The day was hot and sultry, with fog hovering offshore. The wind hardly ruffled the trees and Linekin Bay looked like a tub of dull mercury. Driving down the wooded track to Roger and Mary Duncan's home in East Boothbay, Maine, I couldn't account for a vague feeling of unease. The Duncans had generously invited me to share their first sail of the 2000 sailing season, but I didn't quite know what to expect from these two octogenarian fixtures of the Maine sailing scene.

"Oh good, you're here," said 86-year-old Mary, who cheerily answered my rap on the battered old screen door on the south side of their modest shoreside home. "Yes, good, now we can get going," she bustled, grabbing her cane in one hand and a few spare life jackets in the other. She was about to add a heavy old bronze compass to her load when I offered to carry it and the life jackets for her. "Oh, yes, that will be fine. Very nice of you. Now if I can just find my jacket and a few other things." She was obviously preoccupied with the details of a first-of-the-season sail.

Soon Roger, 84, also appeared and suggested we pile the growing heap of accessories into his trusty old wheelbarrow. "Been using it for years," he explained as we followed a narrow, steep rocky path down to his dock. "Always been good for getting things to the boat," said the man under the wide, white cloth sun hat. "Protection from skin cancer," he explained, pointing to the hat. "I've got to watch that these days. Doctor said so."

Indeed, Roger, author of seven earlier books plus a new one published this summer (see sidebar), was more slight than he was at a book signing I attended several years ago. But his stride seemed like that of a man many years younger. And neither Roger nor Mary cared to talk much about current physical infirmities. Instead, both Roger and Mary were single-mindedly eager to be sailing.

Given the history of the Duncan family in Maine, this should have been no surprise. Roger is the son of Roger Duncan Sr., who in the 1930s authored "A Cruising Guide to the New England Coast," which remained the bible of cruising guides for Maine until the 1990s. Duncan writing and experience is still the benchmark against which all other guides are compared. Thus the beginning of a new sailing season for Roger Jr. is more than just more sailing. It's the continuation of a tradition, even a dynasty to some.

At any rate, there was snap and excitement in both of their voices as we slowly wound our way down to the dock. After more than 40 summers of sailing their faithful Friendship sloop Eastward, they were about to begin a full summer of sailing their new, 28-foot schooner Dorothy Elizabeth. Like anyone with a basically new boat to sail, and the entire sailing season stretching long and leisurely before them, the Duncans could barely contain themselves.

Even Mary's seemingly painful, cane-assisted hobble down to the dock failed to erase her smile, which hovered at various levels of merriment throughout the day. "Got two new knees this winter," she explained when we finally reached the dock. "I can get around better than I could last fall," she said as she literally crawled into the peapod in which we were to row out to the schooner. "But not like I used to."

Indeed, thousands of summer visitors to Maine are very familiar with the way both Mary and Roger "used to" sail. In addition to writing, both Duncans have hosted day-tripping tourists for nearly half a century. Since the 1950s, Roger and Mary have taken excursion passengers aboard Eastward , a classic 32-foot wooden, gaff-rigged boat modeled after 19th century workboats from Muscongus Bay, where the town of Friendship is located — hence the name Friendship sloop. For tourists longing for a ride on a genuine Maine sailboat, both Eastward and Dorothy Elizabeth admirably fill the bill.

Even today, after a life-threatening illness, Roger optimistically says he may take a few faithful old customers out in the new schooner: "I still have my Coast Guard license, you know." He proudly notes he's held the license since 1936 — which was two years before he graduated from Harvard, four years before he married Mary, nine years before he joined the teaching staff at Belmont Hill School in Belmont, Mass., and more than a decade before the three Duncan offspring began arriving.

Clearly, boats have been a powerful, formative influence in Roger Duncan's life, an observation to which they both readily admit. "Oh my, yes," Mary said as we prepared the schooner to get under way. "The worst summer of my life was the summer he didn't go sailing." With a father, Roger Duncan Sr., authoring the first version of the classic book, "Cruising Guide to the New England Coast," I probably should have expected Roger Jr.'s overpowering devotion to boats.

Still, the Duncans are practical and down to earth about boats. This became readily apparent once we boarded Dorothy Elizabeth. This is no fancy yacht. There is no varnish glittering anywhere. Some sails are lashed to the booms and gaffs with just high-quality, nylon clothesline. Galvanized hardware does the heavy lifting in most places. And the paint throughout is minimal, a fact that Mary regretted all day. "We really have to get to the painting of the decks," she said at various times during the day. Roger just smiled and nodded. He was obviously more concerned with the day's cruise. Shaking down a newly commissioned boat, even in its second season, can be full of unwanted surprises. Both Duncans were well aware of this and worked slowly and precisely as they hoisted the four sails needed for the day's effort.

Roger Duncan's disdain for the use of an auxiliary engine in a sailboat is legendary. He's got one, but he doesn't seem too happy about it. So I was not surprised when, once the sails were up, we dropped the mooring line and let the wind alone take us. Unfortunately, the schooner fell off on the wrong tack, aiming us squarely for the rocky shore some fifty yards to leeward. But the boat and helmsman responded admirably. Dorothy Elizabeth quickly gathered way in the 5-knot zephyr, coming about in plenty of time to head her off into deeper water. We promptly went in search of more wind.

"I do wish this would pick up a bit," Roger said after an hour of sailing from cat's-paw to cat's-paw. "I'd really like to show you what she can do," he told me, sounding more like a young buck with a new hotrod than a senior citizen in an old-fashioned sailboat. He also did not sound like a man who, during the construction of the boat, suffered an aneurysm of the aorta and came perilously close to death. As might be expected, it is a subject on which he does not like to dwell. "Left me with a leg that doesn't work very well," he said, offering a brief medical rundown of how the two problems are connected. But once that explanation was finished, he moved right on to a discussion of new challenges to handling Dorothy Elizabeth.

Indeed, both Roger and Mary boiled with optimism about the future with their new boat. "Now that's a very good question," Roger said, brightening noticeably when I asked him what harbor in Maine he had yet to visit but would like to add to his long list. "I haven't had the nerve to poke into Haycock Harbor," he said of a tiny, high-tide-only shelter about 10 miles east of Cutler. "It's a neat little gunkhole that I've just never had the nerve to try to get into. Yes, I think I'd like to try that. I'd like to try to get in there one of these days."

As the afternoon progressed, the fog thickened offshore and started to move into Linekin Bay. This prompted Roger and Mary to discuss past weather emergencies aboard Eastward. They conceded the sale of the 32-foot sloop with its 8-foot bowsprit and hefty mainsail was due to their advancing years. "We'd like to be able to sail ourselves and not always need someone else aboard," Mary said, recalling many surprise winds that required reefing down the bigger boat.

The day I joined them, however, the wind gods remained on an extended break. As the fog closed in, we rode one last puff back to the mooring. True to form, Roger sailed up to it without the use of the engine while I snagged the pendant with a boat hook. By the time I settled the loop over the mooring bitts, Mary had doused most of the sails while Roger began tying them up. They worked steadily if not quickly, with hardly a word between them. Even though the boat was new, both seemed to know exactly which job to pursue while the other completed another task.

Before I knew it, we were back on shore, saying good-byes. As I drove away, I thought how lucky anyone would have to be to spend a lifetime sailing and still be able to look forward to more from the lofty vantagepoint of 80-plus. Luck and determination, that is. Before I drove off, the last words I heard Mary utter proved that point. "We really have to get to painting those decks," she said to Roger's back as he pushed the wheelbarrow to the shed. "Maybe later this week."

Freelance writer Ken Textor lives in Arrowsic, Maine. He is a licensed captain.

Return to top of page