A quartet of Maine windjammers overnighted in Great Cove on Wednesday. They departed in Thursday’s intense hazy heat during a wind doldrum that thwarted their major reason for being. But, judging from the apparently happy passengers, it was cooler on board the vessels than ashore, where the reported high in Brooklin was a steamy 91 degrees. The four high-masted visitors were “Angelique” (third June visit), “Ladona,” “Mary Day,” and “Stephen Taber” (second June visit).
The visits started Wednesday evening (also hot and hazy), with “Angelique” mooring first and the “Taber” coming in from the south shortly afterward:
The other two vessels apparently came in from the north and moored where we usually can’t see them from our deck. Only "Angelique” was visible to us as dawn’s first light came into the Cove:
“Angelique” is a 130-foot gaff-rigged ketch out of Camden, Maine, that was launched in 1980. She never raised a sail on this torpid day and was the first to motor away:
“Ladona” (usually pronounced locally as “lah-DOE-nah”) is a 105-foot schooner out of Rockland, Maine, that was launched in 1922 as a racing yacht . She went through various interesting lives before being restored as a coastal cruiser. On Wednesday evening, she rafted up with the “Taber” for some partying and sailed off under power Thursday, using her mainsail as a stabilizer :
As usual, the stately and graceful “Mary Day,” a frequent visitor to the Cove, received plenty of attention . She’s a 125-foot schooner out of Camden, Maine, that has classic mercantile coastal cruiser lines, but was built in 1962 just for passenger cruises:
“Mary” motored several hundred feet to Babson Island, where she raised her mainsails for stabilization and hosted a beach luncheon that lasted hours:
Although “Stephen Taber” hooked up with the racy “Ladona,” the “Taber” is one of the oldest windjammers in the Maine fleet. The vessel is a 110-foot schooner out of Rockland, Maine, that was launched in 1871. She doesn’t have a motor and was pushed out of the airless Cove by her trusty yawl boat, “Babe”:
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on June 20, 2024.)