Down East Magazine - Maine Vacations, Real Estate, Lifestyles

Nathaniel Bowditch approaching the cradle

    It's nearing 6:00 p.m. on a hot and sunny spring evening in Rockland. High tide is about an hour away, and a small crowd of schooner bums has gathered at the North End Shipyard to watch the show. The Nathaniel Bowditch is about to haul out.

    Captain Owen Dorr, having just positioned the Bowditch in the railway's cradle, now stands at the water's edge. He double-checks the fastenings on his dry suit, walks backward down the ramp, then slips underwater. As Dorr dives toward his vessel, a trail of bubbles rises to the surface and marks his path. Minutes later Dorr resurfaces, instructs his crew to reposition the boat, then — when the boat is properly aligned within the cradle — Dorr gives the go-ahead to begin hauling. On shore, Linda Lee fires the winch.

    With the gears now turning and the cables spooling, the Bowditch begins its slow crawl toward land. In thirty minutes she'll be on hard, and a new phase of spring fit-out will begin. It's the yard period.

    There are 12 vessels in the Maine Windjammer Association, and 10 of them haul out at the North End Shipyard. (The Victory Chimes and the Angelique are too big to fit in the North End Shipyard's cradle.) The captains book a few days on the railway every spring to inspect the planking (and replace planks when necessary), and to clean and repaint the hull below the waterline.

    Most shipyards employ a handful of workers, but the North End Shipyard is a self-service yard. The schooner captains like it that way.

    "The North End Shipyard is great for us," says Garth Wells, captain of the Lewis R. French." There are very few places — or any, really — where you can do your own work. It's the difference between hiring an electrician to rewire your house or doing it yourself: the quality of the work is about the same, but it costs a lot more."

    "Without the North End, it would be much more difficult to do what we do," says Noah Barnes, captain of the Stephen Taber. "The fact that we're able to haul out our boats and do our own work in an increasingly OSHA-controlled marine industry is a godsend."

    The shipyard is indeed old school. It predates OSHA (and acronym usage in general) by over 100 years.

    "This is the site of the oldest working marine railway in the state of Maine," says co-owner Captain Doug Lee. "The company was formed in 1849. They built the wharf and the railway in 1851. We're living history right here."

    He's not kidding; the shipyard is determinedly anachronistic. This is a place where twentysomething crews swing antique caulking mallets under the sun while salty old captains bend iron over a soot-caked forge. Even modern-day equipment appears old-timey: a mammoth acetylene torch, for instance, has been mounted on a set of wagon wheels. The land use harkens back to a time when waterfront was the exclusive domain of industry, not a site for the painstaking arrangement of rosa rugosa, stone patios, and bronze sculptures. Instead, these grounds are strewn with anchors, chains, cordwood, buoys, floats, heavy machinery, and the ghost of an old sailing peapod. It's the really real Maine: sunburnt, wind-chafed, and gruff.

    Doug Lee, his wife, Linda, and John Foss bought the shipyard in 1976.

    "We've got a nice situation here," Lee says. " Linda, John, and I are the sole owners of the corporation. We're the officers, the principals, and the shareholders. We've got about 400 feet of deepwater frontage.”

    How much was 400 feet of harbor frontage worth in the mid-seventies?

    "We got this whole thing for about 50 grand," Lee says. "Times have changed, but it was a mountain of money back then. It was the end of the world."

    Doug and Linda Lee and John Foss are schooner owners/captains (of the Heritage and American Eagle, respectively), and their shipyard serves as home berth for these vessels (plus the Isaac H. Evans). But their shipyard is a business in its own right; they haul tugs, fishing boats, and large wooden yachts throughout the summer. In the spring, however, it's all about the windjammer fleet.

    "They give precedence in the spring to hauling out one schooner after another," says Noah Barnes. "They don't do it for free, but anybody else in the industry would make it more difficult and charge more. They basically do the appropriate amount of preparation, support, and ancillary work for us, and not any more than that, which is great for us."

    Despite the captains' insistence on doing their own work, the yard period might be the toughest aspect of spring fit-out. It's not necessarily the nature of the work that's so difficult; it's the time constraints. Captains are charged by the day during their yard period, so there's quite a bit of incentive to wrap up early.

    "It's a hard, hard week," says Barnes. "I can't seem to get off the railway in less than a week. I've painted the boat by the lights of my truck. We'll work from 6:30 in the morning until 8:30 at night. Every day in the shipyard it's 'Go! Go! Go!'"

    Compounding that sense of urgency is the fact that there's usually a boat booked on the railway immediately afterwards. This year, the Nathaniel Bowditch is the last schooner to be hauled out before the sailing season begins.

Posted on Monday, May 19, 2008 in Permalink