It was a bit foggy when the schooner “Heritage” anchored off Babson Island in Great Cove Wednesday afternoon:
She was on a six-night cruise along the Down East coast and this was an experience that the her website describes as follows: “We will sail to a beautiful uninhabited Island and row ashore for a lobster cook-out on the beach with hors d'oeuvres, hamburgers and hot dogs, corn on the cob, and of course, lobsters with melted butter. After enjoy watermelon and then smores roasted on the fire.”
The cook-out seemed to go well, and the Heritage moved closer to shore as the weather started to turn nasty. By yesterday morning, she was being engulfed with fog and drenched with episodic rain:
Even so, her intrepid passengers rowed themselves ashore in a longboat to explore the WoodenBoat School campus and rowed back to the schooner to hunker down in the Cove. I don’t know when the Heritage left.
The Heritage is one of the larger windjammers in the Maine fleet. Her reported overall length is 145 feet, with a 24-foot beam (widest part) and a 5200-foot sail area. For stability, she can drop an 18-foot centerboard. She has no internal motor, but maneuvers nicely when using her yawl boat as an outboard engine. Launched in 1983, she hails from Rockland, Maine. Here’s what she looks like when she puts on plenty of sail:
Leighton Archive Image
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on July 24 and 25, 2024. except for Leighton Archive Image.)