Stitch & Glue Cruise
Why not plan a Maine coast cruise around a weeklong WoodenBoat School boatbuilding class that would send us home to Provincetown with a 15-foot, marine-plywood, clinker sailing dinghy?
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The author and his wife pose with Lobster Pot, the 15-foot skerry sailing dinghy they built at the WoodenBoat School. Photo courtesy Evan DeLucia
August 2024
By Evan H. DeLucia
Sailing the Maine coast, you’ll be enthralled by the majesty of the wooden boats – sail and motor – you see in almost every harbor. My wife Leslie and I spend our summers plying these waters in our fiberglass Catalina 355, Balmoral.
The advantage of plastic, of course, is evident every spring when it takes us days, not months, to get her back in the water. But I have fond memories of scraping, sanding, painting, and staining my 1960s Gerber Wood Lightning. As a teenager, I lived in the marina every spring, working on Poseidon – the name inspired by the 1972 movie adventure of the same name – and subsisting on buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken provided by then-girlfriend Leslie.
Acting on these fond memories, last summer, now-wife Leslie and I enrolled at the WoodenBoat School, in Brooklin, Maine, to build our own piece of history, a 15-foot skerry sailing dinghy. Leslie was skeptical. Like many women her age, she didn’t grow up working with her dad building stuff, so the construction aspect was not so appealing. And this particular class was Family Week, so we both had visions of kids throwing chisels at each other in the shop.
That aside, I was excited, and being the supportive partner that she is, we set sail for Brooklin from Provincetown, Mass., on the first of July. We would take our time sailing up the Maine coast and live on Balmoral while building our skerry.
The sail northeast was more of an adventure than we had planned. Do you remember the summer of 2023, or is your memory a bit foggy? If it wasn’t raining the first week of July, it was socked in. Fortunately, I’d upgraded Balmoral during the winter with a state-of-the-art Doppler radar.
Earlier that summer, I had become comfortable interpreting the blips and blobs on the radar screen. And, to make it all easier, the Doppler features color-codes; vessels moving away green and those heading toward you, red. I got a kick from tracking cars on coastal roads. That said, fog is fog, and when in it there’s no time to relax.
At the end of our first week we found ourselves approaching Tenants Harbor, in Penobscot Bay. According to “A Cruising Guide to the Maine Coast,” by Taft and Rindlaub, “Tenants Harbor is very easy to enter under most conditions.” Here, underscore “under most conditions.”
As we approached from the southwest, the fog thickened; by the time we approached the lighted buoy off Southern Island, at the harbor entrance, visibility was down to a boat length or two. With Leslie on the bow and me at the helm, we became concerned, then worried, then outright panicked when a red dot on our radar screen was approaching on a collision course at high speed.
With our foghorn sounding, and Leslie back in the safer confines of the cockpit, we braced. Out of the fog loomed a lobsterboat headed out. She passed not 30 feet to starboard, leaving us rocking in her wake. Not sure why she was in such a hurry under these conditions, but I’m eternally grateful to my old Lightning’s namesake, Poseidon, God of the Sea, that the fishboat saw us and missed.
The rest of the trip into the harbor was still dicey. With Leslie back on the bow, we crawled our way down the fairway, navigating by the chartplotter and radar, until we saw other boats in the mooring field and found our ball next to the Tenants Harbor Boat Yard. Once tied up, I passed on my normal end-of-day beer and went straight for bourbon.
Three more days, under better conditions, found us cruising through Camden, Belfast, and Tom Cod Cove, on Cape Rosier, as we rode the southwesterly breeze down Eggemoggin Reach toward Brooklin and the WoodenBoat School. We were a day early for class, so we picked up a mooring ball next door, in Center Harbor. Leslie called the Center Harbor Yacht Club to see if we could use their guest ball, but no one answered. As we approached the harbor, a row of Beetle Cats was being escorted in by the club launch. As luck would have it, Izzy, a club steward, was finishing up a race. We motored alongside, asked about a ball for the evening, and she escorted us to our home for the night.
With Balmoral buttoned up, we jumped in Mini B, our eight-foot Hypalon dinghy, to motor ashore and hunt for dinner. But first we had to cruise the mooring field. Magnificent! This, after all, is the self-proclaimed Boat Building Capital of the World. We motored in past a fleet of wooden Beetle Cats and Herreshoff 12 1/2s to bathe in the beauty of 40-plus wooden sloops and yawls. This excited us about the adventure in wooden-boat building we were about to undertake.
But first things first: dinner. We tied up Mini B at the Brooklin Boat Yard and walked for about a mile up to the Brooklin Inn. This classic Maine B&B did not disappoint us. I wasn’t that hungry, but how do you say no to lamb ribs in a honey-sherry glaze? A bit bloated, but happy, we found our way back to Balmoral for a great night’s sleep.
The next morning, we set off on a short sail to the WoodenBoat School. Heading west out of Center Harbor, and rounding Torrey Ledge, we turned east and headed past Little Babson Island into the mooring field off the school’s dock. A ball in the mooring field, surrounded by their fleet of wooden sailing dinghies, would be our home for the next seven days.
That evening, we headed to the school’s dock in Mini B. We walked past the boathouse, which reminded me of Harvard’s boathouse on the Charles, and started the two-mile trek to the farmhouse, where our welcome dinner and orientation was scheduled. We didn’t get 200 yards past the workshop building when the sky opened up in a torrential downpour. Fortunately, a sympathetic driver on his way to the orientation picked us up. Ah, it was none other than Dillon, our instructor. I felt terrible because we soaked his car seats. Dillon was, however, unperturbed, excited to meet two of his 14-plus students for the coming week.
Class started in earnest the next day, and, over the next week, it was a whirlwind of fiberglass, sanding and routing – and more sanding. We arrived at the workshop early. It was a magical building, originally a big brick horse barn, now filled with smells of boat construction – fresh wood and fiberglass. We joined six other families in all, and we would build seven boats together during the week.
We were building a 15-foot Skerry designed by John Harris. A traditional working craft from Scandinavia, this dinghy is supposed to be as good rowing as it is under sail. The precut marine plywood that would become our boats was laid out at seven work stations. These kits were designed for folks with little experience in boatbuilding, and we would use the stitch-and-glue method of construction. Basically, we sewed the boards together by threading wire through adjoining pieces and twisting them together. Incredible. We had the hull assembled on the first day. Then came the hard part.
Admiring the gorgeous lines of our assembled hulls, now shining with a coat of epoxy resin, we were unaware of how deeply we soon would be traumatized. After assembling and installing the centerboard trunks, it dawned on us that there was no opening in the hull through which the centerboard could pass. We flipped our boats over, and, under Dillon’s watchful eye, we measured, drilled a pilot hole, then inserted a router to carve out a slot for the centerboard.
It was difficult to approach these beautiful hulls with drills and routers, and some folks simply couldn’t do it. I, however, was happy to step in and help others, before digging into my own boat. After all, practice makes perfect.
At the end of the week we had complete hulls, lapstrake with beautiful lines, ready to be trailered home. As the days passed at WoodenBoat, it was rewarding to see our boat take shape, but it was even more satisfying seeing our confidence in our new skills grow along with our new friendships with fellow shipwrights. Once home, we’d apply a bit more epoxy, then we’d paint, finish, and give her a sail.
After an amazing and exhausting week at the WoodenBoat School, it was time to set sail back to Provincetown. With a slight aversion to overnight cruising, we headed southwest in the fog again, working our way back along the coast. After three days, we anchored at Jewell Island, on the edge of Casco Bay. Cocktail Cove is a tight harbor and it was a bit crowded, but we were able to tuck in near the northwest side. Unfortunately, we were a bit close to exposed rocks, which made for a sleepless night, at least for me. We went ashore to hike and visit the World War II gun emplacements, but, on this leg, we were on a mission to return home.
After another day headed west-southwest, we entered one of our favorite harbors and tied up to a mooring ball at the Biddeford Pool Yacht Club (BPYC). After a shower at the club and a lobster dinner from Goldthwaite’s, with a bottle of Pinot Grigio on the club’s picnic bench, things were looking up. Our plan: a good night’s sleep and an early departure further southwest.
Well, planning and sailing are not always good partners. We awoke to overcast conditions, but with a nice breeze in the harbor. When we motored out past Wood Island to the north and rounded the Dansbury Reef, that nice breeze got nasty, blowing 20 to 25 knots on the nose with a four-foot-plus sea. Our 28-horse Yanmar was giving it her best shot, but after about a half-hour of pounding into the swell, Leslie called the BPYC to ask for our mooring back. It’s good we called early; as we headed back, the mooring field and anchorage began to fill with folks seeking refuge. The wind stayed up all day but the skies cleared, so we made a beach day of it. And, lobster twice in a row. Why not?
Our next day we sailed into Sandy Bay to visit high school friends in Rockport, Mass. This is a great harbor from which to launch the 50-plus-mile sail home to Provincetown. Rockport harbor, however, is not for weenies. This is a small harbor with the racing fleet anchored on the north side and the cruising fleet anchored on the south, leaving a narrow fairway to navigate, with an active fishing fleet competing for space coming and going. But that’s not the most exciting part.
We booked a spot through the harbormaster on a floating dock right in front of the Sandy Bay Yacht Club. It seemed like a good spot when we were out at sea. As we approached the yacht club, the challenge quickly became apparent. Between the sea wall and the floating dock there was barely more than a boat length for our 35-foot Catalina. The open spot was on the left side of the floating dock, with a gorgeous 38-foot Shannon ketch on the right side of the neighboring dock.
We have a rule on Balmoral: no heroics. I’m pretty good with gelcoat, but I’ve got no orthopedic skills, which means no leaping off Balmoral onto the dock. Well, the third time around was the charm. That’s how many times it took us to safely pull up to the dock. At least we provided entertainment for the folks who gathered at the yacht club to watch, and the crew on the Shannon, who were trying to enjoy their cocktails, but were somewhat concerned that we might bounce off their baby.
The sail back to Provincetown the next day was, dare I say, pleasant – a beam reach with a 10-knot breeze and calm seas. As we reflected on our 30-plus days living on Balmoral and building the Skerry, we concluded that, indeed, we do like each other. I never doubted that, but after 43 years of marriage, it was a nice thought. And now I’m married to a shipwright, and we have a beautiful sailing dinghy with which to explore the ponds and harbors of the Outer Cape.
Evan is professor emeritus of ecology from the University of Illinois. He and wife Leslie, shipwright and chef extraordinaire, spend summers in North Eastham, Mass., and sail the New England coast from their home port of Provincetown, Mass.
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