How it all began...the story of the Sheila Yeates
Sheila Yeates
"I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face, and the gray dawn breaking."
Sheila Yeates was a beautiful topsail Ketch. She was built in 1975 and was 50 feet long. Her home port was Port Superior, a marina south of Bayfield, Wisconsin. Geoff Pope was her designer, owner and skipper, and for many wonderful journeys I sailed with friends on the Sheila Yeates around the Apostle Islands and exploring Lake Superior.
On Labor Day weekend of 1987, I was scheduled to depart with our usual crew at midnight for a long weekend of sailing under a full moon - a breathtaking time to be on the water. Some of the group were delayed in arriving at Port Superior, and rather than waiting on board with my dear friend Roxanne and her buccaneer boyfriend, I decided to walk up to the marina and wait. Upon entering, my eyes were drawn to a very handsome guy across the room...and our eyes locked at the same time my heart flipped. This was the moment that I met the love of my life, and the rest of the story is history!
The Sheila Yeates spent most of her time on Lake Superior until May 15, 1989 when she left Duluth, Minnesota to sail across the north Atlantic to Cornwall, England and got stuck in fog and an icepack 80 miles south of Cape Farwell, Greenland. The Danish fishing vessel Kiviuq saved the crew, but could not save the Sheilia Yeates. While being towed by the Kiviuq, the crew had to cut the Sheila Yeates loose because she had lost positive buoyancy due to heavy seas. She sank southwest of Iceland the Monday before July 18, 1989.
One of my most treasured possessions is a Sheila Yeates mug from her galley, and the many photos of our adventures while on the Sheila Yeates.
And all I ask is a tall ship and star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face, and the gray dawn breaking."
Sheila Yeates was a beautiful topsail Ketch. She was built in 1975 and was 50 feet long. Her home port was Port Superior, a marina south of Bayfield, Wisconsin. Geoff Pope was her designer, owner and skipper, and for many wonderful journeys I sailed with friends on the Sheila Yeates around the Apostle Islands and exploring Lake Superior.
On Labor Day weekend of 1987, I was scheduled to depart with our usual crew at midnight for a long weekend of sailing under a full moon - a breathtaking time to be on the water. Some of the group were delayed in arriving at Port Superior, and rather than waiting on board with my dear friend Roxanne and her buccaneer boyfriend, I decided to walk up to the marina and wait. Upon entering, my eyes were drawn to a very handsome guy across the room...and our eyes locked at the same time my heart flipped. This was the moment that I met the love of my life, and the rest of the story is history!
The Sheila Yeates spent most of her time on Lake Superior until May 15, 1989 when she left Duluth, Minnesota to sail across the north Atlantic to Cornwall, England and got stuck in fog and an icepack 80 miles south of Cape Farwell, Greenland. The Danish fishing vessel Kiviuq saved the crew, but could not save the Sheilia Yeates. While being towed by the Kiviuq, the crew had to cut the Sheila Yeates loose because she had lost positive buoyancy due to heavy seas. She sank southwest of Iceland the Monday before July 18, 1989.
One of my most treasured possessions is a Sheila Yeates mug from her galley, and the many photos of our adventures while on the Sheila Yeates.
AP News Article
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) _ A wooden replica of a Civil War-era sailing vessel sank in the North Atlantic after its seven-member crew was rescued from a massive ice pack shrouded in fog, the ship's builder says.
A Danish shrimp boat responded to the Sheila Yeates' mayday call on Friday and plowed through ice and fog to save the crew, said Geoffrey Pope, 76, who built and skippered the ship.
The trawler towed the ship 430 miles from the spot off the coast of Greenland where it was trapped, but the boat took on water and finally was cut loose and sank Monday, he said.
The Sheila Yeates, a topsail ketch with a 50-foot deck, was one of the tall ships that commemorated the U.S. Bicentennial. The ship left Duluth on May 15 bound for Cornwall, England.
Pope's account was delivered from aboard the trawler to friends in the Minneapolis area just moments after the ship went down.
"I feel very responsible,'' Pope said. ''I lost the ship. But aside from that, I feel such a reaffirmation of the potential ... of the bond that exists between men in extremus.''
Pope said the voyage went smoothly until Thursday, when the ship approached a point about 80 miles south of Greenland's Point Farwell and encountered ice farther south than expected.
In an apparent misunderstanding over ice conditions, the Sheila Yeates found itself in thick fog surrounded by massive chunks of ice with no room to maneuver. The shifting ice would have crushed the wooden ship to bits, Pope said.
The trawler Kiviuq, which fishes in the Arctic and is equipped with ice- breaking equipment, responded to the tall ship's mayday. By radio, the skippers of the two vessels traded navigational coordinates until the Kiviuq broke through the ice pack and found the Sheila Yeates.
A Danish shrimp boat responded to the Sheila Yeates' mayday call on Friday and plowed through ice and fog to save the crew, said Geoffrey Pope, 76, who built and skippered the ship.
The trawler towed the ship 430 miles from the spot off the coast of Greenland where it was trapped, but the boat took on water and finally was cut loose and sank Monday, he said.
The Sheila Yeates, a topsail ketch with a 50-foot deck, was one of the tall ships that commemorated the U.S. Bicentennial. The ship left Duluth on May 15 bound for Cornwall, England.
Pope's account was delivered from aboard the trawler to friends in the Minneapolis area just moments after the ship went down.
"I feel very responsible,'' Pope said. ''I lost the ship. But aside from that, I feel such a reaffirmation of the potential ... of the bond that exists between men in extremus.''
Pope said the voyage went smoothly until Thursday, when the ship approached a point about 80 miles south of Greenland's Point Farwell and encountered ice farther south than expected.
In an apparent misunderstanding over ice conditions, the Sheila Yeates found itself in thick fog surrounded by massive chunks of ice with no room to maneuver. The shifting ice would have crushed the wooden ship to bits, Pope said.
The trawler Kiviuq, which fishes in the Arctic and is equipped with ice- breaking equipment, responded to the tall ship's mayday. By radio, the skippers of the two vessels traded navigational coordinates until the Kiviuq broke through the ice pack and found the Sheila Yeates.
THE DREAM AND THE LOSS
August 28, 2010 Geoff Pope - BUZZ BLOG - Bob Crockett
Sheila Yeates seized my imagination the moment I walked into the boat shed. Her tall bow, round as an apple, loomed over my head, smooth, pale as cream, and looking as soft as a powder puff. That was the rare Port Orford cedar planking, bound at the top with a thicker sheer strake of dark mahogany.
I had come looking for work, and for a chance to learn to build wooden boats. This was September of 1973 and I had immigrated to Nova Scotia, Canada with my wife, Susan, a few days before. Impressed with the low cost of real estate and convinced that values would increase, I had first sought work in the real estate industry in Halifax, the Provincial capital. After a few days of interviews, we had decided to go to Lunenburg County for the weekend. We had visited there on a couple of previous trips, liked the area and had made a few friends. One was Kip Holmes. Her husband worked for another boatbuilder, Teddy Snyder. She told me that if I applied there, he would tell me to come back in two weeks and would hire me then. I went, he said to come back in two weeks, but then I went on to Second Peninsula, and saw Murray Stevens, who asked if I could begin the next day. I told him I could begin on Monday and we made a quick trip back to New Hampshire on the ferry to get our other vehicle and the rest of our belongings.
Murray’s crew was comprised of Ashton and Freddy Hyson, Jim Rodenhiser, and Clyde Hiltz. Ashton was my favorite. He was tall and thin, and never without his pipe. But his most distinguishable characteristic was his wry humor. Nothing escaped his sharp wit. His cousin, and next door neighbor in Indian Point, Freddy, was steady and content, with a pleasant disposition. Jim Rodenhiser, from across the LaHave River in Conquerall Bank, was more surly, or pretended to be. He was proud of his boatbuilding skills and kept a serious mien in respect of them. Clyde Hiltz was the oldest, and was downright ornery, or as the local expression went, "contrary." He was a Tory, and was reported to have cut down his own gate post because someone had emblazoned it with a campaign poster for a liberal candidate. He was also a master of the malapropism, substituting "collution" for pollution, "conflation" for inflation and referring to noxious solvents and such as "high tentacles". Clyde painted and varnished, and despite his disposition, made everyone else’s work look really good.
They were my teachers, along with Steve Slauenwhite, a Tancooker who joined the crew later. It seemed that they had all worked with each other in different yards, most notably Smith and Rhuland in Lunenburg where they had built the schooner Bluenose II, a close replica of the famous vessel enshrined on the back of the Canadian dime, and the replica of HMS Bounty, which was sailed to Tahiti for the movie starring Marlin Brando. All, except Clyde, had been building boats since childhood and there was nothing about wooden boatbuilding that they didn’t know.
Murray Stevens, our boss, had built a large quonset hut boat shop at the edge of a pristine beach near the end of Second Peninsula. His father, David, was a builder of note who built fast schooner yachts in a shop behind his house nearby. Each was named for a grand-daughter, was taken from a wooden half-model that he carved himself, without benefit of naval architect’s calculations, and was built over a winter, single handed. He could make and apply a round of planking in a day by himself, no mean feat. This is not meant as a recommendation for omitting trim calculations, for his boats did not always float on their designed waterlines. One of my tasks had been painting Atlantica, which he built at the Montreal World’s Fair, and for which he was given the Governor General’s Award. I had seen where the original waterline had been carved into the hull, then painted over after the boat was launched.
Murray, it seemed, did not have his father’s devotion to boatbuilding, but was willing to trade on his reputation. He did have the sense to allow others to do the work, and was seldom seen at the yard. Although I never saw him try, I heard it said that he couldn’t put two pieces of wood close together enough to squeak. His interests were in politics and in making deals. He had a particular attraction for scrap stainless steel which he brought back to the shop in copious quantities and of dubious grades. He had learned to weld and used these scraps to fashion fittings for the boats built at his shop. Ashton likened him to a crow for his fascination for shiny metal.
Over the subsequent years that I built boats I came to observe certain facts about them, their builders and owners. First, aside from our human progeny, boats are the only things that we are inclined to christen. That, and the fact that we typically personalize them by calling them "she" should raise some concern that humans’ relationships with boats are not quite normal. In fact they are romanticized by all parties. I recall, after leaving the industry, a woman telling me that she liked me better as a boatbuilder. Builders want to build boats, and will often build them at a loss, or at least estimate the cost below what it’s likely to be in order to get the opportunity. Owners typically desire much more boat than they can afford, or at least, are willing to pay. Given these facts, the economics of boatbuilding are abysmal. And often the parties collude in a sort of mutual self-deceit when they enter into a boatbuilding contract. Such was the case with Murray and Geoff. Murray had told Geoff that he could build this 64-foot long replica of a civil war era square-rigged ship for $25,000. And Geoff really didn’t even have that much. The fact that it was ever finished was a miracle.
Because some time passed working on Geoff’s boat before I actually met him, I formed an advance impression from the comments of my co-workers. They saw him as a dreamer, and complained about having to build a boat from "cartoons." The boat’s designer, Bob Jackson, a neighbor and friend of Geoff’s in Minnesota, hadn’t drawn plans in the ordinary sense, but had submitted lovely sketches of the way the details of the boat would appear when finished. It was up to the craftsmen to work out the scale and dimensions, and to engineer the construction. In spite of the derogatory comments, though, I sensed a real respect and affection for Geoff among the men, and they knew that Sheila Yeates was an especially pretty boat.
Geoff finally did arrive, having driven from Minnesota in a very old and very rusty Chevrolet Suburban he called the African Queen. He had driven straight through, no doubt, for his time was as limited as his money. His work was selling women’s ready-to-wear fashions, but that was only his means. His passion was the boat, and beyond its construction, the adventures he foresaw. He was already 60 and his hair was grey, but there was nothing else about him that suggested his age. He was thin and spry, with a ceaseless twinkle in his eyes.
A lot of men, as they notice age creeping up on them, embark on a last-ditch effort to make up for a lack-luster life. Not so with Geoff Pope. His entire life had been in pursuit of adventure. In 1936, still in his twenties, he and Sheldon Taylor had set out from Manhattan Island in a canoe. Following the routes of the fur traders and the Indians who had preceded them, they paddled and portaged 7,865 miles across North America to Nome Alaska. The trip took them 18 months and was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest canoe trip in history.
His blue water credentials were as real. He had sailed on Romance, a lovely square-rigged ship, with Arthur Kimberley (Skipper) and his wife, Gloria. Skipper, who I had the honor of befriending in later years, was the quintessential square-rig master. Those sailors who were fortunate enough to learn their skills from him call themselves Marineros and had the right to claim the distinction. And simply because it is the Mount Everest of ocean passages, Geoff had sailed around Cape Horn on a 57-foot ketch as part of a crew of six, some of whom I have also met and sailed with.
I do not mention that I met this person, or learned from that one, or sailed with another to drop names, but because if it hadn’t been for Geoff Pope these encounters and adventures would not have occurred and my life and the lives of many others like me would have been a whole lot poorer.
Geoff was a man who was not afraid. He did not have a death wish; he confided in me after we became friends that he would love to experience the ultimate storm at sea, as long as he knew the outcome. But Geoff was unafraid to dream. How else could he embark upon a canoe trip greater than anyone had accomplished before? Who could imagine, on a salesman’s salary, building a perfect little square-rigged replica of a civil war era sailing ship?
For that was what we were building in that boat shed outside on Second Peninsula. Although only 50 feet long on deck and 64 feet from bowsprit to boomkin, she was every bit a ship. Beamy and deep, she would, in a scale suitable to her size, carry the signature elements of ships much larger. Her trailboards, curving from the cutwater at the top of her stem, along the sheer below the knightheads that strengthened her bow, were carved from Kauri wood from the Antipodes. Her taffrail, wrapping gracefully across her stern to the break in her sheer were not overly ornate, but ended in delicate scrolls. A pinrail surrounded the mainmast at the deck, and pinrails would be mounted on her shrouds below the ratlines to belay and stow her running rigging.
Geoff had wonderful taste, expressed in the "cartoons" that Bob Jackson had drawn and that the men at the boatyard wrought into this vessel. The aft cabin had berths port and starboard, but was dominated by a large chart table forward at which two or three could stand. Forward, and a couple of steps lower, lay the saloon, its large table, and pilot berths to port and starboard. With a large skylight overhead and mirrored at the aft end, this was the center of the boat at mealtimes. This was where stories were told and enduring friendships cemented. And forward of that was the galley, where it always was on ships. And this was a galley large enough to feed a hungry crew of seamen, and women.
Her rig was uncommon. She was a topsail ketch. Her mainmast was forward, and she had a smaller mizzen mast aft. Her mainmast was crossed by a yard, from which hung her square topsail. (Geoff would later cross a t’gallant yard and add another square sail above the topsail.) She also had fore-and-aft sails, of course. The main and mizzen sails were quadrilateral, held aloft at their heads by gaffs. And forward she had two triangular sails, a jib set from the bowsprit, and a staysail tacked to the gammon iron at the stemhead.
Square rig adds a dimension unfamiliar to modern sailors, the vertical. Only rarely does someone go aloft on today’s yacht at sea, and it usually requires that person to be hoisted in a bosun’s chair by one or two other crew members. But setting and furling squares, those powerful wind engines of yore, is done from the yards. At the command to set a sail, crew members scurry up the windward ratlines and step out onto the footropes suspended beneath the yards, saying, laying on to port (or starboard) as they do, warning others already on the rope that it is about to tauten from their weight. First onto the rope sidles out to the yardarm to stand on the Flemish horses suspended there and others follow onto the footropes.
On deck, hands let go the clews and bunts, lines that are used to draw the corners and bellies of the sail to the yard in furling, and the hands aloft let go the gaskets, lines holding the furled sail to the yard, and let fly the sail. Gaskets are coiled in a special way and left hanging, then the crew aloft moves back to the ratlines, announcing that they are laying off as they leave. Furling is the reverse, accomplished by laying over the yard with one’s belly, grabbing a handful of sail in both hands and, in unison, pulling that fold of sail up and tucking it under one’s belly before reaching down for the next. Properly done, the sail is furled on top of the yard, flaked out neatly and tied tight with the gaskets, a true harbor furl.
Going aloft the first time is scary for anyone. The ratlines, especially as they narrow aloft, can be very unstable, and the footropes are even hairier. On small vessels, like Sheila Yeates, and on the higher, and smaller yards on larger ships, the footropes are not far below the yards. The yards, can barely come to your knees, never mind your belly, or your center of gravity. My first few times, I couldn’t discern between the shaking of the ropes I was standing on and the shaking in my own legs!
After a while, though, one cannot wait for the call to go aloft, for the experience is unparalleled. Sometimes you have a commanding view of the ocean or harbor, or have birds fly up to you as if you were a part of their airy world. At other times it is dark, windy, rainy and cold, and the boat’s rolling swings you from one side to the other. But always you are part of a team; your shipmates beside and below you keeping all safe until the next port is reached.
Geoff introduced me to this world, and I never would have sailed and served on other ships like Niagara, Gazella, and Picton Castle if I hadn’t first experienced Sheila Yeates. Yet my life was only one of countless that he touched in this way, and many of those wonderful people have become dear friends.
While the boat was slowly shaped by the skilled hands of my co-workers in Lunenburg, Geoff struggled to raise the money to finish it. The $25,000 that Murray Stevens had estimated the boat would cost turned out to be only one-fifth of the funds required. This was way beyond Geoff’s means, and other owners were recruited and loans were secured. Nonetheless, the boat was shoved out of the shop and looked like it might never be finished. And in 1975 I left Murray’s employ to start a boat shop of my own.
But in the summer of 1976, he put a push on his fund-raising, the boat was finished and launched. He invited me on its maiden voyage, but commitments in my young business and with my young family prevented my participation. In fact, with the vessel berthed in Duluth, Minnesota, at the far western end of the great lakes, we rarely saw each other and it was 1984 before Sheila Yeates returned to the East Coast. Halifax was hosting a major tall ships event and Geoff was there early. At the first opportunity he came to visit our home in Rose Bay, outside of Lunenburg.
Our son, Rigel, was 9. Geoff asked us if he could invite him to sail with him in the parade of sail, then continue with him on a voyage that would take him to the Gasp Peninsula. We agreed, Rigel was invited, and accepted. I still recall that evening as we all ate dinner at Glady’s Canteen at Hirtle’s Beach, Rigel sitting next to Geoff with the young man’s hand resting on the the old man’s. Our son went to sea the next day as cabin boy, charged with feeding the ship’s cat and polishing the brass. Geoff had touched another life in his unique and powerful way. For a week he was Rigel’s captain, grandfather, and mentor. At the end of the trip, Rigel was put on a plane and we met him at the airport.
The next year Rigel joined the ship in the Magdalen Islands, and sailed to Halifax. In 1986 we flew together to New York, where we joined Sheila Yeates for the tall ships parade celebrating the re-dedication of the Statue of Liberty. This was the first time that Rigel was taken aloft and I can remember like it was yesterday the expression on his face when he returned to the deck. It was a mixture of awe and relief. But he was hooked. His agility in the rigging today is described as simian.
It was on that trip that I became close friends with Bob Bruce, a friendship that would last a lifetime. Although there were many people who helped Geoff achieve his impossible dreams, Bob’s part was important. I know nobody more practical than Bob Bruce, or with feet more firmly planted in reality, yet Geoff lit the spark in Bob that he ignited in so many others, and Bob’s nature and skills proved valuable in many ways. I could not begin to describe the storms and eddies that Geoff and those around him went through in order to pay for the vessel’s construction and to keep her sailing. Bob not only provided his expertise in matters mechanical, but actually reached into his pocket and loaned a significant amount of money to the project. He also served as skipper on demised charters that were used to raise money. Because of a U.S, law referred to as the Jones Act, foreign-built vessels cannot be chartered in the United States except as a bare boat, without a captain or crew. Bob was on Sheila Yeates‘ list of approved captains and had been hired by an insurance company for the Statute of Liberty event. Rigel, Geoff, and I were volunteers under his command.
Geoff’s influence on Rigel’s career didn’t end with Sheila Yeates. The following year, when Rigel was 11, he received a phone call informing him that if he could be in Mackinaw City, Michigan the next day he had a berth as cabin boy on Ernestina. This 1894 schooner, designated as a National Historic Landmark, is considerably larger than than Sheila Yeates at 106 feet on deck and 156 feet overall length, and flying over 8,000 square feet of sail. She was skippered by Daniel Moreland, a Marinero who had played an important role in her restoration and would figure greatly in Rigel’s sailing career.
Geoff had done his magic. Rigel sailed every summer thereafter. He voyaged with Ernestina to Newfoundland, where he won the blueberry pie eating contest in Brigus, the home town of the ship’s celebrated skipper, Bob Bartlett, who had taken the ship within 600 miles of the north pole in 1926, when she had her original name of Effie M. Morrissey. He spent three summers living and working on the gorgeous Shenandoah, a square-topsail schooner out of Martha’s Vineyard and a couple of years on U.S.S Niagara, a replica of Admiral Perry’s flagship in the War of 1812. He also spent one summer as skipper of Eastern Star, a lovely yawl, taking tourists out from Lunenburg.
And in the summer of 1997, just out of college, he joined the crew working to convert the former steam trawler and diesel freighter Picton Castle into a 3-masted barque. This project was the brain child of Dan Moreland, with whom Geoff had secured Rigel a berth as cabin boy a decade earlier. He worked with a dedicated group of like-minded tall ship aficionados for starvation wages, hoping to earn a berth on the world voyage planned for that winter. He got his berth, finished the voyage, and wrote about it in Fair Wind and Plenty of It, a Modern Day Tall Ship Adventure. He went on to get his Coast Guard license and served as mate and captain of other tall ships.
Rigel is the one I know best, but he is just one of many people whose lives have been touched. Several of my dearest friendships are with people I met through him, and just the other day I met someone who knew him and had sailed with him. It was like we were immediate old friends, because of our kinship through Geoff.
A man who could canoe from New York to Nome was not afraid of difficulties, and Geoff was always seeking new challenges. One of his goals was to sail to the Devil’s Thumb, a promontory at the northern extreme of Iceland, and 1989 was the year he decided he would go. Sheila Yeates would continue on to the Shetland Islands off Scotland and continue with a European tour. Geoff was 75.
Geoff invited Rigel and me to go, and although we informed him that we had already made plans to charter a sailboat on the Maine coast that would prevent our going all the way, we agreed to sail with him as far as St. Anthony, Newfoundland, at the northern tip of the island. Geoff never lost hope that we would cancel our charter and cross the Atlantic with him.
We joined the crew in Baddeck, on the Bras d’Or Lakes of Cape Breton Island. Among the crew making the voyage was Nat Wilson, a tall ship sailor of the first order. While a member of the U.S. Coast Guard, Nat and another man had performed an act of particular heroism and had been offered their choice of assignments for the remainder of their enlistments. Nat had asked to be bosun on the Coast Guard’s magnificent tall ship, Eagle. As such he was in charge of the deck and the rig, and was the ship’s primary sailmaker, a career he follows to this day in East Boothbay Harbor, Maine.
I name a few people with whom I made a particular connection, or who have remained friends. There are numerous others whose paths crossed with mine and lots whom I never met. They were all special, though. Geoff attracted wonderful people into his orbit. He didn’t need to be the most knowledgeable or the center of attention. People loved and respected him and wanted to be around him.
Our voyage took us across the Cabot Strait to the southwest corner of Newfoundland, then up the Strait of Belle Isle, the Westerlies filling our sails as we climbed the Northern Peninsula. At Saint Anthony, we visited the Grenfell Mission in the town, a particular interest of Geoff’s, and L’Anse au Meadows, an archaeological site nearby, the earliest known Norse settlement in North America. It finally came time for Rigel and me to leave, and Geoff drove us to the bus station in a rented car. It was clear Geoff didn’t really want us to go, and if others weren’t depending upon us, we wouldn’t have considered leaving him. But we boarded the bus and waved goodbye.
We were heading south, but not much time passed before our regrets began to overwhelm our resolve. Let’s let fate decide, we agreed. We flipped a coin, but it said to stay on the bus. Two out of three gave us the same answer, as did three out of five, so on we went. We chartered a lovely yacht out of Southwest Harbor, Maine and sailed to Eastport and back with friends, but Sheila Yeates was never far from our thoughts.
I was having breakfast back home not long after our return when I saw a brief article in the Halifax newspaper about a small replica sailing vessel going down in the Atlantic, no names given. I called the paper and they offered me a copy of the wire report. There I learned it was true. All hands were safe, but the beautiful Sheila Yeates was lost. My first thought was for Geoff: how would he survive the loss?
Shortly after passing the southern tip of Greenland, they had found themselves in a floe of sheet ice, which gradually thickened around them until they were surrounded and entrapped by pack ice. The ice reports they had relied upon were wrong; this ice wasn’t supposed to be there. Using pike poles, they could keep the ice away from the hull, but they were unable to advance. They were stuck. And they were out of radio range from any help. They could not raise a response from anywhere.
Had they been able to advance to the edge of the pack ice now, the ship would have been destroyed, because the seas had come up and blocks of ice as big as refrigerators and automobiles were grinding against each other in the waves. The little ship would have been crushed. They felt doomed to die.
While passing on deck, Nat Wilson picked up the VHF radio and made another distress call. Strictly line-of-sight at this frequency, its range is only about 50 miles. As luck would have it, though, at this moment there was a ship passing just to the south of the ice pack. It was an ice-strengthened shrimp trawler, brand new, on its maiden voyage. Its owners were European, but its skipper was David Fancy, from Lunenburg. One of its crew had recently acquired a video camera, so there is a film of the drama that ensued.
With the captain in the wheelhouse was the owner’s agent. His instinct was to protect the ship and he forbade Captain Fancy to proceed into the ice. Fancy was a seaman, though, and there was no question in his mind, he would always go to the aid of sailors in peril. They entered the pack without mishap, found Sheila Yeates in the mist, and maneuvered so that the little ship could be hauled up close behind the trawler’s stern ramp and thereby protected from the crushing ice at the edge. Her crew came aboard the shrimper and Sheila Yeates was thus towed into open water.
She sustained damage in the tow, however. Her bowsprit was broken, resulting in the loss of her topmast. Worse still, the extreme strain in the tow apparently damaged the area around the bow and the knightheads. She would not be able to proceed on her voyage, but would have to be towed to port in the Scottish Isles, where she could be repaired. Her tow lines were lengthened and the long voyage continued. As she was now taking on water from the damage, it was necessary each day to lower an inflatable boat from the shrimper to board and pump her. But a few days into her tow, the outboard on the inflatable was reluctant to start, then the weather got too bad to make the trip.
Geoff and the crew watched from the deck of their rescuer as Sheila Yeates went down. When I saw it on video, sitting beside Geoff, tears came to my eyes. I cried for her and I cried for him.
Some insurance money was received, lenders were repaid, and Geoff retained a little. Geoff, undaunted as was his nature, had plans drawn up for another Sheila Yeates. I helped with the planning, and visited the naval architect’s offices in Maine with him. But this ship was not to be. Signs of Alzheimer’s had begun to appear and it wasn’t long before the Geoff Pope that we all knew and loved was gone for us. He lingered for a few years, then was mercifully taken less than 5 years ago. He is gone now, as is his beautiful ship. But his legacy lives on in the memory of all of us lucky enough to have known him and call him friend. Thank you Geoff. May your sails always be filled on your journey.
Sheila Yeates seized my imagination the moment I walked into the boat shed. Her tall bow, round as an apple, loomed over my head, smooth, pale as cream, and looking as soft as a powder puff. That was the rare Port Orford cedar planking, bound at the top with a thicker sheer strake of dark mahogany.
I had come looking for work, and for a chance to learn to build wooden boats. This was September of 1973 and I had immigrated to Nova Scotia, Canada with my wife, Susan, a few days before. Impressed with the low cost of real estate and convinced that values would increase, I had first sought work in the real estate industry in Halifax, the Provincial capital. After a few days of interviews, we had decided to go to Lunenburg County for the weekend. We had visited there on a couple of previous trips, liked the area and had made a few friends. One was Kip Holmes. Her husband worked for another boatbuilder, Teddy Snyder. She told me that if I applied there, he would tell me to come back in two weeks and would hire me then. I went, he said to come back in two weeks, but then I went on to Second Peninsula, and saw Murray Stevens, who asked if I could begin the next day. I told him I could begin on Monday and we made a quick trip back to New Hampshire on the ferry to get our other vehicle and the rest of our belongings.
Murray’s crew was comprised of Ashton and Freddy Hyson, Jim Rodenhiser, and Clyde Hiltz. Ashton was my favorite. He was tall and thin, and never without his pipe. But his most distinguishable characteristic was his wry humor. Nothing escaped his sharp wit. His cousin, and next door neighbor in Indian Point, Freddy, was steady and content, with a pleasant disposition. Jim Rodenhiser, from across the LaHave River in Conquerall Bank, was more surly, or pretended to be. He was proud of his boatbuilding skills and kept a serious mien in respect of them. Clyde Hiltz was the oldest, and was downright ornery, or as the local expression went, "contrary." He was a Tory, and was reported to have cut down his own gate post because someone had emblazoned it with a campaign poster for a liberal candidate. He was also a master of the malapropism, substituting "collution" for pollution, "conflation" for inflation and referring to noxious solvents and such as "high tentacles". Clyde painted and varnished, and despite his disposition, made everyone else’s work look really good.
They were my teachers, along with Steve Slauenwhite, a Tancooker who joined the crew later. It seemed that they had all worked with each other in different yards, most notably Smith and Rhuland in Lunenburg where they had built the schooner Bluenose II, a close replica of the famous vessel enshrined on the back of the Canadian dime, and the replica of HMS Bounty, which was sailed to Tahiti for the movie starring Marlin Brando. All, except Clyde, had been building boats since childhood and there was nothing about wooden boatbuilding that they didn’t know.
Murray Stevens, our boss, had built a large quonset hut boat shop at the edge of a pristine beach near the end of Second Peninsula. His father, David, was a builder of note who built fast schooner yachts in a shop behind his house nearby. Each was named for a grand-daughter, was taken from a wooden half-model that he carved himself, without benefit of naval architect’s calculations, and was built over a winter, single handed. He could make and apply a round of planking in a day by himself, no mean feat. This is not meant as a recommendation for omitting trim calculations, for his boats did not always float on their designed waterlines. One of my tasks had been painting Atlantica, which he built at the Montreal World’s Fair, and for which he was given the Governor General’s Award. I had seen where the original waterline had been carved into the hull, then painted over after the boat was launched.
Murray, it seemed, did not have his father’s devotion to boatbuilding, but was willing to trade on his reputation. He did have the sense to allow others to do the work, and was seldom seen at the yard. Although I never saw him try, I heard it said that he couldn’t put two pieces of wood close together enough to squeak. His interests were in politics and in making deals. He had a particular attraction for scrap stainless steel which he brought back to the shop in copious quantities and of dubious grades. He had learned to weld and used these scraps to fashion fittings for the boats built at his shop. Ashton likened him to a crow for his fascination for shiny metal.
Over the subsequent years that I built boats I came to observe certain facts about them, their builders and owners. First, aside from our human progeny, boats are the only things that we are inclined to christen. That, and the fact that we typically personalize them by calling them "she" should raise some concern that humans’ relationships with boats are not quite normal. In fact they are romanticized by all parties. I recall, after leaving the industry, a woman telling me that she liked me better as a boatbuilder. Builders want to build boats, and will often build them at a loss, or at least estimate the cost below what it’s likely to be in order to get the opportunity. Owners typically desire much more boat than they can afford, or at least, are willing to pay. Given these facts, the economics of boatbuilding are abysmal. And often the parties collude in a sort of mutual self-deceit when they enter into a boatbuilding contract. Such was the case with Murray and Geoff. Murray had told Geoff that he could build this 64-foot long replica of a civil war era square-rigged ship for $25,000. And Geoff really didn’t even have that much. The fact that it was ever finished was a miracle.
Because some time passed working on Geoff’s boat before I actually met him, I formed an advance impression from the comments of my co-workers. They saw him as a dreamer, and complained about having to build a boat from "cartoons." The boat’s designer, Bob Jackson, a neighbor and friend of Geoff’s in Minnesota, hadn’t drawn plans in the ordinary sense, but had submitted lovely sketches of the way the details of the boat would appear when finished. It was up to the craftsmen to work out the scale and dimensions, and to engineer the construction. In spite of the derogatory comments, though, I sensed a real respect and affection for Geoff among the men, and they knew that Sheila Yeates was an especially pretty boat.
Geoff finally did arrive, having driven from Minnesota in a very old and very rusty Chevrolet Suburban he called the African Queen. He had driven straight through, no doubt, for his time was as limited as his money. His work was selling women’s ready-to-wear fashions, but that was only his means. His passion was the boat, and beyond its construction, the adventures he foresaw. He was already 60 and his hair was grey, but there was nothing else about him that suggested his age. He was thin and spry, with a ceaseless twinkle in his eyes.
A lot of men, as they notice age creeping up on them, embark on a last-ditch effort to make up for a lack-luster life. Not so with Geoff Pope. His entire life had been in pursuit of adventure. In 1936, still in his twenties, he and Sheldon Taylor had set out from Manhattan Island in a canoe. Following the routes of the fur traders and the Indians who had preceded them, they paddled and portaged 7,865 miles across North America to Nome Alaska. The trip took them 18 months and was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest canoe trip in history.
His blue water credentials were as real. He had sailed on Romance, a lovely square-rigged ship, with Arthur Kimberley (Skipper) and his wife, Gloria. Skipper, who I had the honor of befriending in later years, was the quintessential square-rig master. Those sailors who were fortunate enough to learn their skills from him call themselves Marineros and had the right to claim the distinction. And simply because it is the Mount Everest of ocean passages, Geoff had sailed around Cape Horn on a 57-foot ketch as part of a crew of six, some of whom I have also met and sailed with.
I do not mention that I met this person, or learned from that one, or sailed with another to drop names, but because if it hadn’t been for Geoff Pope these encounters and adventures would not have occurred and my life and the lives of many others like me would have been a whole lot poorer.
Geoff was a man who was not afraid. He did not have a death wish; he confided in me after we became friends that he would love to experience the ultimate storm at sea, as long as he knew the outcome. But Geoff was unafraid to dream. How else could he embark upon a canoe trip greater than anyone had accomplished before? Who could imagine, on a salesman’s salary, building a perfect little square-rigged replica of a civil war era sailing ship?
For that was what we were building in that boat shed outside on Second Peninsula. Although only 50 feet long on deck and 64 feet from bowsprit to boomkin, she was every bit a ship. Beamy and deep, she would, in a scale suitable to her size, carry the signature elements of ships much larger. Her trailboards, curving from the cutwater at the top of her stem, along the sheer below the knightheads that strengthened her bow, were carved from Kauri wood from the Antipodes. Her taffrail, wrapping gracefully across her stern to the break in her sheer were not overly ornate, but ended in delicate scrolls. A pinrail surrounded the mainmast at the deck, and pinrails would be mounted on her shrouds below the ratlines to belay and stow her running rigging.
Geoff had wonderful taste, expressed in the "cartoons" that Bob Jackson had drawn and that the men at the boatyard wrought into this vessel. The aft cabin had berths port and starboard, but was dominated by a large chart table forward at which two or three could stand. Forward, and a couple of steps lower, lay the saloon, its large table, and pilot berths to port and starboard. With a large skylight overhead and mirrored at the aft end, this was the center of the boat at mealtimes. This was where stories were told and enduring friendships cemented. And forward of that was the galley, where it always was on ships. And this was a galley large enough to feed a hungry crew of seamen, and women.
Her rig was uncommon. She was a topsail ketch. Her mainmast was forward, and she had a smaller mizzen mast aft. Her mainmast was crossed by a yard, from which hung her square topsail. (Geoff would later cross a t’gallant yard and add another square sail above the topsail.) She also had fore-and-aft sails, of course. The main and mizzen sails were quadrilateral, held aloft at their heads by gaffs. And forward she had two triangular sails, a jib set from the bowsprit, and a staysail tacked to the gammon iron at the stemhead.
Square rig adds a dimension unfamiliar to modern sailors, the vertical. Only rarely does someone go aloft on today’s yacht at sea, and it usually requires that person to be hoisted in a bosun’s chair by one or two other crew members. But setting and furling squares, those powerful wind engines of yore, is done from the yards. At the command to set a sail, crew members scurry up the windward ratlines and step out onto the footropes suspended beneath the yards, saying, laying on to port (or starboard) as they do, warning others already on the rope that it is about to tauten from their weight. First onto the rope sidles out to the yardarm to stand on the Flemish horses suspended there and others follow onto the footropes.
On deck, hands let go the clews and bunts, lines that are used to draw the corners and bellies of the sail to the yard in furling, and the hands aloft let go the gaskets, lines holding the furled sail to the yard, and let fly the sail. Gaskets are coiled in a special way and left hanging, then the crew aloft moves back to the ratlines, announcing that they are laying off as they leave. Furling is the reverse, accomplished by laying over the yard with one’s belly, grabbing a handful of sail in both hands and, in unison, pulling that fold of sail up and tucking it under one’s belly before reaching down for the next. Properly done, the sail is furled on top of the yard, flaked out neatly and tied tight with the gaskets, a true harbor furl.
Going aloft the first time is scary for anyone. The ratlines, especially as they narrow aloft, can be very unstable, and the footropes are even hairier. On small vessels, like Sheila Yeates, and on the higher, and smaller yards on larger ships, the footropes are not far below the yards. The yards, can barely come to your knees, never mind your belly, or your center of gravity. My first few times, I couldn’t discern between the shaking of the ropes I was standing on and the shaking in my own legs!
After a while, though, one cannot wait for the call to go aloft, for the experience is unparalleled. Sometimes you have a commanding view of the ocean or harbor, or have birds fly up to you as if you were a part of their airy world. At other times it is dark, windy, rainy and cold, and the boat’s rolling swings you from one side to the other. But always you are part of a team; your shipmates beside and below you keeping all safe until the next port is reached.
Geoff introduced me to this world, and I never would have sailed and served on other ships like Niagara, Gazella, and Picton Castle if I hadn’t first experienced Sheila Yeates. Yet my life was only one of countless that he touched in this way, and many of those wonderful people have become dear friends.
While the boat was slowly shaped by the skilled hands of my co-workers in Lunenburg, Geoff struggled to raise the money to finish it. The $25,000 that Murray Stevens had estimated the boat would cost turned out to be only one-fifth of the funds required. This was way beyond Geoff’s means, and other owners were recruited and loans were secured. Nonetheless, the boat was shoved out of the shop and looked like it might never be finished. And in 1975 I left Murray’s employ to start a boat shop of my own.
But in the summer of 1976, he put a push on his fund-raising, the boat was finished and launched. He invited me on its maiden voyage, but commitments in my young business and with my young family prevented my participation. In fact, with the vessel berthed in Duluth, Minnesota, at the far western end of the great lakes, we rarely saw each other and it was 1984 before Sheila Yeates returned to the East Coast. Halifax was hosting a major tall ships event and Geoff was there early. At the first opportunity he came to visit our home in Rose Bay, outside of Lunenburg.
Our son, Rigel, was 9. Geoff asked us if he could invite him to sail with him in the parade of sail, then continue with him on a voyage that would take him to the Gasp Peninsula. We agreed, Rigel was invited, and accepted. I still recall that evening as we all ate dinner at Glady’s Canteen at Hirtle’s Beach, Rigel sitting next to Geoff with the young man’s hand resting on the the old man’s. Our son went to sea the next day as cabin boy, charged with feeding the ship’s cat and polishing the brass. Geoff had touched another life in his unique and powerful way. For a week he was Rigel’s captain, grandfather, and mentor. At the end of the trip, Rigel was put on a plane and we met him at the airport.
The next year Rigel joined the ship in the Magdalen Islands, and sailed to Halifax. In 1986 we flew together to New York, where we joined Sheila Yeates for the tall ships parade celebrating the re-dedication of the Statue of Liberty. This was the first time that Rigel was taken aloft and I can remember like it was yesterday the expression on his face when he returned to the deck. It was a mixture of awe and relief. But he was hooked. His agility in the rigging today is described as simian.
It was on that trip that I became close friends with Bob Bruce, a friendship that would last a lifetime. Although there were many people who helped Geoff achieve his impossible dreams, Bob’s part was important. I know nobody more practical than Bob Bruce, or with feet more firmly planted in reality, yet Geoff lit the spark in Bob that he ignited in so many others, and Bob’s nature and skills proved valuable in many ways. I could not begin to describe the storms and eddies that Geoff and those around him went through in order to pay for the vessel’s construction and to keep her sailing. Bob not only provided his expertise in matters mechanical, but actually reached into his pocket and loaned a significant amount of money to the project. He also served as skipper on demised charters that were used to raise money. Because of a U.S, law referred to as the Jones Act, foreign-built vessels cannot be chartered in the United States except as a bare boat, without a captain or crew. Bob was on Sheila Yeates‘ list of approved captains and had been hired by an insurance company for the Statute of Liberty event. Rigel, Geoff, and I were volunteers under his command.
Geoff’s influence on Rigel’s career didn’t end with Sheila Yeates. The following year, when Rigel was 11, he received a phone call informing him that if he could be in Mackinaw City, Michigan the next day he had a berth as cabin boy on Ernestina. This 1894 schooner, designated as a National Historic Landmark, is considerably larger than than Sheila Yeates at 106 feet on deck and 156 feet overall length, and flying over 8,000 square feet of sail. She was skippered by Daniel Moreland, a Marinero who had played an important role in her restoration and would figure greatly in Rigel’s sailing career.
Geoff had done his magic. Rigel sailed every summer thereafter. He voyaged with Ernestina to Newfoundland, where he won the blueberry pie eating contest in Brigus, the home town of the ship’s celebrated skipper, Bob Bartlett, who had taken the ship within 600 miles of the north pole in 1926, when she had her original name of Effie M. Morrissey. He spent three summers living and working on the gorgeous Shenandoah, a square-topsail schooner out of Martha’s Vineyard and a couple of years on U.S.S Niagara, a replica of Admiral Perry’s flagship in the War of 1812. He also spent one summer as skipper of Eastern Star, a lovely yawl, taking tourists out from Lunenburg.
And in the summer of 1997, just out of college, he joined the crew working to convert the former steam trawler and diesel freighter Picton Castle into a 3-masted barque. This project was the brain child of Dan Moreland, with whom Geoff had secured Rigel a berth as cabin boy a decade earlier. He worked with a dedicated group of like-minded tall ship aficionados for starvation wages, hoping to earn a berth on the world voyage planned for that winter. He got his berth, finished the voyage, and wrote about it in Fair Wind and Plenty of It, a Modern Day Tall Ship Adventure. He went on to get his Coast Guard license and served as mate and captain of other tall ships.
Rigel is the one I know best, but he is just one of many people whose lives have been touched. Several of my dearest friendships are with people I met through him, and just the other day I met someone who knew him and had sailed with him. It was like we were immediate old friends, because of our kinship through Geoff.
A man who could canoe from New York to Nome was not afraid of difficulties, and Geoff was always seeking new challenges. One of his goals was to sail to the Devil’s Thumb, a promontory at the northern extreme of Iceland, and 1989 was the year he decided he would go. Sheila Yeates would continue on to the Shetland Islands off Scotland and continue with a European tour. Geoff was 75.
Geoff invited Rigel and me to go, and although we informed him that we had already made plans to charter a sailboat on the Maine coast that would prevent our going all the way, we agreed to sail with him as far as St. Anthony, Newfoundland, at the northern tip of the island. Geoff never lost hope that we would cancel our charter and cross the Atlantic with him.
We joined the crew in Baddeck, on the Bras d’Or Lakes of Cape Breton Island. Among the crew making the voyage was Nat Wilson, a tall ship sailor of the first order. While a member of the U.S. Coast Guard, Nat and another man had performed an act of particular heroism and had been offered their choice of assignments for the remainder of their enlistments. Nat had asked to be bosun on the Coast Guard’s magnificent tall ship, Eagle. As such he was in charge of the deck and the rig, and was the ship’s primary sailmaker, a career he follows to this day in East Boothbay Harbor, Maine.
I name a few people with whom I made a particular connection, or who have remained friends. There are numerous others whose paths crossed with mine and lots whom I never met. They were all special, though. Geoff attracted wonderful people into his orbit. He didn’t need to be the most knowledgeable or the center of attention. People loved and respected him and wanted to be around him.
Our voyage took us across the Cabot Strait to the southwest corner of Newfoundland, then up the Strait of Belle Isle, the Westerlies filling our sails as we climbed the Northern Peninsula. At Saint Anthony, we visited the Grenfell Mission in the town, a particular interest of Geoff’s, and L’Anse au Meadows, an archaeological site nearby, the earliest known Norse settlement in North America. It finally came time for Rigel and me to leave, and Geoff drove us to the bus station in a rented car. It was clear Geoff didn’t really want us to go, and if others weren’t depending upon us, we wouldn’t have considered leaving him. But we boarded the bus and waved goodbye.
We were heading south, but not much time passed before our regrets began to overwhelm our resolve. Let’s let fate decide, we agreed. We flipped a coin, but it said to stay on the bus. Two out of three gave us the same answer, as did three out of five, so on we went. We chartered a lovely yacht out of Southwest Harbor, Maine and sailed to Eastport and back with friends, but Sheila Yeates was never far from our thoughts.
I was having breakfast back home not long after our return when I saw a brief article in the Halifax newspaper about a small replica sailing vessel going down in the Atlantic, no names given. I called the paper and they offered me a copy of the wire report. There I learned it was true. All hands were safe, but the beautiful Sheila Yeates was lost. My first thought was for Geoff: how would he survive the loss?
Shortly after passing the southern tip of Greenland, they had found themselves in a floe of sheet ice, which gradually thickened around them until they were surrounded and entrapped by pack ice. The ice reports they had relied upon were wrong; this ice wasn’t supposed to be there. Using pike poles, they could keep the ice away from the hull, but they were unable to advance. They were stuck. And they were out of radio range from any help. They could not raise a response from anywhere.
Had they been able to advance to the edge of the pack ice now, the ship would have been destroyed, because the seas had come up and blocks of ice as big as refrigerators and automobiles were grinding against each other in the waves. The little ship would have been crushed. They felt doomed to die.
While passing on deck, Nat Wilson picked up the VHF radio and made another distress call. Strictly line-of-sight at this frequency, its range is only about 50 miles. As luck would have it, though, at this moment there was a ship passing just to the south of the ice pack. It was an ice-strengthened shrimp trawler, brand new, on its maiden voyage. Its owners were European, but its skipper was David Fancy, from Lunenburg. One of its crew had recently acquired a video camera, so there is a film of the drama that ensued.
With the captain in the wheelhouse was the owner’s agent. His instinct was to protect the ship and he forbade Captain Fancy to proceed into the ice. Fancy was a seaman, though, and there was no question in his mind, he would always go to the aid of sailors in peril. They entered the pack without mishap, found Sheila Yeates in the mist, and maneuvered so that the little ship could be hauled up close behind the trawler’s stern ramp and thereby protected from the crushing ice at the edge. Her crew came aboard the shrimper and Sheila Yeates was thus towed into open water.
She sustained damage in the tow, however. Her bowsprit was broken, resulting in the loss of her topmast. Worse still, the extreme strain in the tow apparently damaged the area around the bow and the knightheads. She would not be able to proceed on her voyage, but would have to be towed to port in the Scottish Isles, where she could be repaired. Her tow lines were lengthened and the long voyage continued. As she was now taking on water from the damage, it was necessary each day to lower an inflatable boat from the shrimper to board and pump her. But a few days into her tow, the outboard on the inflatable was reluctant to start, then the weather got too bad to make the trip.
Geoff and the crew watched from the deck of their rescuer as Sheila Yeates went down. When I saw it on video, sitting beside Geoff, tears came to my eyes. I cried for her and I cried for him.
Some insurance money was received, lenders were repaid, and Geoff retained a little. Geoff, undaunted as was his nature, had plans drawn up for another Sheila Yeates. I helped with the planning, and visited the naval architect’s offices in Maine with him. But this ship was not to be. Signs of Alzheimer’s had begun to appear and it wasn’t long before the Geoff Pope that we all knew and loved was gone for us. He lingered for a few years, then was mercifully taken less than 5 years ago. He is gone now, as is his beautiful ship. But his legacy lives on in the memory of all of us lucky enough to have known him and call him friend. Thank you Geoff. May your sails always be filled on your journey.
Apostle Islands, Sleepily Yours In A Laid-back Corner of Wisconsin
June 28, 1987 by Jane Ammeson
BAYFIELD, WIS. — The waitress in Madison had never heard of Bayfield; neither had the service station attendant at Steven`s Point. The small town of Bayfield (population 700) was so remote that even Wisconsin natives believed it was in Minnesota or, maybe, Michigan.
My husband, who is an intrepid sailor, but a faint-hearted traveler, spent the last 100 miles of the drive muttering about sending our money to a mythical charter company in a town that didn`t exist.
Fortunately for me (and our bank account) there was a Bayfield and the first sight of its Victorian and Queen Anne mansions perched on hills overlooking Lake Superior helped allay his fears. But it was a glimpse of the Apostle Islands lining Bayfield`s coast that convinced my husband that we had discovered a northwoods sailing paradise.
Within an hour of our arrival, we had checked in and were aboard the 26-foot sailboat we had rented for the week.
Our mooring was a little north of Bayfield, in Schooner Cove Marina. To our port, across an expanse of Lake Superior, lay Oak and Hermit Islands. A nest of bald eagles was on the adjacent mainland and its inhabitants would often fly overhead. We also glimpsed a family of otters swimming in the cove. At night, after sailing all day, we would drive into town for dinner and then return to the marina, to sit and have a late night drink and watch the moon shine over the bay.
Bayfield describes itself as the Gateway to the Apostles, an archipelago of 22 islands, ranging in size from tiny three-acre Gull Island to 14,000-acre Madeline Island.
In a tiny corner at the tip of Wisconsin, the islands, which were declared a National Seashore in 1970, are approximately 400 miles from Chicago, 200 miles from Minneapolis/St. Paul and 90 miles from Duluth. After finding that Bayfield did exist, my husband fell in love with its northwoods flavor. We have returned there several times. On our last trip in 1968, we found that despite its remote location the town had undergone a mini-boom in the tourist trade (the local grocery now sells fresh pasta and Perrier and there are several more gift shops and a new fern bar which serves gourmet hamburgers.)
Other than that, the town remains sleepily the same--a mixture of artists, fisherman and Native Americans, many of whom live on the nearby Red Cliff Reservation. And that`s just fine with many residents and visitors.
``We really don`t want anyone to know what we have here,`` said Richard Ojard, a resident of Knife River, Minn., who keeps his sailboat moored in Bayfield. Ojard, who with his family commutes to the Apostles every other weekend, drives three hours to get to his boat. But the structural engineer said it`s well worth the drive.
``The marina in Knife River is just two blocks from our house,`` he said. ``We used to keep our boat there, but we spent so much time just sailing over here that we decided why not just keep the the boat here. The coastline of Minnesota is beautiful, but nothing can beat the lure of island sailing.`` Boating isn`t the only way to enjoy the Apostles. Both Bayfield and Madeline Island (the only inhabited island) are small villages with restaurants, antique stores, and gift shops.
Elaborate Victorian residences, once the summer homes of wealthy lumber barons, are now bed and breakfast inns filled with period antiques and enough turn-of-the century charm to transport guests back to a different era. There are also hiking and camping facilities available at Big Bay State Park on Madeline Island, as well as numerous hiking trails and primitive camping spots on the other islands.
Both Bayfield and the Islands have a rugged history--having gone through several booms and busts. A late 18th Century lumber bonanza fizzled and was replaced by a thriving quarry stone industry
which produced much of the brownstone used in New York City dwellings. That business also died out. By the time Bayfield`s heydey ended in the mid 1930s, many of the islands were denuded of forests and animals, and the magnificent houses on both the mainland and Madeline Island were in desrepair.
Today, the islands are again covered with dense woods filled with deer, bear, beaver, coyote, and fox. A revived interest in architecture led to the creation of the Bayfield Historical Society and extensive renovations of the city`s homes. Brick streets are lined with small gingerbread cottages and turreted large homes with wide wraparound verandas.
Because Bayfield is built on a series of steep hills, even homes a mile away from the lakeshore offer panorama views of Superior. Other remnants of the area`s early life exist on the islands. The National Parks sponsors tours through an early 20th Century fishing camp on Manitou Island. These old ramshackled buildings offer a glimpse of a hard life where men spent isolated weeks playing cards, drinking and pulling nets from beneath the frozen waters before undertaking a 13 mile journey across the frozen bay to sell their fish in Bayfield.
A less primitive view of island life is found on Raspberry Island. Here, park rangers show visitors through the immaculately restored light house and keeper`s home. Besides offering historical sights, the islands with their carved sandstone rock formations, beaches, and nature trails, feature outdoor recreation.
There are many ways to navigate the Apostles. Both bareboat charters and fully outfitted and manned sailboats are available. The most intriguing of these is the two masted Sheila Yeates, which is a 10-year-old replica of a tall ship that sailed the ocean in the mid-1800s. Several excursion boats also leave Bayfield on daily tours of the islands.
Though hardy natives try to extend the season by several months, the sailing season is short on Lake Superior. The safest time, with the most predictable weather, is between June 20 and Labor Day. For those willing to risk ``iffy`` weather, the fall colors in late September and early October are beautiful.
My husband, who is an intrepid sailor, but a faint-hearted traveler, spent the last 100 miles of the drive muttering about sending our money to a mythical charter company in a town that didn`t exist.
Fortunately for me (and our bank account) there was a Bayfield and the first sight of its Victorian and Queen Anne mansions perched on hills overlooking Lake Superior helped allay his fears. But it was a glimpse of the Apostle Islands lining Bayfield`s coast that convinced my husband that we had discovered a northwoods sailing paradise.
Within an hour of our arrival, we had checked in and were aboard the 26-foot sailboat we had rented for the week.
Our mooring was a little north of Bayfield, in Schooner Cove Marina. To our port, across an expanse of Lake Superior, lay Oak and Hermit Islands. A nest of bald eagles was on the adjacent mainland and its inhabitants would often fly overhead. We also glimpsed a family of otters swimming in the cove. At night, after sailing all day, we would drive into town for dinner and then return to the marina, to sit and have a late night drink and watch the moon shine over the bay.
Bayfield describes itself as the Gateway to the Apostles, an archipelago of 22 islands, ranging in size from tiny three-acre Gull Island to 14,000-acre Madeline Island.
In a tiny corner at the tip of Wisconsin, the islands, which were declared a National Seashore in 1970, are approximately 400 miles from Chicago, 200 miles from Minneapolis/St. Paul and 90 miles from Duluth. After finding that Bayfield did exist, my husband fell in love with its northwoods flavor. We have returned there several times. On our last trip in 1968, we found that despite its remote location the town had undergone a mini-boom in the tourist trade (the local grocery now sells fresh pasta and Perrier and there are several more gift shops and a new fern bar which serves gourmet hamburgers.)
Other than that, the town remains sleepily the same--a mixture of artists, fisherman and Native Americans, many of whom live on the nearby Red Cliff Reservation. And that`s just fine with many residents and visitors.
``We really don`t want anyone to know what we have here,`` said Richard Ojard, a resident of Knife River, Minn., who keeps his sailboat moored in Bayfield. Ojard, who with his family commutes to the Apostles every other weekend, drives three hours to get to his boat. But the structural engineer said it`s well worth the drive.
``The marina in Knife River is just two blocks from our house,`` he said. ``We used to keep our boat there, but we spent so much time just sailing over here that we decided why not just keep the the boat here. The coastline of Minnesota is beautiful, but nothing can beat the lure of island sailing.`` Boating isn`t the only way to enjoy the Apostles. Both Bayfield and Madeline Island (the only inhabited island) are small villages with restaurants, antique stores, and gift shops.
Elaborate Victorian residences, once the summer homes of wealthy lumber barons, are now bed and breakfast inns filled with period antiques and enough turn-of-the century charm to transport guests back to a different era. There are also hiking and camping facilities available at Big Bay State Park on Madeline Island, as well as numerous hiking trails and primitive camping spots on the other islands.
Both Bayfield and the Islands have a rugged history--having gone through several booms and busts. A late 18th Century lumber bonanza fizzled and was replaced by a thriving quarry stone industry
which produced much of the brownstone used in New York City dwellings. That business also died out. By the time Bayfield`s heydey ended in the mid 1930s, many of the islands were denuded of forests and animals, and the magnificent houses on both the mainland and Madeline Island were in desrepair.
Today, the islands are again covered with dense woods filled with deer, bear, beaver, coyote, and fox. A revived interest in architecture led to the creation of the Bayfield Historical Society and extensive renovations of the city`s homes. Brick streets are lined with small gingerbread cottages and turreted large homes with wide wraparound verandas.
Because Bayfield is built on a series of steep hills, even homes a mile away from the lakeshore offer panorama views of Superior. Other remnants of the area`s early life exist on the islands. The National Parks sponsors tours through an early 20th Century fishing camp on Manitou Island. These old ramshackled buildings offer a glimpse of a hard life where men spent isolated weeks playing cards, drinking and pulling nets from beneath the frozen waters before undertaking a 13 mile journey across the frozen bay to sell their fish in Bayfield.
A less primitive view of island life is found on Raspberry Island. Here, park rangers show visitors through the immaculately restored light house and keeper`s home. Besides offering historical sights, the islands with their carved sandstone rock formations, beaches, and nature trails, feature outdoor recreation.
There are many ways to navigate the Apostles. Both bareboat charters and fully outfitted and manned sailboats are available. The most intriguing of these is the two masted Sheila Yeates, which is a 10-year-old replica of a tall ship that sailed the ocean in the mid-1800s. Several excursion boats also leave Bayfield on daily tours of the islands.
Though hardy natives try to extend the season by several months, the sailing season is short on Lake Superior. The safest time, with the most predictable weather, is between June 20 and Labor Day. For those willing to risk ``iffy`` weather, the fall colors in late September and early October are beautiful.