It’s sunny here as I write, but we’ve had soaking rains during the past several days. They’ve been a boon to thirsty farmlands and gardens and a curse to sailors and sightseeing passengers on coastal cruisers. Yet, a few of the latter have been determined that discomfort will not deter their plans. Here we see a small schooner’s crew and its complement of young and adult passengers sailing – above deck – through a downpour in Great Cove on June 25.
This is the Alamar out of Castine, Maine. (I’m told that Alamar is a Spanish name that means “to the sea” or “get closer to the sea.”) She’s only 45 feet long and her beam (widest part) is 13 feet. She’s a keeled wooden schooner like some of her large cousins; that is, she has a permanent keel, not a retractable centerboard as a keel. She also has an inboard diesel engine.
Alamar was bult in 1947 in Machiasport, Maine. A bit unusually, the craftsmen who built her worked by eye from a half-model designed by Dan Stuart and Nathaniel French; non-linear lines were not “lofted” from carefully cut wooden or plastic strip forms that would have allowed full scale scribing of her curves.
(Brooklin, Maine)