Here you see the schooner Mary Day gliding into Great Cove with her jibs down at sundown on Thursday. She overnighted and her passengers were ferried to the WoodenBoat School campus, which they toured. She was on a four-day cruise that included visiting Down East lighthouses, according to her schedule.
Meanwhile, the schooner Stephen Taber snuck into the Cove Thursday without us seeing her initially and also overnighted off of Babson Island not far from Mary Day..
Mary is a 125-foot schooner out of Camden, Maine. She has classic mercantile coastal cruiser lines, but was built in 1962 just for passenger cruises. (She reportedly has heat in every tourist cabin.) She was built in South Bristol, Maine, and named after the wife of the late Captain Havilah Hawkins, Senior, who designed the vessel and owned her for about 20 years. She drew the attention of a a Coastal Kayaking class from the WBS.
The 110-foot Stephen Taber was built in 1871 and is a National Historic Landmark that now hails from Rockland, Maine. Curiously, she was named after a once-famed, but now forgotten,19th Century New York politician. As with many coastal cargo cruisers in the 1800s, the Taber was built with a flat bottom to “ground out” and discharge her cargo at low tide without the need for a pier. She does have a centerboard to lower as a keel during cruising, but has no motor. She was pushed out of the the Cove and into the wind by her motorized yawl boat, Babe, at about 10:30 a.m.
The Mary Day, on the other hand, raised her two mainsails, a top sail, and a jib, turned to have the wind aft and sailed off at about 12:15 p.m.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on June 22 and 23, 2023.)