Fishing under sail

A couple of historic videos of fishing under sail

What year are those videos from? I found the oyster dredges especially interesting -- I crewed for four years on a skipjack, otherwise known as a two sail bateau or sail-powered oyster dredge, with a club-headed main. The Chesapeake Bay skipjacks are the last vessels in North America to fish commercially under sail. They don't make a living at it; my boat is owned by a small non-profit organization. At the time of her restoration her major donor stipulate she be kept working as an oyster dredge, so in warm weather we do school groups and public tours, but in the winter she oysters commercially and sells her take to local restaurants. She only dredges for a month though, then gets hauled out for repairs.

You can see my boat, the skipjack Martha Lewis dredging for oysters here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxKxLccKCKM&feature=player_embedded

Skipjacks have no engines--Maryland prohibiting dredging under power -- the engine is the winch engine. About 1941 a captain hooked up a pickup truck engine to run the winder--it had been back breaking labor to hand crank the winch up until then.

Sometime before that a clever captain realized that although the regulations prohibited dredging under power, the laws said nothing about traveling back and forth to the oyster reefs, so he put an engine in a yawl boat, and with is own personal miniature tugboat, steamed back and forth. The yawl boat, now known as the 'pushboat', is hauled up on davits under the lazyboard while dredging.

In 1962 I think it was, the declining harvest was such that Maryland now permits skipjacks to dredge under power two days a week so that the waterman were certain of getting something to make a living. However, nobody makes a living with a skipjack any more. The captain is a professional, but everyone else is a volunteer.

Yeah, I volunteer to spend all day in winter in an open boat, rain or shine, dredging oysters, on my knees culling, and shoveling the debris overboard. The law requires the oyster shells to go back onto the reef. The trash we keep and dispose of ashore.

Martha is rated for 150 bushels, and they were all stacked up on deck, not in the hold. The most we ever got was seven bushels a day.

There's another video with 'Daddy Art' of Deal Island. I've been on his boat, although not under sail, and I will say, the City of Crisfield can make use of the lightest air. Daddy Art knows every inch of Tangier Sound. He is 88 years old and he's still dredging. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nDie3JsSqw&NR=1

There's a skipjack race at Deal Island every year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGWx-RuMK4Q&NR=1

Skipjack races are not the refined affairs of yacht clubs; they're more like the Nascar races. Your opponents bowsprit over your deck up to the winder box isn't a foul. I did the 2007 race, and I love it. I miss skipjacks.
MDSeaGrant has a number of videos on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvrPnG8sinQ&feature=related

Here's another one: This is Capt Wade, another famous character on the Bay. His skipjack the Rebecca Ruark is the oldest afloat, she was built in the 1880s. She's a sweet sailor, too. I had her helm for a while when I took a tour with him, and she is as kind as could be to the helm. She's the total opposite of the Martha Lewis, who is notoriously hard to handle. It's said it's impossible to sail a straight wake with Martha, but I've been with captains that could do it. Rebecca went down some years ago and was raised up. Capt. Wade runs her as a tour boat to make a living these days. The day I was on her we got an eel pot fouled in her propellor and were forty-five minutes late getting back. I didn't mind a bit, even if I did wind up working when I'd paid to ride

Thanks for sharing those videos.

One of the ones I posted (the top one) has a reference to the Royal Family watching it in 1896 so it must have been taken before then.

Kujakupoet, that's awesome! I know this is an old thread, but I am just discovering it and I have long been fascinated by the Chesapeake Bay skipjacks. I live near the great oyster fishery of Apalachicola Bay and I really wish that traditional working sail oyster boats were still in use here too (though I concede it would be neither viable nor realistic). I am also interested by the way the Maryland government restricted motor vessels in this particular fishery to serve the twin ends of conservation of a resource and conservation of a way of life.

And I have a question about the oysters. You say you shuck them on the water and discard the shells over the reef. That seems reasonable for preserving a substrate. But how do you then transport the oysters?

We shuck the ones we eat. The rest stay in their shells to go to the restaurants. We transport them in a bushel basket and it's heavy they are! One bushel to the marina owner to pay the dockage, and the rest into the captain's car to be taken to the restaurants.

It's not economically feasible; nobody makes a living fishing with a skipjack anymore. She's owned by a small non-profit and we take paying passengers who want to work in the cold and wet to eat the freshest oysters they've ever had.

~K~

Thanks! I guess I was confused on that point from what you'd said earlier about leaving the discarded shells. It makes a whole lot more sense both in terms of physically transporting them and in presentation at the restaurants.

I am glad that there are volunteers like you out there keeping the tradition (full of hardships that bely the romance of the idea) alive.

Call me crazy, but I like sailing in winter. All the crazy tourists have gone home and there are no bugs. On a day in which you've seen nothing but freighters, the sight of a white sail ghosting along a distant short makes you glad. And if she happens to be a log canoe or a bugeye, then you know what joy is.

~K~

I also like sailing in winter, but I'm on the Gulf Coast where the crazy tourists go when it gets too cold.

Fortunately you never see big aggregations of them in my area on the "Forgotten Coast".

Where are you? I have a friend in Louisiana. She sent me a picture of a Gulf schooner and I was startled to see upright masts -- I'm so used to the raked masts of the Chesapeake that I had forgotten they weren't universal.

I'm in the Big Bend area of Florida. You don't see a whole lot of traditional rig sailboats around here though. But like the Chesapeake it's definitely shoal-water sailing around here.

Another video from 1909 has been posted

My first reaction was 'what cute little dredges' However, it was greatly familiar otherwise. I miss the 'drudge boat' as we call them. My health has been very poor this spring and past winter, so I haven't done any sailing at all.

I'm sorry to read that, kujakupoet. I hope that your health improves and that you are able to get back out on the water again soon!