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Tag: American Eagle

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Should I buy a boat?

Skylarking II, 18×24, oil on linen, $1855, includes shipping in the continental US.

When I row in my local harbor, I always tell the person Iā€™m with, ā€œIf youā€™re looking for something for my birthday…ā€ I love rowing quietly around, lusting after sailboats. My heartā€™s desire is never a big boat, but itā€™s always beautiful, sleek and wooden. Something I can sail solo would be best.

Of course, this is pure nonsense. The mooring fee alone would scrap my budget. Add to that the work and expense of hauling and winterizing. Iā€™m not talking through my hat here; we had a beautiful old wooden boat until I was in my late teens. Besides, my yard is already cluttered with a skiff, canoe and dinghy, none of which I have time for.

American Eagle rounding Owls Head, 6×8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 unframed includes shipping and handling in the continental US.

I was reminded of this the other day while listening to the podcast Ridiculous Crime. The hosts were joking that the stupidest thing to do with lottery winnings was to buy a boat. ā€œMy father always said itā€™s a hole in the water into which you pour money,ā€ said host Zaron Burnett. Iā€™ll add two more jokes to his repertoire: ā€œThe two best days in a boat owner’s life are the day he buys a boat and the day he sells it.ā€ And, ā€œa friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.ā€

Should I buy a boat? Iā€™m afraid not, although writing this post has darn near killed me. But there are other ways to enjoy them.

I have a friend who is a boat

I am buddies with a very big boat, the schooner American Eagle. Not only is she the best looking schooner in the fleet, she was impeccably repurposed by Captain John Foss and maintained by Captain Tyler King.

I get to go sailing on her once a year. Even better, my job isnā€™t night watches or deck swabbing. Instead, I teach watercolor painting. And if you go with us, you too can sail and paint and give no thought at all to cooking or polishing brightwork.

My daughter made a beautiful short reel for Instagram that catches the essence of this trip (above). Hereā€™s another that captures a foggy day on the water. This isnā€™t sailing with carbon fiber sails that you can adjust with your key fob while surfing the web on your phone. This is sailing as itā€™s been done for centuries. Itā€™s a wooden boat with traditional rigging, and the opportunities to sail like that grow fewer and fewer.

Hang a boat on a wall

Drying Sails, 9X12, oil on canvasboard, $869 framed.

Another way to enjoy sailing is with a painting. I was in an oncologistā€™s waiting room the other day (for a routine check-up) and noticed that the walls are covered with boat art. They chose boats and the sea because theyā€™re calming, and people in crisis need all the tranquility they can get. But so do you and I, every day.

I paint boats because I love them, and because their journeys are much like our journeysā€”we go through storms, we have larky bright mornings, and we rest at anchor. I think those are all good reasons to own a boat painting. And as Zaron Burnett would probably tell you, it’ll cost you a lot less to buy a painting of a boat than to keep a real boat. The maintenance is easier, and youā€™re likely to keep it longer, too.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Sunset sail

Sunset sail, 14X18, oil on linen, $1594 framed includes shipping and handling in the continental US.

My husband is under the sweet illusion that I can identify any boat in the Maine windjammer fleet from the top of Beech Hill. From that distance, lobster boats are specks on the water, sloops are brilliant white triangles, and schooners are a blurred sawtooth pattern.

Closer, I find it hard to identify them by their sail plans alone. Some have topsails and some don’t, and the mast heights and rakes are different. The trouble is, I can never remember which are which. I’m much better on hull color and shape, but they are often not visible when a boat is far away.

When painting a boat, the details of rigging matter. Before I moved to Maine, I had a commission to paint one of the schooners in Camden Harbor. I wrestled with it for two days and was happy with the results. Two wharf rats stopped to look at it as I packed up.

“Should we tell her?” said one.

“Nah,” said the other.

I couldn’t figure it out then, and to this day I still don’t know what I’d done wrong. But I console myself with the knowledge that the buyers probably knew even less than I did.

A completely different evening on the water, from this fall’s watercolor workshop.

Sunset Sail is not intended to be any specific boat. She’s meant to be sort of an Everyman of schooners.

You can watch a thousand sunsets across the ocean and none of them will be the same. That’s also true of schooners-by the time they’ve bobbed along the coast for a century or more, they’ve developed their own character. Of course I have my favorites-American Eagle, obviously, because she’s the most beautiful of boats and I get to sail on her every year. Then there’s the ketch Angelique with her sweet red sails and plumb bow, Heritage for its beautiful hull colorsā€¦ oh, who am I kidding? I love them all.

I have the great fortune to be able to watch the sun rise or set on the ocean any time I want. In this painting, sunset is an explosive kaleidoscope of color. Tomorrow’s sunset will be completely different. In fact, I could paint a sunset every day for the rest of my life and never repeat myself.

Sunrise from Beech Hill, earlier this month.

CODA: I spent some time yesterday perusing Black Friday deals on my phone. Here are my observations:

  • The deals I saw were heavily slanted towards electronics. How many of these does a person need?
  • Nothing seemed like a great deal to me; I compared Black Friday prices with commonly-available discount prices on products I know. I was underwhelmed.
  • Black Friday shopping is boring, whether in person or online.

That leads me to remind you about one of my current anti-Black-Friday deals: you can get 10% off this or any other painting on this website until the end of the year by using the code THANKYOUPAINTING10.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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How I fell in love (with a boat)

American Eagle in Drydock, 12X16, $1159 unframed.

Shortly after I moved to Maine, I presented myself at the North End Ship Yard in Rockland to ask if I could paint. It was spring, and the annual rite of fit out was just starting. This is when the windjammers are lifted out of the water, their hulls scraped and painted, and below-the-waterline repairs done. Large wooden vessels spend all year in the water, and each boat spends just a few days on the rails. If they pass their Coast Guard inspections, they are allowed to sail another season.

It was there that I met Captain John Foss of American Eagle, and Captains Doug and Linda Lee of Heritage. They’ve co-owned the shipyard for almost fifty years. They are tolerant of artists and allowed me to mooch around the yard all spring.

When that season ended, Captain John said, “Why don’t you go out with us on our last cruise? You can see what this is all about.” I foolishly brought oil paints, which got all over his beautifully-finished deck, but he’s a very even-tempered fellow.

Schooner and double rainbow. That’s almost as good as a unicorn!

The next year, we started our watercolor workshop, because the paint is easier to get off the fittings.

I think American Eagle is the best-looking schooner in the Maine Windjammer fleet. (The ketch Angelique comes a close second.) I’m not saying that just because I sail on her. Some schooners, like Angelique and Heritage, are modern reproductions of 19th century designs. Others are repurposed 19th century working boats. They tend towards the ruffles and ribbons of the Edwardian age.

In contrast, American Eagle was built in 1931, part of the last generation of the Gloucester schooner fishing fleet. She has an elegant, austere silhouette. I’d almost call her Art Deco, she’s so sleek. The graceful arc of her prow, which is all that shows in American Eagle in Dry Dock, is a hint that the whole of her is equally graceful.

That first fit out impressed me with the amount of sheer, hard graft the captains put in readying their boats for the water. Of course, they don’t do it alone; each year they get a new crop of youngsters working as deckhands or messmates. (If I’d known such a gig existed when I was 18 or 21, my life would have been very different.)

Trina Ross, Savra Frounfelker, and Donna Gray playing at ‘Three Men in a Boat.’

Before they ever go out, these hands scrape, strip, varnish, paint, caulk, lug, climbā€¦ in short, any difficult physical labor you can imagine, they do. And the captains are right there with them, even up past an age when any sane person would have retired.

What I didn’t realize was that life on the water is as strenuous as life in the winter. Not only does the crew handle the ship (and there are no labor-saving devices on board), they also prepare meals and serve passengers. They take turns staying awake at night to keep watch, because the schooners anchor in deep water.

Everything is done by hand on a windjammer. That’s Mike Prairie holding the line.

Two years ago, Eagle went out with a new captain, Tyler King, who is the same age as my youngest kid. I’d sailed with him as John’s mate, but that’s different from having all the responsibility for boat, crew and passengers on his young shoulders. On our first cruise together, I watched him do a quick evasive maneuver with utter calm and competence. He’s an excellent sailor and a sharp cookie.

The chances that I can convince my husband I need a sailboat are slim to nil. Realistically, I can’t even take out the skiff I own. But I’m blessed to be able to go cruising during my watercolor workshop, and I don’t have to do any of the heavy lifting.

Remember to bookmark December 1 for our first Virtual First Friday, starting at 7 PM. I think it’s going to be a gas.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Ecotourism and art

Painting aboard schooner American Eagle.

The track up Beech Hill is my daily morning routine. Occasionally I run across C-, who’s a co-owner of an elegant windjammer plying Penobscot Bay.

As you know, I teach two watercolor workshops each year aboard the schooner American Eagle. These workshops combine two things I love: sailing and painting. I get to do them without the responsibility of owning a boat, and my students get to do them without the responsibility of carrying their gear. (I supply it.)

I’m always thinking about ways to get more people excited about the combination of painting and sailing, because I can’t imagine anything better. Windjammers tend to attract older people, and that’s great, except that I don’t really understand why younger people don’t love them too.

“I had an idea that windjamming is the natural extension of eco-tourism,” I told C- the other day. “But I can’t figure out a way that you could stack 18 kayaks on your deck. They wouldn’t fit.”

“We don’t have to,” she pointed out. “The boats themselves are the original form of ecotourism.”

That’s my girl! American Eagle modeled for this painting, called Breaking Storm, 30X48, oil on linen, $5,579.00 including shipping in continental US.

What is ecotourism?

Ecotourism is defined as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education.”*

Schooners rely on wind power to glide silently through the sea; hence their moniker of ‘windjammers.’ We pass ledge and small islands where sea birds and eagles nest. I’ve seen sea otters, dolphins, and, memorably, a whale breaching off Rockland harbor last fall.

Because American Eagle carries several smaller vessels, including a seine boat, we can row to uninhabited islands, which we visit on a carry-in, carry-out basis. And those interested in studying quaint, endangered local cultures need look no farther than the lobstermen of coastal Maine.

Lobster pound, 14X18, oil on canvas, $1,594.00 framed, includes shipping in the continental US. G**gle recently disapproved this image because it violates their policy. “Local legal requirements and safety standards (live animals).”

So why hasn’t the windjammer industry tapped into the $200 billion annual ecotourism market? I suspect it is because we believe that to see something exotic, you must go overseas. Having traveled extensively, I know this is nonsense. New Englanders and Nevadans may-nominally-share the same language, but we live in very different physical, economic and cultural communities. Ours is a vast country, twice as large as the EU. It has amazing diversity, including more than 95,000 miles of coastline.

Maine’s little piece of that includes 17 million acres of forestland and 3,500 miles of rocky coast. There are more than 3000 sea islands (and who knows how many on inland lakes). Only about 200 have more than four structures, meaning that the whole coastline is covered with forestland, bluffs, cliffs, and coves-and all the wildlife that goes with that.

As a painter, I find that irresistible, and I’m not alone. That’s why the Maine coast is infested with artists and galleries.

The Wave, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 includes shipping in continental US. You can tell it was painted from a boat, rather than from shore, because the wave isn’t horizontal.

Where happiness lies

“A wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” wrote Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert. We’re happiest when we’re living in the moment, totally focused on what we’re doing. A wandering person, on the other hand, tends to be a sublimely happy soul. New experiences sharpen our focus in a way that material goods can’t. Soon after they’re purchased, our new car, phone or dress fade into the background; in fact, they’re only notable if there is a story to their acquisition.

Psychologists tells us that experiences bring people more enduring happiness than do possessions. Which, I suppose, is why I love the paintings I’ve done from the deck of American Eagle so much. They are treasured memories of happy days.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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A vacation from the news

A silvery sky off the stern of American Eagle.

ā€œThere have been few more momentous weeks in British history, or indeed in world history,ā€ Bruce Anderson wrote in the Spectator. The Queenā€™s funeral coincided with the rout of Russia. I missed it all. I was coasting around Penobscot Bay on the schooner American Eagle, teaching watercolor, as I do twice a year.

I would normally have watched the Queenā€™s funeral, either in real time on the internet, or by flipping to the BBC every five minutes as I worked. I donā€™t watch television, but I do read voraciously. I was raised with The Buffalo News delivered every afternoon. Reading the news is a hard habit to break.

The sea is a strangely bonhomous place.

Back then, the news was structured. The front section gave us international and national news of import. The second section was local news. Then living, and then sports. After that came the auto ads and classifieds. All neatly segmented and focused on a local audience. Those of us who wanted more could take the New York Times on Sundayā€”back when it really was the nationā€™s ā€˜newspaper of record.ā€™

One would occasionally get a ā€˜Florida manā€™ storyā€”if it was sufficiently amusingā€”but paper and ink and the trucks to drive them around were expensive. Editors carefully selected what went in our local paper. Moreover, we read it and then we set it aside. We didnā€™t come back every hour for more.

We picnicked at Burnt Island.

Today my phone tells me ā€˜The Real Reason Why Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Allegedly Went Back to Montecito Fumingā€™. I can read about a woman who faked her own kidnapping, a teenager shot to death by someone who thought the kid was a political extremist, another teen who died in a football game, or a Missouri mother looking for the remains of her murdered child. No wonder so many Americans take antidepressants. The world isnā€™t inherently any worse than it used to be, but all its ugliness is being served up to us constantly.

Out at sea, there is only spotty signal. (Unfortunately, itā€™s improving over time, as more islands get coverage.) My husbandā€”an electrical engineerā€”once told me how he could fix that empty space. I looked at him horrified. ā€œDonā€™t even think about it!ā€ As long as our captain can communicate his position to other boats and the Coast Guard, thatā€™s enough contact.

Heather fishing for mackerel long before breakfast.

While the world revolved without us this week, we painted. A Hurricane Island crew stopped and talked to us about their scallop research. We watched two bald eagles doing an amazing dance over a bit of ledge. A finback whale breached behind our stern. Porpoises did their lovely cartwheels. Seals were everywhere; so were schooling fish and the gulls that eat them.

Heather broke up her painting by fishing for mackerel. She caught five.

One of Heather's watercolors from off Northhaven Village.

It was unusually cold for September, but that didnā€™t make it bad weather. It mizzled, it fogged, the wind came up and went down, the sky was grey, then slate blue and violet, and finally brilliant blue. We picnicked on lobster, corn and fresh vegetables.

Finally, on our last morning, it came down in buckets. We watched it from beneath a deck awning while eating hot biscuits and frittata, wearing waterproofs.

An opening in the sky.

I canā€™t say why, but art is restricted by anxiety. Nervous tension stops us from reaching our real potential. Thereā€™s something about the ocean that releases that, and frees us from the need to produce something ā€˜greatā€™.

By my last day aboard, I find that I never reach for my phone except to take photos. The real challenge is to bring that home, to stop being so plugged in. Yes, we need to be informed citizens, but a little bad news goes a long way.

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Gone sailing

Breaking Storm, oil on linen

Sailing is a great disperser of cares.

Breaking Storm, oil on linen, available
Breaking Storm, oil on linen, available.Ā That’s of courseĀ American EagleĀ in the starring role.

By the time you read this, I’ll be sailing in Penobscot Bay, teaching my first workshop of the season aboard the schooner American Eagle. Between the pressures of work and some personal issues, I’ve been struggling since I got home from walking across Britain. Sailing is just the tonic I need right now.

Occasionally, someone will tell me that they suffer terribly from mal de mer and ask me for suggestions. There are better medications available these days, but if you really can’t look at a glass of water without getting queasy, you’re better off just taking a different kind of workshop.

You never know what you’re going to find in the ocean.

But if you’ve got the stomach for it, sailing is a great disperser of cares. You’re at one with the boat; you have to be, as ignoring her swings and rolls will cause you to fall down. That puts you totally in the moment, watching the sails, the waves, the shifts in air, and being an active part of the amazing complexity of 19th century transport technology. Sail power is the original renewable energy resource, but the boat doesn’t go if we don’t help. Someone has to hoist those sails, and we’re it.

Painting and sailing and sailing and painting…

Schooners are defined not by their hull shape but by their rigging; they’re fore-and-aft rigged on two or more masts, with the foremast generally shorter than the mainmast. They were the workhorses of the preindustrial sea, designed mainly for fishing and to move cargo. The overwhelming majority of them were never meant as passenger boats. The whole Maine windjammer thing was an impossible idea realized by people who primarily wanted to preserve and sail these big, beautiful beasts. The best way to do that turned out to be to operate them for the tourist trade.

There’s occasional shore leave… and lobster.


One of these people is Captain John Foss, who restored American Eagle and sailed her for 37 years. He’s passed the wheel to Captain Tyler King. I’ve sailed with Tyler, and he’s a nice young man who clearly knows what he’s doing. I’m quite confident Tyler won’t hit anything, but I’ll sure miss the old gaffer. But as they say, the only constant in this world is change.

I won’t be back until Saturday, so there will be no blog post here on Friday. But on Saturday afternoon, I’ll open my gallery at 394 Commercial Street, Rockport, for the first time this year. It’s going to be a soft opening (meaning I don’t have my act together) but I sure would enjoy seeing you if you want to stop by.