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By Jack Sherwood (Reprinted with permission from Soundings.) A gathering of Down East boats in the heart of Maryland chicken country seemed an odd notion at first. But after... listening to owners expound why they love the irascible Bob Stine and their cruising boats with the semi-displacement lobster-boat hulls, the message was clear... Black Dog specializes in servicing, maintaining, building, and fitting out traditional boats, working with bare fiberglass hulls, decks and cabins provided by several Down East boatbuilders like Lee Wilbur of Southwest Harbor, Maine. Stine once lived on a Wilbur 34 and many of these boats were among the 40 or so vessels that showed up at [a recent] rendezvous... What's so special about Maine lobster-boats? Mostly it is their superior sea-kindly characteristics. A new softcover book -- Maine
Lobsterboats: Builders and Lobstermen Speak of their Craft by Virginia L. Thorndike -- has been published by Down East Books of Camden, Maine, and goes into great deta "Normally measuring from 20 to 50 feet in length, the modern Maine lobserboat is nearly always a single-engined vessel, one with a distinctive arrangement of house and cockpit," writes Thorndike. "Forward, she has a low trunk cabin, which provides at least minimal accomodation and, on smaller working lobsterboats, space for the gas or diesel engine. "Aft of the trunk cabin, usually about amidships, her standing shelter -- complete with windshield and canopy top -- provides cover for the helmsman. The standing shelter, or house, may be enclosed on three sides, left open to the elements, or fitted with removable panels on a seasonal basis. The open cockpit runs from the after edge of the standing shelter to the stern. On a working boat, this cockpit may be half the length of the boat, on a heavily dressed pleasure boat with an extended house, it may be far smaller," Thorndike writes... "Particularly distinctive is the graceful, upward curve of the rails, starting low n the stern and rising to the bow," Thorndike writes. These classic boats have a low freeboard, a beautiful sheer, and lines that make up a long, sleek waterline. "Beneath the water," she writes, "the lobsterboat hull features a sharp V forward, at the bow, and are relatively flat aft at the stern." The construction, built-down or skeg-built, features graceful double-curved ribs providing a smooth transition from bilge to keel. The less expensive skeg boat is said to be lighter and faster, while the build-down claims to be stronger and more seakindly. Each side staunchly defends one or the other as being superior. Says Down East yacht designer Spencer Lincoln of the lobsteboat's semi-displacement hull: "The absolutely lovely characteristic of a lobsterboat is the relationship between boat speed and engine rpm. For each application of the throttle, you get a commensurate increase in speed." Stine has been working with Wilbur hulls since the early 1980s when he was operating a boatyard in Annapolis. At first, Stine worked out of Spa Creek, but the property was sold to a developer who built an office building on the site, kept the marina but got rid of Stine and the boatyard. The same thing happened when he moved to another Annapolis site at Horn Point on Back Creek. So he packed his black dogs 10 years ago and moved his operation across the Bay to Denton where he's the only show in town and far away from commercial developers -- so far, that is. Running the Black Dog office is Stine's daughter, Julie Rose, who introduced computers to the six-man workplace. His son, Mike, operates Brickhouse Yacht Yard on Kent Island in Stevensville, Md.... The boats come from as far away as Virginia, Annapolis, Chestertown, and Havre de Grace, Md. It [is] a long way from the mouth of the Choptank River, and then to Cambridge, where many cruisers think the navigable river ends. But it's a beautiful, deep tributary that narrows as it winds on for 33 more miles until it reaches the lovely town of Denton... The people who own these dark-hulled boats have bonded into a kind of fraternity. They're constantly trading ideas. Stine is the one they look to for a go-ahead approval on changes, because they know he will tell them of anything unworthy of the traditional design. |
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