels; we always have, right? You look at European churches, in Portugal, in the 15th century, they had ship models in the churches because it was important to have the boats that were part of their life be living things.

In some ways, it’s no different from the fact that it’s very hard for my mom to talk about the inevitability of when she won’t be able to drive anymore and will have to go to a retirement home. She won’t talk about that either.

MS: None of us want to end up in the shallow end of the harbor with mud in our bilges and our paint peeling off and our masts broken off at the deck.

But if you don’t talk about these things, or plan for these things, the outcomes are not going to be pretty.

SM: Exactly. And that is what we wanted to avoid. I think we are doing something different, in that most organizations wait until they know exactly what’s going to happen before they tell the public. One of the cornerstones of this project is that it has always been a public project. It was built in front of the public in a major city. It was built by volunteers. It’s Traditional & Modern Rigging Services public. The public is at the heart of this project.

So we want to say to the public, “Help us get & Fancy Knot Work through the next two years.” What are the events that you need to say farewell to this boat? What are the stories about it that stick with you, that Jose Hernandez-Juviel you want us to keep telling? What are the new ways you think we should be interpreting it?

Edgecomb, Maine We don’t have an exact plan and graphics. I 207-350-1994 don’t have a schematic of the new exhibit that I jose@knotnerd.com can trot out and say, “This is going to be amazing. This is what we’re going to do.” Because we want to be creating that with the public, the way we always have for this project.

That is, I acknowledge, a different approach you need a new rig for your ship or boat, than most organizations go for. But it’s how we operate. And it felt like the right thing to do. or maybe just a splice!

SOU’WESTER RIGGING

If

MS: If this goes well, I think you will open people’s eyes to another path that can be taken.

Not every boat can or should live forever.

It’s very difficult when you’re in charge, and your crew, your staff, your volunteers are all attached to this vessel and they’re looking to you to somehow make it work. But instead you stand up in front of them and say, “It’s not going to work.” It takes guts.

SM: Thank you. I hope we will find a way that people can think about it and learn from us, right? Everyone makes mistakes as they’re learning new things. I’m sure there will be missteps that we make in the next two years, but hopefully we’ll get a lot of things right too.

And hopefully we can be a place that people can learn from because they know we’re not alone in making these plans. Every decision we’re making is with the best interest of the boat at the center. b For more on the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum and their many programs, visit LCMM.org.

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Just last year we interviewed Garth and Jenny Wells, and never had an inkling that they’d soon be selling out of the windjammer business.

“For the last 24 years, my life has revolved around a little schooner in Maine called the Lewis R. French,” posted Garth on March 10. “That boat has been really good to me. But the time has come to pass her on, so we are selling the LRF and her business to Becky Wright and Nathan Sigouin.

“It is truly bittersweet; we met such cool people and made so many friendships from our time on the French.

We learned so many things. It has been an amazing playground for our boys. But we are looking forward to a little more time ashore and a little less craziness in the summer.”

The turnover in the Maine fleet seems, if anything, to be accelerating. Most of the fleet has changed hands in the last decade, and currently the Grace Bailey, Mercantile, and Mistress are for sale as Capt. Ray Williamson downsizes his Maine Windjammer Cruises business to focus on the Swift. ★ The Hudson River Sloop Clearwater named David Toman as their new Executive Director in January.

Toman’s background is in financial management and con-

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servation. He most recently worked as the VP of Operations and CFO at the Mohonk Preserve.

Launched in 1969 by legendary folk singer and activist Pete Seeger, Clearwater has been at the forefront of the environmental movement as a champion of the Hudson River.

Clearwater has become a grassroots model for producing positive changes to protect the waters of our planet. ★ Meanwhile, Call of the Sea has new leadership as well, with Mark Welther taking the helm.

Welther began his nonprofit career at the California League of Conservation Voters. He was Founding Executive Director of the Spaulding Wooden Boat Center, where he pioneered the Youth Boatbuilding & Sailing Program, partnered with the Arques School of Traditional Boatbuilding, and directed the initial restoration of Freda, the oldest private sailing yacht in San Francisco.

In 2009, he returned to conservation to serve as the Executive Director of the Golden Gate Audubon Society.

From 2013 to 2021, Mark led the Redwood Forest Foundation as President & CEO, managing the nation’s largest community-owned working forest.

Mark learned to sail at Berkeley’s OCSC, and raced on a championship J-29 team. He also restored a Tayana 37, and owned and raced an Olympic class Finn. Mark held a U.S. Sailing Small Boat Level One Instructor Certificate,

PIONEER

and served as volunteer crew for two seasons on the Pegasus Youth Educational Project 50-foot Alden ketch Pegasus. ★ Six months into the pandemic, South Street Seaport Museum President and CEO Jonathan Boulware broadcast a warning: “At present stripped-down levels of funding, the Museum will not survive 2021.”

Then, in December, Boulware announced the Museum had secured a $40 million gift from a real-estate developer in exchange for its air rights, a move approved by the New York City Council. The city has also pledged to give the Museum $10 million.

In a noisy bar in Avalon, I tried to call you But on a midnight watch I realized, why twice you ran away The bars of Avalon are not very noisy this time of year, but the island of Catalina continues its siren call to sailors and hikers alike. The harbor of Avalon is dominated by the art-deco Casino, built in 1929 as a theater and ballroom. The mermaid mosaic alone justifies the cost of the one-hour ferry ride from Los Angeles.

The iconic building sits mostly silent over the winter, but guided tours are available, and highly recommended. — MR

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“To say I’m thrilled would be an understatement,” Boulware told Artnet News.

The museum sold its rights to build in the South Street Seaport historic district to the Howard Hughes Corporation, which will use them to erect a 324-foot residential tower at the site of a nearby parking lot.

Opponents say the tower would block views of the Brooklyn Bridge and disrupt the character of the historic neighborhood, which was placed on the National Trust For Historic Preservation’s list of most endangered places in 2015.

“I accept the idea that in concept there could be a different solution, but there hasn’t ever been one, and we’ve had decades to see that,” said Boulware.

“This is a solution and it’s one that actually works.

“The district is completely unique in that it is the birthplace of a metropolis with a museum as its beating heart. So if the Museum were to be lost, which is what the other fork in the road looked like, what is left? A bunch of old buildings.”

The Museum’s survival means it can display its collection of some 28,000 works of art and artifacts as well as more than 55,000 historic records and a fleet of ships that tell the story of New York’s crucial role in the rise of the U.S. economy, he said.

“We have a collection that is the crown jewels of maritime New York, and very little has been available to the public. This $40 million, and $10 million in capital funding from the city, is the stabilizing force which means we can provide these beautiful elements to the people of New York.

We have this incredible dowry that we must share. The greatest city in the world deserves a maritime museum worthy of its place in the world, and that is what we intend to create.”

Meanwhile, the Seaport has announced that the 2022 sailing season for 1885 schooner Pioneer and rides aboard 1930 tugboat W.O. Decker will run from May 25 to October 30 from Pier 16 (Fulton and South Streets).

Both vessels are now taking reservations for private charters. Pioneer charters range from $2200 to $3750 for either a two- or three-hour sail, for up to 36 people.

W.O. Decker charters are $1100 for a 2-hour ride for up to 14 people ★ Plans to sail the Swedish East Indiaman replica Götheborg from Sweden to China had to be altered due to COVID, but are going forward for this summer. Two stops on the journey have now been announced: London and Bremerhaven.

It is the first time in fifteen years that the ship will sail up the Thames to London (August 8-12). In Bremerhaven, the ship will be participate in the Lütte Sail Bremerhaven event (August 17-21) with over 80 other vessels.

Götheborg is looking for both paid crew and paying deckhands for the voyage.

“To sail the ship, the crew has to consist of about 70 people. About 20 are professional crew, the others are paying

A recent swing through the LA area, the High Desert, and Catalina turned up very little to write about. While most restaurants offerered one or two rum drinks, they weren’t especially creative, and everyone carries the same stock: Captain Morgan, Myers’s, Bacardi, and Malibu.

Then there’s the Tonga Hut. It’s a fair ways from the ocean, but the Tonga Hut in Palm Springs (Palm Canyon Drive, across from the Hyatt) is a must-stop for rum aficionados.

It was too dark, and she was moving too fast, to follow most of our friendly bartender’s moves, but the Polynesian decor, collection of tiki mugs, and wide selection of seldom-seen rums were impressive. The manager told us that many of their recipes harken back to the legendary Trader Vic’s.

Our $7 Happy Hour Mai Tais were topped with edible orchids and fresh mint. Go! — MR

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deckhands. As a deckhand it is not necessary to have any experience of sailing, it is for anyone who wants to experience sailing an 18th century ship. The sailing leg London to Bremerhaven will take five days.

“We’re also looking for professional crew! Götheborg will depart from Gothenburg in June 2022, and arrive in Shanghai in September 2023. The ship will sail the Baltic Sea and Northern Europe, before it continues to the Mediterranean. During winter 2022/2023 the ship will remain in the Mediterranean. It will sail to Asia in spring 2023.”

Götheborg is a sailing replica of a Swedish East Indiaman launched in 1738. She was wrecked off Gothenburg in 1745,while returning from her third voyage to China. Construction of the replica started in 1995, with

the hull launched in 2003.

The ship previously made a round-trip voyage to China from October 2005 to June 2007. ★ Mystic Seaport Museum announced in February that it will present its 2022 America and the Sea Award to Captain William “Bill” Pinkney, former Mystic Seaport Museum trustee, U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman, sailor, educator, author, and adventurer.

The award recognizes those individuals and organizations whose extraordinary achievements in the world of maritime exploration, competition, scholarship, and design best exemplify the American character.

“Pinkney and his work to open the maritime world to inner-city youth and others around the United States

for Schooner AMAZING GRACE 58’ LOD ferrocement schooner, built 1991. New engine, rigging, electronics. COI for Lakes Bays & Sounds, 33 + 2. Located San Juan, PR. Asking $450,000.

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Schooner GRAND NELLIE 1988 steel hull, COI for 48 on deck, 20 overnight.

Located Key West, FL. Asking $400,000.

Schooner CAPT. KIDD 55’ steel schooner, 2000. COI for 28. Located Seabrook, TX. Asking $190,000.

Schooner ALLIANCE Three-masted schooner, 1995, steel hull built by Treworgy.

COI for 49 daysails, 12 overnight. Located Yorktown, VA. Boat and business for sale. info@sailyorktown.com Schooner HALIE & MATTHEW 2006, fiberglass hull. Located Maine. COI for 100 on deck, 50 overnight. Asking $1,250,000.

Schooner RED WITCH Cypress hull built by Nathaniel Zirlott, 1986. 77’ LOA. COI for 49. Located Kenosha, WI. Asking $149,000.

MERCANTILE

Schooner GRACE BAILEY 1882 wooden-hulled schooner in the Maine Windjammer trade. LOD 81’, COI for 54 passengers, 34 overnight.

Brand new sails. Located Camden, ME. Asking $640,000 Schooner MERCANTILE 1916 wooden-hulled schooner in the Maine Windjammer trade. LOD 79', COI for 49, 29 overnight. Brand new sails. Located Camden, ME. Asking $480,000.

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Coveside, Christmas Cove, South Bristol Maine — home of the darkest and stormiest even on the brightest of days. Stories so vast and rich and hilarious and unbelievable and never exaggerated that they cannot begin to be listed here except for that one about Ivan Frederick Boesky passing out at the bar.

— Graham Jack Walsh

embody the Museum’s mission to inspire an enduring connection to the American maritime experience,” read the Museum’s release.

“His work as captain of the Amistad — the first vessel constructed from the keel up at Mystic Seaport Museum — and his journey through the Middle Passage on Sortilege, a 78’ ketch-rigged moto sailer, brought to life personal connections to the history of slavery and the crucial role that seafaring played. His solo circumnavigation on his 47-foot cutter, aptly named Commitment, from Boston around the five southern capes and back to Boston, spanning 27,000 miles and 22 months, grew into an educational opportunity for many children via video diaries, phone conversations, opportunities to track his progress through satellite technology and lesson plans that included navigational calculations and the influence of faraway cultures.

BILL PINKNEY “All of this work, born from a desire to leave a legacy for his grandchildren, speaks to the mission of Mystic Seaport Museum.”

The award presentation will take place October 26 at the Metropolitan Club in New York City.

Past recipients of the award include author and historian Nathaniel Philbrick; America’s Cup Hall of Famer and author Gary Jobson; WoodenBoat founder Jon Wilson; for-

mer Secretary of the Navy John Lehman; oceanographer and explorer Sylvia Earle; America’s Cup sailor William Koch; President and CEO of Crowley Maritime Corporation, Thomas Crowley; historian David McCullough; and the first honoree, legendary yacht designer Olin Stephens. ★ Bluejacket Shipcrafters is holding a weeklong class at the Fireside Inn in Belfast, ME this May 23-27 to teach novice modelers the finer points of square & gaff rigging.

All tools and materials are provided with the class fee of $440. You get a hull to work on, all the sticks and dowels, glue, blocks, deadeyes, threads, wire, beeswax, sandpaper and a variety of tools.

“Obviously, we don’t waste a lot of time to make the model look pretty! We want to concentrate on the shrouds, backstays, bobstays, gammoning, vangs, topping lift, ratlines, hearts, throat halyard, peak halyard, sheet tackle on a traveler, lifts, braces, forestays, etc.”

Class is limited to 12 vaccinated people. For more info, visit www.bluejacketinc.com b Do you have a newsworthy item for Boats, Bars & Beaches?

Contact us at Marlinspike1812@gmail.com.

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AJ MEERWALD

CLARK & EISELE TRADITIONAL BOATBUILDING

From the Belfast boatyard of Clark & Eisele, where the 1928 schooner A. J. Meerwald is undergoing a significant rebuild: “Things are moving along quickly on the A. J. Meerwald.

Big projects like this have a turning point where the demolition completely ends and the only thing left to do is put the boat back together. We have recently rounded that proverbial corner — at this point, we are only putting new wood on the boat and, with a fairly large crew of skilled shipwrights, the visible progress is very satisfying.

“Several minor spar repairs were done in the initial stages of the project while demolition of the vessel took place. Deck frame repairs and re-fairing were completed a few weeks ago. New starboard knightheads and several new and repaired bulwark stanchions were installed, and covering boards are almost totally installed.

“At this time, about two-thirds of the deck planking is laid, and all cabin structures are nearing completion.

“The transom was found to be rotten and was completely replaced. Many new pieces of hardware are being fabricated, and salvageable old ones are being reconditioned — including some machine work and tightening up of tolerances on the original steering gear.

“Careful repair and re-installation of the aft cabin’s original varnished interior woodwork has begun now that a com38

pletely new cabin trunk has been built, with the desired end result of that space looking exactly as it did before the restoration.

“As we look ahead to a spring launch, our attention will turn to building the bulwarks, caulking the deck, doing a lot of paint work, and the task of putting the whole schooner back together and in seaworthy condition to make her trip back to New Jersey.

“We will be hosting an open house at the boat in Belfast, ME on April 30th from 3:00 to 7:00 pm.

Attendance is free, with a suggested donation of $5 that will go directly to Bayshore Center at Bivalve, the museum that owns and operates the vessel. We would love to see you there!”

Readers can follow Clark & Eisele on Facebook and Instagram for updates on the restoration.

H Staff from the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum’s working Shipyard are excited to report that progress on Maryland Dove has continued at a rapid pace.

“The ship’s main and quarter decks have now been decked in solid, old-growth Douglas fir (2 ¼” thick, clear vertical grain to be exact). Meanwhile, the planking crew has focused on steaming and installing cedar planking along the bulwarks.

MarlinspikeMagazine.com

“With planking completed, an angelique cap rail will add the finishing touches to the deck and the osage orange chicken beak (or gammon piece) and gammon knee have been put in place and are awaiting the final fitting and install of the bow sprit.

“In addition to work on the deck, shipwrights are accomplishing work below deck to create the cabin soles and respective framing for the head and galley. Electrical, bilge, and fire suppression systems are also being installed.

“Meanwhile, in the rigging shop, staff members are dressing the spars with a plethora of hand-crafted cleats and final touches. This process includes adding coats of varnish, weaving sword mats, steam-bending hanks, and fitting some of the smaller sails.

“Whether the project is small or large in scale, all are leading to crucial next steps including the uprig process once Maryland Dove is in the water.”

To learn more about the construction of Maryland Dove — a reproduction of the vessel that accompanied the first European settlers to Maryland in 1634 that is owned by the state of Maryland and operated by Historic St. Mary’s City — visit marylanddove.org.

H On June 4, Maine’s First Ship will launch their traditional wooden sailing vessel Virginia, a reconstruction of a 17th-century pinnace, and will host a celebration to commemorate the historic event and to share thanks for the many volunteers who have shared their time and talents to bring both history and vessel to life.

The original Virginia was the first English ocean-going ship built in Maine.

The launch celebration will span much of Commercial Street in Bath, including Waterfront Park, with music, special guests, local food vendors, regional artists, and a marinethemed yard sale.

Virginia, which will be launched via crane through a series of lifts (see diagram, page 41) is expected to touch down in the waters of the Kennebec River at 4:30 pm on Saturday the 4th before finding her new home dockside at the Bath Freight Shed — just north of the Sagadahoc Bridge.

H At the Jungle Shipyard in Costa Rica, the shipwrights working on Ceiba are installing deck beams and simultaneously building the galley deckhouse on the lofting floor. This unique structure will house the ship’s kitchen, sitting area and storage rooms.

In February, SailCargo released a set of drawings showing the auxiliary propulsion system.

“We are working with Hundested Propeller for our regnerative electrical system. These propellers will be able to recharge the batteries when the ship is under sail.”

The 45-meter cargo schooner is being built to sail sustainably produced goods between the Americas. A second ship has already been requested by investors with cargo interests and wood is being set aside for the second build.

AJ MEERWALD

CLARK & EISELE TRADITIONAL BOATBUILDING

AJ MEERWALD

CLARK & EISELE TRADITIONAL BOATBUILDING

Ceiba is expected to launch in 2023. Launch preparation is already underway as a team of geologists and surveyors are conducting an environmental impact assessment to help determine the best way to build the launch infrastructure.

Learn more at SailCargo.inc.

H According to Craig Dalton, Ernestina-Morrissey is on track for a late spring launch and a midsummer delivery to Mass Maritime.

“The shipyard has been finishing up work on many of the ‘Phase 1’ items as we approach the final push for completion.

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“Laminated spars have been produced and are awaiting their hardware. The yard is about to start reconditioning the reusable pieces and reproducing the others.

“Preliminary ballast has been installed.

The Hundested drive unit is on site and the shipyard has been custom fabricating its mounts. The drive train should be installed within a month. A great deal of electrical work is being done, with wiring and switches being installed.

“Some original blocks are being reworked by Captain Krihwan and a crew of volunteers and others are being replaced, with new ones being specially built.

“Mass Maritime is in the process of hiring a Chief Mate and is interviewing for a Chief Engineer at this time. Captain Krihwan has procured a seasonal crew for the vessel who will be starting this spring.”

H “Call of the Sea has been busy this winter with seasonal rig maintenance and fine-tuning the foremast,” writes Sylvia Stompe from Sausalito. “We had the expertise of master rigger Jamie White for a week to oversee operations.

“We also built new floating docks with towers and ramps to make boarding from the pier easier at all tidal levels and to allow for wheelchair-assisted people to board both ships.

“This has been a major capital cam-

VIRGINIA

VIRGINIA

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ERNESTINA-MORRISSEY

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BOATYARDS Continued from page 41

SWIFT

paign, raising $100K over almost two years to complete the project in time for our first school group of the year on March 16.

“The project had the collaboration of many volunteers!”

H Up in Camden, Capt. Ray Williamson of Maine Windjammer Cruises continues working on his pet project — a new interior of the Swift, exActress, ex-Oliver C. Wyant. He plans to run the newly-acquired Swift as a six-pack overnight charter vessel.

The work sped up as February turned to March.

“We’ve pretty much finished the galley, all the counters and the shelving, and a little chart table that probably will be used by the cook as well,” said Williamson.

The eye-catching vessel has already been booked for some charters this season.

“I haven’t really been pushing it, but we’ve got three or four full-boat charters, which is good.

That’s what I want to do. We’ve got a seven-day, a couple of four-days, I think a three-day. Once we get all the photos and so on that we need to promote it… people don’t seem too concerned over the price, either.”

Meanwhile, Capt. Ray has placed his three schooners on the market — Grace Bailey, Mercantile, and Mistress.

“I’ve had some people look at them… there’s been some discussion back and forth. One was just interested in the Grace Bailey, one was just interested in the Mercantile, and two people were interested in both.

“Hopefully we’ll find someone who wants both boats and will continue to operate them out of Camden. That would be ideal.”

Maine Windjammer Cruises is hiring for the summer season. For more on the positions available, contact RayW @ MaineWindjammerCruises.com.

H “We count ourselves lucky that we were ready for this winter and that it has not yet turned into a severe one,” writes Harold Burnham from his boatyard in Essex, MA. “So far we have not been buried too deep in snow, the tide has kept out of the shop, and the boats we left in the water are still there and on the surface. Moreover — at least to date — we have had some wonderful working weather and got a lot done.

“We’ve been doing a lot of work on the Isabella. Besides sprucing up her interior we have been getting her structural, mechanical, electrical and rigging plans together for the Coast Guard. Our friend Tom Farrell will be conducting a 42

SWIFT stability test, and by July we are hoping to have her working as an inspected 12-passenger charter vessel beside our other schooner, Ardelle.

“This winter saw the Sylvina W. Beal being worked on again, and hopefully she will be moving ahead soon — literally moving ahead. The fact is, although we were able to sail her all the way down from Bar Harbor, her hull was no longer strong enough to support her own weight and...

“Although she was featured in this year’s calendar of wooden boats, we were really trying not to draw to much attention to her where she was. There were a couple of things hanging over our heads that we had to get out of the way before we could move her again.

“Luckily, though, we got her masts down safely and they appear in excellent condition. Her engine has been removed and is running well in a specially-build “engine room” in the yard.

“On top of everything, we still have our health, and are very grateful to everyone who helped us out with that last spring and early summer.” b

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A select list of sailing opportunities open to the public.

WEST COAST Call of the Sea, Sausalito, CA (415) 331-3214 * CalloftheSea.org Ed programs aboard Seaward and Matthew Turner.

Grays Harbor Historic Seaport, Aberdeen, WA (800) 200-5239 * HistoricalSeaport.org Sailing aboard the brig Lady Washington.

Los Angeles Maritime Institute, Los Angeles, CA (310) 883-6055 * LAMITopSail.org Sail-training for school and youth groups.

Maritime Museum of San Diego, San Diego, CA (619) 234-9153 * SDMaritime.org Day sails on Californian; coastal cruises on galleon San Salvador.

Ocean Institute, Dana Point, CA (949) 496-2274 * OceanInstitute.org Marine science and ed programs; operators of Spirit of Dana Point.

SALTS, Victoria, BC (888) 383-6811 * Salts.ca Sail training for youth, day sails for all, on two large schooners Schooner Adventuress, Port Townsend, WA (360) 379-0438 * SoundExp.org Overnight programs for teens, adults, seniors, and families.

Schooner Zodiac, Bellingham, WA (206) 719-7622 * SchoonerZodiac.com Windjammer cruises in the San Juan Islands, April-October.

Schooners North, Friday Harbor, WA (360) 378-2224 * SanJuanSailCharter.com Cruises from the San Juans to Alaska on the schooner Spike Africa.

GREAT LAKES Appledore Tall Ships, Bay City, MI (989) 895-5193 * BaySailBayCity.org Day-sails, charters, ed programs, and overnight opportunities.

Brigantine St. Lawrence II, Kingston, ON (613) 544-5175 * Brigantine.ca Sail-training programs on the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario.

Traverse Tall Ship Co., Traverse Bay, MI (231) 941-2000 * TallShipSailing.com Education, day-sails, charters, and multi-day windjammer cruises.

US Brig Niagara, Erie, PA (814) 452-2744 ext. 214 * FlagshipNiagara.org A wide variety of programs aboard Niagara and Lettie Howard.

EAST COAST Barque Picton Castle, Lunenburg, NS (902) 634-9984 * Picton-Castle.com World Voyage 8 now scheduled for October, 2022 Brilliant, Mystic, CT (860) 572-0711 * MysticSeaport.org Brilliant is an offshore classroom for Mystic Seaport’s ed programs.

Discovering Amistad, New Haven, CT (203) 498-8222 * DiscoveringAmistad.org

Dockside tours and ed opportunities aboard replica slaver.

Liberty Fleet of Tall Ships, Boston, MA (617) 742-0333 * LibertyFleet.com Windjammer-style Caribbean cruises; day sails from Boston.

Maine Windjammer Association, Midcoast Maine (800) 807-WIND * SailMaineCoast.com Nine, count ‘em, traditional sailing vessels on the Maine coast.

Maine Windjammer Cruises, Midcoast Maine (207) 236-2938 * MaineWindjammerCruises.com Three traditional sailing vessels offering multi-day cruises in midcoast Maine from mid-May into October.

Ocean Passages, Portland, ME (855) 212-0123 * Ocean-Passages.org Long-form sail-training aboard the schooner Harvey Gamage.

Oliver Hazard Perry, Newport, RI (401) 841-0080 * OHPRI.org Workforce development and other sailing and dockside programs.

Pride of Baltimore II, Baltimore, MD (410) 539-1151 * Pride2.org Paid crew opportunities, educational programs and dockside events.

Schooner A. J. Meerwald, Bivalve, NJ (856) 785-2060 * BayShoreCenter.org Day and overnight Maritime Camp programs for children 13-17.

Schooner Adventure, Gloucester, MA (978) 281-8079 * Schooner-Adventure.org Public sails, private charters, and educational programs.

Schooner Alliance, Yorktown, VA (757) 639-1233 * SailYorktown.com Public sails, private charters, and educational programs.

Schooner Ardelle, Gloucester, MA (978) 281-0470 * SchoonerArdelle.com Public sails, private charters, and educational programs.

Schooner Fame, Salem, MA (978) 729-7600 * SchoonerFame.com Public sails, private charters, ed programs, and sail training.

Sloop Clearwater, Kingston, NY (410) 539-1151 * Clearwater.org Day sails, youth & adult programs, environmental activism.

Schooner Sultana, Chesterton, MD (410) 778-5954 * SultanaProjects.org Week-long “Chesapeake Adventures” programs for ages 11-14.

World Ocean School, Boston, MA (340) 626-7877 * WorldOceanSchool.org Education programs in Boston Harbor on board Roseway.

Sea I mester, Sarasota, FL (941) 924-2900 * Seamester.com Semester-at-sea and gap-year programs for college students.

SEA Semester, Woods Hole, MA (508) 540-3954* Sea.edu Accredited semester-at-sea programs for college students.

Sylvina Beal, Essex, MA (978) 491-7666 * BurnhamBoatbuilding.com 1911 sardine carrier currently being restored by National Heritage Fellow Harold Burnham to offer a variety of sailing programs. ❂

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A popular feature on the Marlinspike facebook page is NAME THAT BOAT, where readers are asked to identify tall ships and sail-training vessels of the past & present.

A

How many of these vessels can you name?

8/9 — Admiral of the Ocean Sea 7/9 — Commodore 6/9 — Captain 5/9 — Master & Commander 4/9 — First Mate 3/9 — Seaman, Able 2/9 — Seaman, Ordinary 1/9 — Swabbie 0/9 — Tourist ANSWERS: A) Thalassa, B) Sorlandet, C) Young America, D) Ocean Star (L) and Argo (R), E) Niagara, F) Stephen Taber, G) Wendameen, H) Kaiulani, I) Elissa.

B

C

D

NADIA DALE

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G

E

H

I F

DON VANDELINDER

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! ,+*)('&*%$)(#)$+*)"!!(% ( ) !)$()#(!$* ) ( ($*) )* %( *)$+*)* &( * $ ) $ ( ! ) ) *!* ( )(#)!%+(( * !)' ) ! ( ) !) )( ( !)$$+ $) *) )! $+ ) $+)( )('&*%$ )' ) $$ ) ) *%( )(#)$+*!*) *!!* !) !$) ) *!* $$ ) ) ' )%(( ) ) ( )(#) % ) ) % ! ) ( * ) ) )$+*)"!!(% ( ) !) ) ( )( ( ) +(!*) * '* !) **) ( * !)(#)!%+(( * ! )! ( !) )($+* ) !) )( ( !) $* *!$* ) ) *!* ) ) ( ( )$+*) $ *!)(#)$+ +*) !%+(( * ) ( ) * '* !+ )+* !)! ( $) ( $+) * % ( ) $)!%+(( * )* * $! )$+*)"!!(% ( !)

) )($+* ) "!!(% ( ) (&*%$! ( )$( ) $)+ " %+(( * ( & &( )

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So this is my tattoo designed and inked by an old Kung Fu buddy, Miles Becken, in Dallas, Texas. A few years ago I had the honor of assisting the USCG in delivering Eagle from Baltimore to Germany, with stops in England and Norway. I’d been working tall ships for a couple years, day sailing and maintenance, so I was super stoked to test myself with an Atlantic crossing. Thanks to Tall Ships America and the USCG, I got to do it on America’s Tall Ship! So of course I had to get a tattoo to memorialize the journey: an eagle carrying an anchor. [See Marlinspike #26] Now, after nearly three years, I was able to get it finished! I’m super stoked with how it came out.

— Mysti SoThen

When I turned 50 I decided I was either going to get my first tattoo or go skydiving. And since I wasn’t going to jump out of an airplane, I snuck away to New Hampshire and got this tattoo in a small parlor in a small town I unfortunately don’t remember. The signal flags M, E, and J stand for my family members, who anchor me. The tattoo took about an hour and I was surprised how little it hurt. When I arrived home I told my husband and son I’d gotten a tattoo. They just shook their heads and said, “No, you didn’t.” — Melissa Rutstein

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Visit the historic seaport of Salem, Mass for a cruise on our replica of the 1812 privateer schooner FAME! Sailing daily all summer from our downtown dock!

978.729.7600 * SchoonerFame.com