On-Site with Maynard

Just as soon as they could buy gasoline engines in the early years of the 20th century, lobstermen snapped them up and soon began building boats to suit. As more powerful engines emerged, the boats gradually changed shape, their bottoms looking like double-wedges:...

We missed a month blogging here, but as 2024 begins, there are still plenty of stories to tell with this group of photos, which cover a lot of ground (or water, more aptly). In November, we mused a little about ketches and yawls, making a distinction for the layperson...

While schooners are still easy to spot in the 21st century (here in midcoast Maine, that’s due in large part to the Windjammer passenger trade), ketches and yawls are more uncommon these days. For the puzzled layperson, each of these rigs feature a smaller mizzen mast...

Sailboat design is endlessly inventive. It’s a best attempt to produce a highly dynamic machine that will be efficient and reliable, sometimes in a narrow range of conditions. They are purpose-built: a sailboat that’s perfectly suited to gunkholing would be a sketchy...

Most of Maynard’s camera work was laid down in black and white. Parallel to this sustained effort, he did manage to capture some color images, on both negative and slide film. These color photographs are a treat to behold; they have an immediacy we’re all accustomed...

The allure of tiny, human-powered watercraft is about as old as homo sapiens. In a little boat, there’s not much separating the subject from the landscape, human from water; the vessel becomes an extension of oneself. This intimate connection can be calming,...

This month we pivot our lens to tugboats, yawl boats, and push boats, waterborne workhorses that enable much larger vessels to sidle into place in crowded harbors. In many cases, the vessels they service have power of their own, but lack fine maneuverability where...

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...

Growing up on the Maine coast, it would be easy to assume the place is the holy land of traditional and classic boats. It’s easy to forget that there are boatbuilding traditions on waterfronts everywhere, even along the metropolitan shores of California. Thanks as...

Wooden boat rockstars Maynard Bray and Ben Mendlowitz flew to the west coast in the late summer of 1993 in search of premiere specimens for the Calendar of Wooden Boats. They aptly timed the visit to coincide with the Classic Boat Festival in Victoria, BC, and the...

The Eggemoggin Reach Regatta takes place annually on the first Saturday in August, and that's how it's been ever since the first race in 1985. It's a 'round-the-buoy contest of 15 miles out into Jericho Bay and return for wooden sailboats longer than 25' and the event...

A little before the end of Daylight Savings in 1989, Maynard and Anne Bray struck out on an autumn cruise aboard Charlena, the 31’ converted lobster boat they’d recently bought from a friend in Northeast Harbor. Doug Hylan and Maynard had replaced some frames and...

The work of putting together the Calendar of Wooden Boats is not all work. To find wider-ranging examples of beautiful boats to feature, the team has left no stone unturned; in other words, they've done a lot of travelling. In the late summer of 1990, Anne and Maynard...

Of schooner Bowdoin’s deep restoration 40 years ago, Maynard writes: “I'd followed her career closely ever since the MacMillans donated her to Mystic Seaport in the early 1960s. The museum failed to maintain her and got a ton of bad publicity because of it. A grand...

Maynard writes: In March of 1984, Ben Mendlowitz, Anne and I flew to the Bahamas, first to the Abacos and then to Andros. There, we spent a couple of days on Mangrove Cay where we found native working sloops in abundance—both active ones and ones that had been hauled...