In which Doris’s husband takes Doris’s husband and Doris to see Doris.
From Newport we bimble down the coast of Massachusetts to Stonington in Connecticut. Today’s plan is quite heavily boaty and is mostly spent in Mystic, once a major whaling port.
To start we need a boat to get ashore and then we borrow a car to get around to Mystic (founded in 1654 according to the signs). You might have seen Julia Roberts in Mystic Pizza. The restaurant is still there but she had the day off.
Our first stop is the Seaport Museum which is a working shipyard and outdoor museum in the style of Beamish, Singleton or colonial Williamsburg.
The big project just now is the maintenance of an old whaler, the Charles W Morgan. Launched in 1841 it was active until 1920 out of New Bedford, Mass or San Francisco going hunting initially around Nantucket and then when the whale population there was all killed, in the Pacific, around the Galapagos, Japan and Okhotsk, and in the Atlantic. They would be away three years at a time and come home with barrels of whale oil. The trade was much reduced as more drilled oil was discovered and fewer whales were to be had. In a moment of some irony, the restored Charles W Morgan has been sailed once, up to its old hunting grounds, and was greeted by a pod of humpback whales. Possibly they were saying “You didn’t get all of us.”
We wander through the model town, divert through the twizzling rope walk and make our next rendezvous. Thanks to our new friend Dave Snediker we have guides to take us behind the scenes to the warehouses full of marine engines and small boats not currently on display.
It is just as well we have guides as there is more to see than can be seen. Our party immediately begins to think how to make sense of the science and history of boats, using only these few thousand exhibits and a hydrodynamics tank.
In fact the warehouse’s archivist is already doing a great job collecting some stories, and descriptions of the boats which go beyond “look at the beautiful lines on that” (which usually seems to be a safe thing to say if you are ever shown a wooden boat).
Next is a visit to Doris. Not the Doris, but a Doris (or maybe that should be the other way round). This one is a Herreshoff racing yacht built in 1905, at 78 feet long the largest all wood boat they built. It is a restoration in much the way Teal is a restoration.
Doris was trailered to the Snediker shop in 2015 from her last resting place in New London. The final approach to the unit was managed by trimming back some small trees and lifting up some significant power lines.
Happily all of the original drawings are available though material has to be gathered from wood yards around the world. New Doris will be better than new: more bronze cross strapping, bigger chain plates, mast pressure better supported. (Stefan, this is some feat of woodworking.) The project’s website www.doris1905.com says this was originally a five year project. Ten years feels more likely (hope the trees haven’t grown too much) so Doris could be racing again in 2025. There will be no trouble getting a crew, although your correspondents are already in the queue. [And if you want any tips on mainsheet trimming, I have three or four – D.]
We finish the day with the Snedikers at a farm to fork restaurant. The menu is what they grow and what you get, though I am not sure if the goat was theirs. There was kale on the menu. If you have killed the goat then maybe you do not need a field of kale anymore? We sample some military grade Mos-you-go. Sid got some on his lips and was numb ’til bedtime.
Young Snediker ferries us back to Nereus, Doris’s husband in Greek mythology. And so to bed, on a mirror-calm wine-dark sea.