Thursday, March 31, 2016

For the Love of a Boat - High Idle - Jeff Armstrong

Jeff & Nancy leaving Thomaston for Hupper Island
My dear friend Jeff Armstrong, who passed away on January 11 lived every day to the fullest.  On the day before he went to Portland for the last, heroic efforts to extend his life, I stood with him in his basement workshop as he carved another black walnut wooden spoon and instructed Kathryn's beau Max Holm on how to turn bowls on  the lathe.
One of his passions was his 1963 Thompson 21' - High Idle, which carried him and many friends and family for forty years to destinations on the St. George River and Muscongus Bay - from Thomaston to Monhegan.  That last destination is memorialized by James Wyeth - who painted it in gratitude for a mission of mercy Jeff once did for Jamie's wife.
Jeff
What do we mean when we say For the Love of  A Boat?  Many of us share a passion for wooden boats - but few have put more into theirs than Jeff did for High Idle.  Click on that link above for a special piece of writing by Jeff - completed three years to the day before his death - and published only now by his family and friends at Jeff's Marine.


The Pirate of the Mid-coast.
Why he thought that was a selling point none will ever know.