We caught sight of the coastal schooner Ladona (“la-DOE-na”) for the first time this year at a distance on June 24. As you see here, she was racing downwind into the setting sun out in Eggemoggin Reach. It turned out that the 83-foot beauty out of Rockland, Maine, was headed for our Great Cove to shelter for the night.
The following morning, however, was not sunny; it was cold and rainy. Here you see her hunkered down there as it began to rain and pucker the water then:
Despite the rain, she raised some sail and continued her cruise:
Ladona was launched as a racing yacht in 1922 in East Boothbay, Maine. She reportedly took first in her class in the Bermuda Cup in 1933 and still remains one of the fastest windjammers in the Maine fleet.
She was named after a Union Civil War gunship on which her original owner’s father had served. Ladona, herself, performed Navy duty as a coastal submarine patrol vessel during World War II. After the War, she reportedly trawled for fish out of Stonington, Connecticut, under the name Jane Doré.
She was renovated in 1971 as a training vessel and renamed Nathaniel Bowditch, after the founder of modern sea navigation. She kept that name when she moved to Maine in the 1980s and became a coastal passenger cruiser. In 2014-2015, she was extensively restored again, given luxury appointments, and rechristened with her original name, Ladona.
Here’s an image of Ladona visiting Great Cove on a prior sunny day .
Leighton Archive Image
(Brooklin, Maine)