Here you see the Schooner American Eagle in Great Cove yesterday morning with her sails down, her weather tarp up, and her passengers ashore exploring the WoodenBoat School Campus on a fine sunny day:
Soon the passengers descended the WoodenBoat pier and rowed themselves back to the Eagle, two boatfulls of them:
Almost as soon as the Eagle’s passengers re-boarded her, a massive rogue fog wave lurched in from the southwest and engulfed everything before it, including the schooner and her passengers. Sometimes, a little sunlight was able to leak into the fog; sometimes a swirl of air would reveal parts of the schooner.
Nonetheless, the Eagle had a schedule to keep. Her crew and passengers raised her mainsail and foresail in the fog, sometimes disappearing from view from the shore:
Then, she sounded her fog horn and headed off into Eggemoggin Reach, disappearing and reappearing as the sun slipped through gaps in the fog. For awhile during her departure, the only trace of her was the sound of her fog horn every few minutes. Then, nothing but silence and shifting fog.
The Eagle is a 90-foot, high-riding schooner out of Rockland, Maine. She was launched in 1930 as the Andrew & Rosalie, the last fishing schooner built in Gloucester, Massachusetts. In 1941, during World War II, she was renamed American Eagle. She fished until 1983 and then went through difficult times until she was totally renovated in 1986 as a tourist schooner. She has since become a National Historic Landmark.
As she was departing Great Cove yesterday, the Eagle passed behind another historic vessel, the 20-foot pocket cruiser Martha, once owned by New York- and Brooklin-based author E.B. White:
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on June 12, 2024.)