The Peloton - Stage 6

winning speed: 29 mph, 112 miles

Fabian Cancellara, Switzerland wears the yellow jersey

New Jersey's official tall ship - the A.J. Meerwald

The A.J. Meerwald - a 115 foot restored Delaware Bay (South River) oyster schooner - is visiting the Hudson (North) River.

The Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area and the Crossroads of the American Revolution Heritage Area, in cooperation with the Nyack Boat Club and the Palisades Interstate Park are sponsoring a cruise on the Hudson River. Driven by over 3,500 square feet of sail, it should get a move on even on a light air summer day!

The boat will depart from the Alpine boat basin.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

9:30 am to approx. 5:00 pm

To register, visit the Crossroads website at www.revolutionarynj.org and click on donate and then the menu option "other".
For further information, email Palisades Park Convservancy at info@revolutionarynj.org or call 609-633-2060.

Thomaston - New England's first town

Thomaston is 8 miles north of Port Clyde on the St. George River, just west of Rockland. Few stop there, though some head by and for boats to Lyman Morse - the all-purpose yard specializing in luxury yachts. Some check in at Jeff's Marine where the "pirate of the Midcoast" will sell you a skiff with a Yamaha 4-stroke on the back.

Thomaston has a great Fourth of July parade - and a great Halloween too. Crowds line the Main Street for 1/2 mile in front of classic colonial homes, and the monument-studded mall.

The site of George Waymouth's first sustained anchorage - in 1605 - at what is now George's Harbor - 12 miles south - is the acknowledged founding spot of New England. The cross placed there in 1905 by the governor of Maine marks Waymouth's first sustained anchorage in the New World.

But Thomaston has a distinct claim to fame: Waymouth landed and claimed a right of possession there, where the River narrows and turns west. A bronze plaque marks the event. Some highlights of the parade are above.

Bowsprite - the Sturgeon of Liberty State Park

Thanks to Tugster and Bowsprite for exploring a surviving bit of the salt marsh behind the Statue of Liberty. They find clams, oysters, sturgeons and other harbor edibles. A video of the biggest find - the carcass of a 6 foot sturgeon - shows that the fish that once dominated the river survives.

The marsh and the fish are transformed by Bowsprite's watercolors, which beautifully abstract the shock of the found carcass of a six foot sturgeon. The fish lies half-buried in a salt marsh of the kind that once dominated the harbor shoreline, in a lost, beautiful world. The river and the harbor fed New York City and its surrounds. Sturgeon (Albany beef), shad, stripers and blues, along with the oysters that carpeted the bottom of the New York Bay, were the staple source of protein in New York's first three centuries.

My daughter Taisy's fifth grade teacher - Mr. Lofton - at P.S. 84 on Columbus Avenue - took the kids to Jamaica Bay to cast nets and catch shiners (spearing)! Mr. Lofton was an award-winning teacher. The City should be pleading with Bowsprite and Tugster - to teach teachers how to teach children (and grownups) about the Harbor.

Why wood

Beauty and functionality are two answers.

I'll let Tugster do the talking and the photography. HERE is his spread taken at the Wooden Boat Festival in Mystic, this past weekend - sponsored by Woodenboat.

Above are a rowboat from tugster, and a shot from the dock at Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club of Canvasback. A 100 y.o. (with all original planks!) 48 foot "commuter boat". Wait, I want to go to work that way too.

Volvo: St. Petersburg finish for 37,000 mile race

The Volvo Ocean Race finished yesterday in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad). 37,000 miles, 11 legs, 8 boats. (All but Team Russia finished th entire circuit.)

The final event was a parade of boats up the Neva River.

The final account is here.

The skipper of the winning boat is the great Brasilian Olympic sailor Torben Grael. For his sailing bio, see his wikipedia entry here.

Two of the top three teams, including Grael's, were sponsored by Ericcsson. Puma finished second, skippered by Ken Read, and Telefonica Blue, skippered by Boewe Bekking.

Skate Captain Calvert - 1st to surface at the north pole

Those childhood memories of the not so happy 50's were retrieved by news of the death of James Calvert, captain of the nuclear sub Skate, which surfaced at the North Pole in 1959.

Nautically speaking quite the coup.

It was the Sputnik hysteria and the missile gap nonsense that helped elect John Kennedy, and took the Skate to the north pole. No more sled dogs. Soon we would have Polaris submarines - the undetectable threat of massive nuclear retaliation against the Russian surprise attack. The submarines and the stupidity of it all would end the era of band-aids, biscuits, and barrels of drinking water in Civil Defense bomb shelters and elementary school air raid drills, crawling under desks and getting down on our knees with hands over heads in the hallways of the Abbey Lane School in Levittown.

I still believe that no one will use the bloody things again - not the Israelis, not the Iranians, not the North Koreans, not the Indians, nor the Pakistanis, the Russians, the Chinese, and certainly not the Brits. How can we stop any of the aspirants if even we won't give up the strategy of nuclear deterrence?

Anyway, the Times obit for a great mariner - who got to the north pole without the north star to guide him - is here.

Galway - Marstrand photo finish

The picture above shows the few yards that separated Boston-based Puma from Irish-crewed, Chinese-bult Green Dragon at the finish of the 415 mile Galway to Marstrand leg. Ken Read, Puma skipper describes the leg and their luck in a way that any round-the-buoys sailor will recognize here.

The fleet is seen above in the Marstrand harbor. It's a beautiful spot, with a 700 year old viking fort atop the small island, which guarded the entrance to Gothenburg (Goteborg) whence Marilyn's grandparents sailed to America. And not nearly as cold as you might imagine. Milder than New York, actually, though dark in the winter - but long days in summer. Volvo is headquartered a few miles away. The fleet has sailed more than a circumnavigation now - with a leg to go.

images: VOR (c) 2009

The Mackerel-crowded Sea: Sustainable fisheries

The evidence at the public landing at Port Clyde on the Gulf of Maine is that there are a lot of mackerel in the sea. And a hook with an eel on it will tell you the same in the East River about the striped bass, and a shiny jig about bluefish. But what about the others? The Times has invited specialists who study the matter to comment here. Among those on the good list: haddock, east coast scallops, and Alaska wild salmon - at record levels now.

Scallop draggers - Barnegat Light

"We drag it just above the bottom - the steel rings and fingers scrape em up, into the bag", said the captain of the William & Lauren. "Shouldn't be giving away my secrets - but that's about all there is to it." (click on the 3rd thumbnail to see details)

We never think about scallop draggers until we see a short item about a winter search off the coast of New Jersey or Nantucket. That's why the Coast Guard developed Rescue 21. And that's why there are rigid-inflatable motor life boats with a pair of 200 horsepower engines ready to fly out of the Coast Guard stations at Barnegat Light, Atlantic City, New Bedford and the other fishing ports along the coasts. Speed could save a crew member, like on the F/V NORTHERN EDGE – Dec. 20, 2004, 75-ft scallop boat sank 45 miles SE of Nantucket, 5 lost, 1 survivor.

These shots were taken at Barnegat Light and the Marina at Barnegat Light, a busy fishing port more famous as a summer resort beach town on the Jersey shore 45 miles south of Sandy Hook.

Here is some video of a scallop dragger at work. I know there are people who think it is crude, rapacious, and destructive of the ocean bottom. Maybe but I really don't feel any sympathy for a scallop as I bake it or an oyster as I pop it into my mouth with some tabasco.