We’ve had fog in Center Harbor during the past four days, but some of the boats look especially good in the mist. One of them, shown here, is Planet, a 25-foot Charles Wittholz catboat from his Prudence series.
Wittholz (1918-1993), an MIT-trained naval architect from Maryland, designed hundreds of boats in his 50 years of practice, but he probably is best known for his catboats.
Recreational catboats, such as Planet, are descendants of broad-beamed, single-masted working boats of the 1800s that fished, freighted, and ferried. They often were sailed by one person. The name catboat reportedly came from one of two sources: the cat-like maneuverability of the boats or the actual cats that greeted the fleet when they off-loaded fish.
More and more boats are mooring at the Harbor each day. The boating season usually is considered to open in June. Here’s the Brooklin Boat Yard pier during the same fog:
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on May 15, 2022.)