W/NW Boats and Ships

Vince Lupo said:
An old Ektachrome slide from about 1997-98. Think it ran in Chesapeake Bay Magazine for some story or other on junior sailing.


Eastport Sailing by Vince Lupo, on Flickr


Another from around that time, also Ektachrome 100.

Hoopers Island by Vince Lupo, on Flickr

Also around the same time, I think this was for a story on the boatyards in Eastport (Annapolis), Maryland for Chesapeake Bay Magazine.

Eastport Sailing2 by Vince Lupo, on Flickr
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The old Eastport boatyards are condos and tourist restaurants now.
 
bigeye said:
The old Eastport boatyards are condos and tourist restaurants now.
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Jabin’s, Eastport Yacht Center and Port Annapolis are still around, plus South Annapolis Yacht Centre (formerly Sarles) on Spa Creek. Not as many as back in the late 90’s, but a few still chugging along.
 
Kept a boat with Bert Jabin a long time ago. Glad to hear the yard is still going. Our old sailor/biker 😎 dive bar there turned into a Ruth’s Chris. Long live the Republic.
 
As a child I summered in Maine, on Washington Pond, and saw many mornings like those, in an Old Town wood and canvas that looked a lot like that in the photos. A canoe paddled rightly can be as silent as a whisper and can sneak up on loons at night. They can be called in close, too. To the uninitiated the amount that can be carried in a canoe is amazing. And go back to the French-Canadian Voyageurs who paddled the Great Lakes with 500 to 800 pounds of beaver pelts in their birch bark canoes on the way to Montreal And sang while they did it.

A quiet morning paddle on a pond is more my speed. ;o) With that same "correct" paddle.
 
Thanks, We had to sell the place several years ago, after 35 years spending summers and some wintertime there, since the only way to get to the camp was by boat, and it got to be too much. We miss it still, or more correctly we miss being 35 there. I was out most mornings. The small canoe is a single pack canoe. We also have a 1914 Kennebec that I recovered and refinished. I am pleased that you understand how special this sort of thing is.IMG_0814.jpg

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The old Old Towns were masterpieces. I see they no longer make the wood and canvas canoes. They were heavy but could glide like a leaf. If you were away on the rapids for a few days you had canvas and Ambroid to make quick field repairs. I see you have both length paddles, nose high for the stern paddle. I forget the height for the bow paddle. And those are the right paddles. The new ones may be more efficient but they do not have the grace and beauty of the ones we know. I took it all for granted at the time. Looking back now on those magnificent Old Towns I see them differently. Yours are just lovely. And if I knew your address and had a station wagon, . . . LOL

Dawn fishing from a canoe is just great with the mist coming up off the water, the water stalking birds marching about for their morning fish and the ripples of the pickerel in the pickerel grass. Your photos have brought it all back. As with so many things in my life I took it all as matter of fact at the time. Now it is magic and regal. Yes, early morning in that Old Town, paddling that silent "J" stroke and whisping along drawing an inch or so and not a threat to any of the shore life, just another morning denizen. Thanks so much for those photos. Those were lovely moments.
 
oldhaven said:
1914 Kennebec canoe
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I can rent a station wagon. LOL That's a beaut. Just like the Old Towns I remember. Gorgeous, just gorgeous. Aluminum would fold across the middle and fiberglass would craze. UniRoyal came out with a good synthetic canoe. It was basically one of the Naugatuck factory's fire hoses modified and made stiff. I got one as a second for $100 and had to put on the gunwales and cross beams, I do not know the correct name. It was homely but a good canoe. Canoes may seem tippy and scare neophytes but when you know how to handle them they can be safe in quite a blow and are pretty safe in storms. It is always more prudent to head for shore, they are small.

Memories of seventy years ago. I can still smell the breeze off the lake. And smell the wood of the canoe. Thanks.
 
I am so glad these photos bring back such vivid sense memories for some of you. Same for me. I have been using a canoe of some sort since my teens. The interior picture was taken midway through the renovation I did on this Kennebec model. I was fascinated by the organic animal look of the canoe and its ribs with the seats out and the wood not yet coated. These canoes from Maine dating from the beginning of the 20th century were built by men from the original families who adapted the Native American birch canoe to commercial use.
 
oldhaven said:
I am so glad these photos bring back such vivid sense memories for some of you. Same for me. I have been using a canoe of some sort since my teens. The interior picture was taken midway through the renovation I did on this Kennebec model. I was fascinated by the organic animal look of the canoe and its ribs with the seats out and the wood not yet coated. These canoes from Maine dating from the beginning of the 20th century were built by men from the original families who adapted the Native American birch canoe to commercial use.
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They were fine canoes, masterpieces of the craft, made with pride. And I know trips down the Alagash and the like included Ambroid, canvas and that ever handy small "canoe ax". I see that Bean no longer carries it. They were shorter and smaller than a regular woodsman's axe and just right for backpacking - do you remember rigid wicker backpacks? - and carrying in a canoe. Good around the campsite and large enough for small felling. I am sorry to see that Bean has drifted away from this, too. It is not the same place it was when it was a small second story store with creaky wooden floors in Freeport, on the corner IIRC.

And a very large hole in the floor walled all around so that packages could be dropped down into the post office for mailing. Yes a USPO open to non-postal employees 24/7. About 75 years ago. LL Bean just sold camping and fishing gear then, good stuff. The catalog was black and white. When they first used color folks were shocked. LOL

The old wood and canvas canoes were heavier and harder to manhandle on land but they worked just fine out on the water. And when that is what you start with nothing else ever seems right. Yeah, it will work, but it just isn't right. Gazing at that old Kennebeck makes all that pretty clear. She's a beaut.
 
Those memories are old but as clear as a bell. They were made when I was young and made on me by real men, woodsmen and a Penobscot who was wise in the ways of the woods, Pa Pushee. A patient gentleman. If you want a feel for that kind of life, in the north, not as a camper kid as I was, Cache Lake Country will take you there. I have read it a few times now and it is on my Kindle. Well-written, not preachy, like a chat with an old friend.
 
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