The original Bloodhound
Bloodhound - the replica, on the St. George, Thomaston, ME
Shamrock and Columbia - 1899 - America's Cup
My boat GeorgiaBel is nothing special: a 22 foot Eastern center console with a 90 HP Yamaha.
But it's maintained and stored across the Thomaston, Maine harbor from Lyman Morse where legends regularly call for service, and are launched fresh from the LM workshop. So it was when I saw an old 70 foot sailboat of unfamiliar design head off the floating dock and down the St. George River.
I got lucky - as I was about to cross the St. George I saw the cutter right across the narrow 75 yard channel from Jeff's Marine where my powerboat is stored and maintained. I stopped, of course. and ran to the dock.
Bloodhound's design - to me it looks like an old English Channel cutter - is a replica of an 1857 design by Scotland's William Fife,* the great yacht builder of the late 1800's.
William Fife III [1857- 1944] was a great Scottish sailboat designer and builder inducted twenty years ago in the America's Cup Hall of Fame at the Herreshoff Marine Museum. His Shamrocks - designed for the great AC challenger the merchant Thomas Lipton - never quite beat the Nat Herreshoff designs but are remembered as the Lipton Era.
If you are interested in chartering Bloodhound - contact them HERE.
