Peter Gallant’s 56-foot sloop Polly. Photo by Jack Farrell
August 2023
By Jack Farrell
“Security call, security call, security call. The motor vessel Shining Star is outbound from Portsmouth Harbor to the Isles of Shoals, passing Fort Point Light. We’re standing by on channels 13 and 16 for concerned traffic. Shining Star.” Such was the regular refrain during a string of early July days with dense fog and visibility measured in boat lengths. In the old days – equipped with only compass, radio-direction-finder and a cranky old Loran unit – this sort of trip would have made my heart race. These days in the fog, I set one radar to a six-mile range and the other to three-quarters of a mile, engage the autopilot on a heading of 157 magnetic, and run to the islands as though the sun were shining on a sparkling blue sea.
And speaking of the old days, I had a few hours to kill between trips the other day. So as not to block the limited dock space for all that time, I went out to a mooring in the cove and tried to catch up on my email. There was no wind, and the late afternoon sun was baking the deck. I put down the computer and decided to go for a swim.
I still don’t have a swim ladder rigged on the new boat, so I opened the gate on the starboard side which got me to within two feet of the water. I rigged a dock line in a big loop with which I could boost myself up and slither back onto the deck. At that point I realized I had no bathing suit aboard. But the moored boats nearby were unoccupied – as near as I could tell – and with no other boats in sight, I took off my clothes and jumped in. The water was cool and refreshing, and I felt a grand sense of freedom as I drifted around, at eye level with the big boat’s waterline. The feeling brought me back to the golden summer of 1970.
Our family stayed that year in a little rented cottage on Salem Bay. My brother and I spent our mornings hauling lobster traps from an old wooden skiff, and our afternoons fishing for bait for the next day. We caught flounder and cod, and mackerel by the barrelful. We took the finest fish back home where my grandmother would cook them for dinner along with the cull lobsters. When we got too hot fishing in the sun, we jumped off the boat for a swim. I took off my shoes on the last day of school and went barefoot until Labor Day that year.
The local harbors in those days were full of classic wooden boats, cared for by yachtsmen and professionals who knew good boats and how to run them. We would cruise around in the evenings, looking up from our little skiff along the sheer lines of famous yachts like Alden’s Lord Jim, L.F. Herreshoff’s Ticonderoga, and the queen of the fleet, Ted Hood’s 12-meter masterpiece, Nefertiti. Those visions have stayed with me, and they shaped my sense of what a good boat looks like and how they should be sailed.
As that golden summer unfolded, unbeknownst to my brother and me, our father was quietly dying of cancer. His death just before Christmas brought an end to our seaside summers, and it would be some years before I had a boat again. But ever since then I have wanted to be around beautiful boats and to learn to handle them properly.
Today it seems as though an inverse relationship has developed in boats between aesthetics and skill on the one hand, and cost and horsepower on the other. (My own recent experience may be exerting undue influence on my assessment, but I don’t think so. In the course of three months my new boat has been hit twice, once incurring significant cosmetic damage. On both occasions we were tied to the dock.) Sailboats in general are selling at a fraction of their value and at basis points on their replacement cost, while flashy new expensive powerboats seem to be everywhere. Bad manners and unwise maneuvers abound on the river every weekend in these boats. This behavior is unbecoming at best, and it’s very often dangerous, too.
Meanwhile, out at Star Island, the unofficial capital of the Isles of Shoals, the abundant rain has kept the lawns green into midsummer, and the rainwater cisterns are full to the brim. The ocean is warm and the bait fish are plentiful. On one recent trip to Duck Island, guests were treated to three surfacing whales and hundreds of gray seals. A humpback whale was spotted well inside Gosport Harbor. Signs of white shark attacks on gray seals are being reported, and the beacons are detecting the presence of tagged specimens of these awesome predators from Rye to York. The scientists report that each ping on a shark beacon represents the potential presence of as many as a dozen sharks.
The boys from Luciano’s Excavating, experts in waterfront work with big stones, are learning the hard way about the most important word in island work: logistics. The first barge delivery trip with heavy equipment and supplies did not go well. The big barge was so high-sided that a single ramp to offload would have been too steep. So, a double ramp set-up had to be constructed, with steel plates and heavy timbers put in place before the gear could come off. It took longer than expected, and the tide went out before the tug could pull the barge back to deeper water, leaving it to spend the night at a steep angle on the island beach with one side perched on a high spot of ledge. Fortunately, there was no damage to barge or beach, and she was gone with the rising tide before dawn the next day. Another barge is expected to arrive next week, this time offloading at a rough stone landing built adjacent to the breakwater.
These days, many fine old sailboats from the era of my golden summer remain. But few boaters seem interested in owning them anymore. I know as well as anyone that old boats are a lot of work. Sailing is hard to learn, too, and people today want more immediate gratification. But I’ll submit that powerboating is hard, too, if you want to do it competently, safely and with a bit of style. Count me an advocate for tasteful boats, and for required training and stricter licensing standards. I had better end this mounting rant before my inner Captain Curmudgeon rears his grumpy head any further. But I’m pretty sure that Catboat Bob agrees with me at least.
On the way back to mainland the other day we passed a glorious sight which offered some redemption: Peter Gallant’s 56-foot sloop Polly, built by Henry Nevins in the 1940’s for his own use, one of the classic yachts of all time, slicing back to New Castle on the late afternoon breeze. That’s what I’m talking about.
Jack was the manager at Star Island for many years. He currently manages major construction and utility projects there and provides all-season boat service to the island (average 250 trips per year) for luggage, food, employees, supplies and guests. He also runs Seacoast Maritime Charters, LLC providing year-round private charter boat service and marine logistics to the general public, now in the Shining Star. He still enjoys cruising in his classic Ted Hood sloop, Aloft, and teaching skiing at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine.
