Grounding Out
There’s a lot of satisfaction in being a maverick if you own a boat. Minor hull repairs left until the end of the season may become bigger headaches. Having the boat hauled at a yard is costly in these situations, and bound to someone else’s busy schedule. The resourceful boat owner may not wait around to pay for the service, and opt instead for the time-tested practice of “grounding out”: letting the tide settle the vessel onto a beach. The primary tools required are knowledge of local tides and shorelines, patience, preparation, and some blocking (or maybe a temporary cradle). The reverse is also true—a boat can be launched on a flood tide, again cutting out the middleman between the skipper and the ocean. Either way, the only limitation is the time pinch imposed by natural rhythms—as the proverb says, “Time and tide wait for no one.”
Maynard admires such mavericks, and is one himself, so it stands to reason that he captured instances of grounding out when he ran across them, and occasionally grounded out (or tide launched) his own boats.
Note that this selection of images includes some from Maynard’s newly digitized Kodachrome slides, the first of his color photographs to be published here.
Kingfisher was a worn-out sardine carrier built around 1910. She was stripped of her machinery and other recyclables, then grounded out at Clyde Bickford's lobster pound on Greens Island and left there to die—which she has done. Only a few bones presently remain.
The double-ended sardine boat Irma lies beached at low tide for some hull maintenance. This stretch of industrial waterfront is somewhere on the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick, where Maynard was cruising with Joel White aboard his cutter Northern Crown in the summer of 1979. On this particular day, Bray and company were invited by local fishermen to come aboard another sardine boat and observe the crew pumping out a weir.
It’s not known what became of Irma; other published photos show her in Eastport and as far west as Southwest harbor into the early 1980s.
Maynard writes: "Us Norther Crowners (Joel White, Bill and Caroline Mayher, Anne and I) were invited aboard the sardine carrier Clauneker on a run down the back side of Grand Manan in a day so foggy you could hardly see the bow from the wheelhouse. Grand Manan's eastern side is rock strewn with a paucity of navigation aids, so radar came into play—totally. Ivan Green had his face poked into the old-style radar viewer constantly as we crept long from buoy to buoy or from one rock outcropping to another. We made it, no sweat, and Clauneker remained a carrier we never forgot. How sad to see her nearly abandoned on our next visit only a few years later!"
The standout novi boat Merry Wind caught Maynard’s attention with her striking lines and strong sheer. She sits here, propped up on a beach somewhere in New Brunswick in the summer of 1981, probably waiting for a coat of bottom paint. Novi boats originate in Nova Scotia and are primarily used for lobstering. Though their hulls aren’t built for planing and are therefore fairly slow, they are seaworthy and can lug a lot of weight.
A stern view of the novi boat Merry Wind shows her hailing port as Grand Manan. Note that the bilge supports are tied in place; this will allow the boat to ground out repeatedly and remain upright without anyone's attention. Here, she sits propped up on a beach somewhere in New Brunswick in the summer of 1981, probably waiting for a coat of bottom paint. The novi boat is a Nova Scotia breed, a workhorse of a vessel used mainly for lobstering.
Grounding out was once a common and inexpensive alternative to a railway. The muddy low tide beach at the head of Camden Harbor was a common site for this. Case in point: the cruise schooner Mary Day lies ashore in April leading up to the 1982 season.
The ketch Tarne leans like a sedated elephant against the pier at Brooklin Boat Yard, Brooklin, Maine, in September 1982, while Joel White (foreground) and Belford Gray install a keel bolt.
Almost all the boats moored around Maldon, on England's east coast, settle into soft mud at every low tide. To take less space in the mooring field, this vessel's bowsprit has been housed, and the throat of her furled mainsail and its spars have been hoisted to reduce the aft overhang. Her topmast has also been brought down to reduce windage. A snug situation while she's stuck in the mud awaiting high tide.
Sedulous, of the class of shallow-draft boats known as cobles, is well suited to this shallow berth in Staithes, North Yorkshire, England. Cobles are a traditional British fishing vessel with a flat bottom and a high bow, designed for launching into surf and landing on sandy beaches bow first.
Maynard and his wife, Anne, had the chance to roam around in the United Kingdom after Maynard had been hired by Dr. Basil Greenhill, director of England's National Maritime Museum, to help select a shipkeeper for the Tamar barge Shamrock.
A fleet of lapstrake double-ended fishing boats has settled into the stony muck below the seawall in Staithes, North Yorkshire, England. Maynard and Anne Bray had the chance to explore the UK for a while after the working half of their working vacation in October 1982.
A native smack awaits attention, up on blocks at Moxey Town, Andros, Bahamas. Several others had been abandoned on the beach there, at the end of their conch fishing days.
A replica of the 36' 9" yawl Spray lies on her starboard side at the head of Southwest Harbor, Maine, for bottom painting in April 1984. This version of Spray was built by Ed Davis of Seal Cove, Maine in 1982; she was later converted to a sloop, then rigged as a Chinese junk. Her hull shape makes her surprisingly fast off the wind.
The little 25-foot lobster boat Tracy Lee is seen here having her registration number painted on her bow while grounded out on the beach near Beals Island, Maine. Most lobster boats are longer than this. Despite her short length, her proportions were just right.
The dragger Nordsee has been left high up on the stony beach at Somes Sound, Maine, for some much-needed hull maintenance in September of 1994.
Another of the Camden, Maine windjammer fleet, the 80’ Mercantile, is shown beached at the head of the harbor in June of 1996 for some hull painting and touch up. This DIY, low cost practice is no longer employed in the harbor (and likely no longer allowed).
Winter Harbor-21 class sloops Whippet (foreground) and Sphinx wait to be tide-launched on the beach at Sorrento, Maine. The Brays discovered these two, along with a sister named Zephyr, stored in a shed owned by Bill Andrews in Winter Harbor, Maine. They inspired three separate neighbors in Noank, CT (where the Brays lived during Maynard’s tenure at Electric Boat) to purchase the trio from their owners at the time: the Gills bought Whippet, the Crowleys bought Sphinx, and the Perrys bought Zephyr. Andrews pulled the boats out of his shed, launched, and rigged them so their new owners could sail them to Noank. All three boats are now back in the Winter Harbor fleet in an amazing renaissance spearheaded by Alan Goldstein and written about in a centennial book about the wH-21 class by his wife, Vickie. This photo was taken about 1961.
The Makinen-built lobsterboat Ethelyn Mae idles ashore in July 1985 while her owner, Wellman Hupper, applies a coat of bottom paint. This beach is at Hornbarn Cove (part of the Back River estuary) in Cushing, Maine.
Bill Ray Simms has grounded out his cutter on the Babson Island beach opposite the WoodenBoat shorefront. It's a two-tide operation; getting access to this boat's starboard underbody will require floating, then letting her tip the other way.