Aboard Victory Chimes: A Journal and Photo Documentary

Roberta on the Arts

Aboard Victory Chimes: A Journal and Photo Documentary

Aboard Victory Chimes: A Journal and Photo Documentary

- On Location with Roberta

Maine Windjammer Association

Explore Maine's pristine coast and islands aboard an authentic windjammer. Great sailing by day, snug harbors each night. 3- to 6-day cruises from Camden, Rockland and Rockport.
www.sailmainecoast.com

The Maine Windjammer Association
www.sailmainecoast.com
800.807.WIND
Meg Maiden, Marketing Director
207.374.2952

Aboard Victory Chimes
www.victorychimes.com
Captain Kip Files, Captain Paul DeGaeta
800.745.5651

A Journal and Photo Documentary

Dr. Roberta E. Zlokower
June 12 - June 18, 2005

This is not a detailed and technically researched, travel documentary, but, rather, a mental and visual reflection of a wonderful trip.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Interviews

Day 1, June 12, 2005
US Airways Flight to Rockland, ME
Tour of Rockland Environs
Arrival Aboard Victory Chimes

For many months I awaited my cruise on a 105 year old schooner, Victory Chimes, www.victorychimes.com, as I love the Northeastern seacoast and the state of Maine, with quaint lighthouses, lobsters galore, and people who aren’t always in a rush (Full disclosure, I live in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen, i.e., border of Times Square and Lincoln Center). For a break from the early, humid, New York summer, The Maine Windjammer Association invited me to fulfill this long-held dream of sailing along the Maine coast in a historic schooner.

The flight to Boston was smooth, large US Airways airbus, nice, new terminal from La Guardia, and a tiny Beachcraft from Boston to Rockland, on which you can watch the pilots fly the plane, in between their lifting and lowering the ramps themselves. During the wait time in Boston, I enjoyed a diet coke and salad at the terminal Sports Bar. On arrival in Maine, Meg Maiden, the chipper and warm Marketing Director of Maine Windjammer, and my host, met me with her car (How often does a New Yorker even get into a private car, let alone be chauffeured around coastal Maine towns?). We visited a couple of the Windjammer schooners to say hello.

We met Les and Nancy, New Yorkers and other Windjammer photojournalists, and visited an old mill and a castle. We passed a home that was the setting for a Dark Horses soap opera, a view of harbors, a ghostly house with large dolls in the windows, and a dead end street at the water’s edge. There was an immediate, sensational feeling of NO traffic noise. With a great dinner at Cappy’s, salmon salad and chardonnay, with wonderful conversation, the vacation had already begun. We toured Rockland and neighboring towns, adorable and so clean, and then drove to the two schooners. First J & E Riggin, for Les and Nancy, and then Victory Chimes, for me.

I was given the “Governor’s Suite”, which means double bed and private bath. Showers were on deck; inside, but through the outside. It was a hot day, and I looked forward to the first shower. Goldy, the “boatswain”, was my helper at first, and, as I had a huge suitcase, plus a smaller one for wine (BYOB), and one more for hair dryer and cosmetics, I was grateful for the help. We had to hoist the suitcases over the deck and down the staircases to the cabins. I had enough clothes for a month, just in case. I toured Victory Chimes, originally Edwin and Maud, now engraved on the Maine quarter, originally built to transport cargo and passengers on the Chesapeake (used to haul 60-70 tons of cargo on deck), 170 feet long, the only three-masted schooner still working in the US.

I saw the galley (kitchen), saloon (dining and living and leisure room), the deck, and met some of the guests and the crew. Everyone seemed to have a passion for sailing, sea creatures, nature, and historic schooners. Captain Files and First Mate, Michael, seemed like real pros and seasoned sailors. We were in good hands. Barbara, one passenger, a “young” 88, has been sailing these schooners since 1982, and this was her 25th cruise on Maine Windjammers. Her daughter, Sue, also on board, mentioned, in perhaps a foreboding way, that the worst thing that she could remember was a sunny week of sunburns. As it turned out, this was not to be a sunny week of sunburns, not at all.