The AshBreezeJournal of the Traditional Small Craft Association Circumnavigate in a Traditional Small Craft IN THIS ISSUE New Youth Chapter Join the Small Boat Monthly Community First Annual Maine Small Craft Celebration VOLUME 39, Number 4 • Winter 2018 • $4.00 The Breeze Ash President’s The Ash Breeze (ISSN 1554-5016) is the quarterly journal of the Traditional Message Small Craft Association, Inc. It is published at Mariner Media, Inc., 131 West 21st Street, Buena Vista, VA Steve Brookman 24416. Communications concerning The brilliantly hued leaves of another spectacular Downeast Maine autumn membership or mailings should be will be raked and composted by the time you’re reading this column. Blue addressed to: PO Box 350, Mystic, CT Hill Bay’s fabulous fleet of classic pleasure and rustic lobster boats will be 06355. www.tsca.net hauled and stored, mooring balls morphed into winter sticks. While our Volume 39, Number 4 boating season has come to an end, those of you down south will be just Editor: coming into your own, so enjoy. Andy Wolfe The season once again flew by too quickly, the summer punctuated by [email protected] attending several boats shows, TSCA events, and lots of just getting out on the water. The Small Reach Regatta had a record number of boats (64) Editors Emeriti: participate, and we are enthusiastically planning for the next one. You have Richard S. Kolin plenty of time to plan a trip to join the fleet, the 14th SRR will be held on Sam & Marty King July 24–27, 2019. Registration will open in January. Visit Downeasttsca.org/ David & Katherine Cockey SRR.html for more info. Ralph Notaristefano I am proud of our TSCA members as they made the 1st Annual Maine Ken Steinmetz Small Craft Celebration a success. As you can imagine, planning an inaugural John Stratton event was a challenge. Getting small boat folks to organize is a bit like the Dan Drath proverbial herding of cats, add to that having the event at a new marina still Ned Asplundh under construction. There was a lot of anxiety. But the TSCA came through, The Traditional Small Craft brought boats, gave lectures, demonstrations, and basically did what we do Association, Inc. is a nonprofit, tax- best, messed about in small boats. Our visitors, participants, and exhibitors exempt educational organization were all very pleased, and this will now be an annual fall event. Put September that works to preserve and continue 21–22, 2019, on your calendar, and check out SmallCraftCelebration.com the living traditions, skills, lore, and for details. You can read about the MSCC in an article by Rosemary Wyman legends surrounding working and in this issue. pleasure watercraft with origins that I’ve brought up the youth initiative topic before, and it has been a focus predate the marine gasoline engine. item during my stint as president. If you’ve attended virtually any TSCA We encourage the design, construction, event, you can’t help but notice that we are heavily weighted towards the and use of these boats, and we embrace contemporary variants and adaptations upper end of the geriatric curve. This doesn’t bode well for the future of our of traditional designs. organization or that of traditional boats. If you don’t mess about in small TSCA is an enjoyable yet practical boats when you’re young, you’re not likely to do it later in life. link among users, designers, builders, During our recent Downeast annual meeting we discussed it, and the restorers, historians, government, and feeling of our group is that while there are many youth boat building and maritime institutions. racing programs, there aren't many ways for getting them back on the water when those programs end. Perhaps the TSCA could help fill that niche. ©2018 by The Traditional Small Craft Association, Inc. I’ve asked our National Council to brainstorm this to see if we can TAB Layout Design: Karen Bowen collectively come up with some ideas, programs, or guidelines that can help get the youngsters away from their little screens and on to the water. One Cover ©Tracey Johns solution is to encourage youth-oriented TSCA chapters like the Brooklin A strip planked two-masted balanced lug Skiff Club, which was formed earlier this year. (See the BSC article in this rig sailing canoe named Ringle, owned issue.) BSC is requiring their kids to become National members so we know by Joseph Slusher of Fairfax, Virginia. continued on page 19 The Ash Breeze, Winter 2018 2 Five Times Around— An Artist Living on the Edge, Free of the Land by Tracey Johns, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, special to The Ash Breeze magazine With a log book that includes five completed solo happened upon arriving at CBMM because the motion is so circumnavigations and another in progress, solo-sailor Webb quick on her. “You can be doing 6–7 knots and catch a wave or Chiles has been freeing himself of the land while living on a little bit of wind, and all of the sudden you’re catching 10,” the edge of the human experience for most of his lifetime. he says. “It took me nine days to get here from Hilton Head. He often uses these words to frame his experiences during When I did 6,000 miles from Darwin to Durban, which was his presentations, including his keynote address at the Mid- almost two months, I think I felt it then also, especially with Atlantic Small Craft Festival XXXV, held Oct. 5–7, 2018, at the gale at the end. You get in the shower, close your eyes, and the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, MD. everything spins.” Chiles arrived aboard Gannet just before Hurricane Michael Long-time MASCF participant and writer/photographer hit land and posted this on his blog as he entered the Little Steve Early from Chesapeake, VA, had encouraged Webb to Choptank River en route back to Hilton Head, “Accompanied attend MASCF over several years, and Chiles saw the 35th by NZ freeze dry roast chicken and mashed potatoes, one of anniversary of the festival as the perfect time to attend, my favorite freeze dried meals, two gin and tonics—mine especially with his solo sailing schedule. Chiles likes small and Michael’s—Yo-Yo Ma’s third and allegedly last recording boats and small boat sailors, but by nature enjoys his alone of the Bach Cello Suites and now Sona Jobarteh’s album, time with the water. FASIYA. I am now going to take Michael’s drink and stand in “I’ve been writing for 60 years, sailing for 50 years, published the companionway and watch the dying of the light.” for more than 40 years,” said Chiles at the beginning of his Gannet, a Moore 24 ultra-light displacement boat, is the keynote at CBMM. “Of all those words, I am confident that only boat that Chiles says has given him the feeling of land 10 will outlive me: A sailor is an artist whose medium is moving when stepping off after a long sail—something that continued on page 8 and 9 Top: Webb Chiles aboard Chidiock Tichborne in the lagoon at Papeete, Tahiti, in January 1979, which was three months and one stop after Chiles left San Diego on his open boat voyage. 3 The Ash Breeze, Winter 2018 How to Paddle a Coracle by Walter R. Peebles Perhaps the easiest way to start is to place the coracle bow Of course, you can try the whole operation off a steep bank (the wider and/or flatter end) towards shore into about or a dock, and more power to you if you do—you are a braver three or four inches of water with a gently sloping bottom, soul than I. If you try it this way, gently put that first foot preferably sandy. Step into the center of the area in front of in, then keep low and get in and turn around quickly and the seat, pressing the bow down onto the sand. Now you've carefully! got enough stability to get in, turn around, and sit down on The basic stroke is a figure-eight sculling stroke off the bow, the seat. Move your feet into the front corners while keeping pulling the coracle towards the paddle. Insert the blade to the the coracle in contact with the bottom. left and bring it towards the right with its leading (right hand) Now lean back slowly to raise the bow off the sand and push edge angled away from the boat by ten to twenty degrees or off gently. When you are fully afloat, try putting a little more so. After a foot or two of stroke, twist the paddle so that the pressure on one foot or the other to see what the boat will left-hand edge is angled away from the coracle and move the do. This can be pretty fun, so make sure you have a change paddle towards the left. Keep it up, and you'll find the boat of clothes along. Basically, you are trimming the boat by the starts to move forward. You don't have to do this very fast. If balance of pressure of your seat on the coracle's seat and your you get the angle too steep, you'll be going around in circles feet on the front corners of the thing's floor. in no time at all. The Ash Breeze, Winter 2018 4 You can use either hand on the top of the paddle, whatever the figure eight stroke to the left.