This is the coastal schooner Victory Chimes entering Great Cove in the heat and haze of Tuesday afternoon, June 8. She’s lowering her fore and mainsails after already having dropped her jibs.
She left her mizzen sail up for the stability of pointing into the wind while anchored overnight in the Cove.
The Chimes then departed the Cove early yesterday morning in hard-driving rain, without raising sail. Here’s an archive image of her under full sail for reference purposes:
Leighton Archive Image
The 170-foot Chimes, out of Rockland, Maine, was launched in 1900 in Delaware as the commercial cargo vessel Edwin and Maud. When she relocated to coastal Maine as a passenger ship in the 1950s, her name was changed to Victory Chimes in honor of a Canadian schooner of that name that had been launched on Armistice Day in 1918.
The Chimes now reportedly is the largest all-sail passenger ship in the United States, which means that she’s big and has no inboard engine. She’s also the only three-masted schooner in the Maine schooner fleet, a National Historic Landmark, and the last of the flat-bottomed, shallow-water schooners known as Chesapeake Rams. (She worked the Chesapeake Bay area for many years.)
Leighton Archive Image
Curiously, credit for much of her restoration must go to pizza. Thomas Monaghan, the owner of Domino’s Pizza, bought and restored her in 1988-1989. He named her Domino Effect and used her for employee incentive cruises. She was renamed Victory Chimes in 1990 when purchased from Monaghan to return to Maine cruising. (Brooklin, Maine)