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From Primedia Publications
The Great Schooner Race
In July, sea and salt are the Maine thing.

By Judy Sopronyi

Full sails strained at tall wooden masts, propelling historic ships of trade in a race off Maine's island-strewn coast. Ships' mates and passengers stood at their posts, poised to work the ropes when the captain called "Ready about!"

"Ready about!" came the reply, soon echoed by the captain's "Hard alee!" At that, one cluster of deck hands and passengers loosened a set of ropes while another pulled theirs taut, and the great sails swung from one side to the other as the ship changed course, trying to gain speed on its competitors, trying to win last year's 19th annual Great Schooner Race on July 7, 1995.

Twenty-eight ships were vying for bragging rights and the Cutty Sark Cup, provided by the scots whiskey company with the 19th-century Scottish clipper Cutty Sark on its label, once said to be the fastest ship in the world.
A veteran of a Maine windjammer cruise the year before, I'd successfully persuaded my editor to send me back to do a story on the race. I was aboard the Timberwind as it ran before the wind on Penobscot Bay midway along Maine's coast. Twenty-eight ships were vying for bragging rights and the Cutty Sark Cup, provided by the scots whiskey company with the 19th-century Scottish clipper Cutty Sark on its label, once said to be the fastest ship in the world. According to company spokesman Carl Casselman, Cutty Sark has sponsored the international Cutty Sark Tall Ships' Races on the other side of the Atlantic since 1972. By supporting the Great Schooner Race in Maine, "We're trying to bring some of the same thing over here," Casselman says.

The captains of these working ships-turned-pleasure cruisers claimed the race was all in fun, but the squint of their eyes had a competitive look, and we passengers aboard the Timberwind definitely wanted our schooner to cross the finish line first.

These honorable old ships are all wood and rope and canvas—not a speck of plastic. They're called schooners because, according to Captain Rick Miles of the Timberwind, "There are two or more masts with the foremast shorter than or equal to the others." Without a huge foremast and a correspondingly huge sail, it's easier to sail a schooner, he says—less sail, less work. Even so, I still can't imagine how, decades ago, the typical working schooner crew of two men and a boy could do it.

A few new schooners have been built for the windjammer trade, but most have a long history as pilot boats, fishing boats, cargo carriers—each has a story to tell. Now refitted for passengers, they set out from the picturesque old Maine seaports of Camden, Rockport and Rockland along U.S. Route 1. Their cabins are tiny and their plumbing is spartan, but their passengers quickly come to terms with this and settle in for some serious relaxation, punctuated by occasional (optional) help with furling the sails, hoisting the anchor, taking the wheel and some politely ravenous eating of wonderful food cooked on the ship's wood-burning stove.

On most windjammer cruises there's not even an itinerary. The schooners drop anchor for the night at a harbor determined by wind and captain's whim, then some passengers catch a ride ashore on the yawl boat (a small motorboat) to explore a little town or a deserted island or stay aboard to watch the sunset and wait for dark, when the sky is choked with more stars than you've ever seen.

But on race day, there was an itinerary as the ships tacked and jibed to stay approximately on an invisible starting line before they took off in earnest. You might expect shouting at a schooner race, and there was a little, but this was a quiet competition. No revving motors jarred the air as the ships glided along before the wind. Then a fog descended and the silence became profound.

Bell buoys rang intermittently in the invisible distance, and the first mate perched on the prow of the ship, trying to peer through the fog and blowing on a huge conch shell as an eerie warning to others nearby. We heard lower and higher conch tones drifting through the fog, but we could see nothing through the whiteness.

The static on the ship's radio erupted with voices from time to time as the schooner captains tried to gauge each other's positions, but in the end the race was canceled; the danger was too great. Everybody was disappointed, but we all had a great time anyway. And there's this to consider. We were dealing with 19th-century technology, not 20th. If the ships had sonar, the captains probably could have kept the race going, but then it wouldn't have been a race of historic schooners.

After the race, the vessels found their way to Rockland's fog-free harbor and majestically and carefully nosed their way through the small boats along the town's waterfront to put on a grand Parade of Sail, cheered on by some 15,000 Schooner Days festival-goers on the shore. And in the evening, fireworks arched into the sky over Rockland Harbor. The gallant competitors floated quietly at anchor as crew and passengers watched the mid-air explosions. Seen through ship's rigging, fireworks achieve a new glory.

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