Eggemoggin Reach Regatta
Come morning, surrounded by gleaming varnish and shining brass, devout crews will hoist sails and be off for the Castine Classic Yacht Regatta. Over the course of 20 miles, a flotilla of wooden thoroughbreds will gallop, wind willing and with tender in tow, southwest along the granite shores of Isleboro, before rounding up and turning into Camden, where they’ll rest for the night.
By dawn, the fleet will have grown. On the grounds of the Camden Yacht Club, skippers will await a final blessing by the race committee before setting off from a point off North Haven, perhaps tacking, perhaps reaching through the rocky outcroppings and pine-speckled isles of the Deer Island Thoroughfare. It will be a pageant of sail as the boats cleave the harbor in Stonington and make the final run for the holy land: Eggemoggin Reach and the cove in Brooklin.
| |Castine Yacht Regatta Can there be a more eye-pleasing sailboat than the Concordia yawl? This year marks the 75th anniversary of the C. Raymond Hunt- and Waldo Howland-designed classics, and they will be belles of the ball at the Castine Classic Yacht Regatta, set for July 31 and August 1. For a list of festivities and race details, visit _www.castineyachtclub.org_.|
As the setting sun casts late afternoon shadows, more sailboats — Herreshoffs, Concordias, Crockers and Aldens — will pour in, many accompanied by their own mother ships to house owners and crew.
Come Saturday, while dew dries on teak toerails, regatta co-founder Steve White of the Brooklin Boat Yard will gather the flock around him on shore. Soon cannons will blast and the race round Halibut Rocks — the Eggemoggin Reach Regatta — will be under way. As it should be. It’s August in Maine.
Mark Pillsbury
