I took the day off on Friday to go down to the WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport. If you have any interest in wooden boats, you're sure to see something that will draw your interest. The trip is a relatively short drive for me, but was rendered a bit longer than usual by two accidents. If you had the dubious pleasure of being on I-95 Northbound up near Mystic on Friday morning, this is probably what you saw as a result of the second accident:
Traffic was, frankly, brutal. It took me nearly an hour to go between exits 88 and 89 where I finally got off the highway. Traffic on the side roads wasn't much better, but I eventually reached the Seaport over an hour after my desired arrival time. Because of this delay I started out at the North entrance and made my way to the South end getting an overview of the show and taking a few pictures.
One of the first real stops that I made was at the docks near the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard. There are usually a neat variety of small craft at the docks and I wasn't disappointed this year. What first caught my eye was Patina. Patina is a Caledonia Yawl by Ed Segen and was literally the "poster girl" from the WoodenBoat Show poster I put up previously. One of the reasons that this boat was used for the poster is that it was designed by Iain Oughtred - the very talented marine designer who was being honored at the show's annual dinner on Saturday evening.
Iain has a fairly broad catalog of designs and many of the boats that were at the show were his work. As I always note about my own student's work, even though the design is the same, they can be completely different. Take for example another Caledonia Yawl, Xena, build by Ken Ford with a unique bird's wing mast.
I was also very interested in seeing this new runabout by Timm Schlieff of Schlieff Boatworks. Timm is a very talented young man and was recently featured in both the editorial and a full article in the most recent edition of WoodenBoat magazine. The runabout was named Vixen and was being delivered to a customer in New Hampshire just after the show.
Up on the walkway was a Herreshoff Watch Hill 15, Kitty, from Alec Brainerd of Artisan Boatworks. They always have some beautiful boats on display at the Maine Boatbuilders show and Kitty certainly showed both the attention to detail and excellent craftsmanship that Artisan always puts forth.
On top of everything else, the folks from Mystic Seaport and WoodenBoat managed to order some of the most gorgeous weather that we've had in a while!
More to come!
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