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Most weekends during July and August will find a small fleet of 16’ 1” gaff-rigged Friendship Catboats racing around the buoys and islands of Friendship Harbor and Hatchet Cove of Muscongus Bay of midcoast Maine. These venerable sailboats have been the focus of waterfront activity on Davis and Martin Points for more than seventy years. Most of the current summer residents learned to sail in one of these boats, and that spans from three to five generations. I learned to sail by crewing for my brother in the late 1940s in the Ella Marie, which was already 20 years old at that time.

The first Friendship Catboat was designed around 1925 by Billy Kirkpatrick, an artist and avid sailor who summered on Davis Point in Friendship. Over the next four years eight catboats were built to this design by local boat builders Gene Brown and Archie Thompson for Kirkpatrick and other sailing enthusiasts of the summer colony. The cost was $100.

When new, these boats were well matched and the skills of the racing skippers determined the winners. In the spirit of fun of those days “The Royal Friendship Yacht Club – Commodore’s Cup” was created in the form of an old, dented tin coffee pot, and it was awarded to the winners of the Labor Day race. Their names were dutifully scratched with a nail onto the “Cup” from 1935 to 1966, when it was retired due to lack of room for further winners. Because of the continued interest in sailing and the popularity of these boats, in 1940 the local postmaster and boat builder, Carlton Simmons, built four more from the original lines: Confusion, Cotly, Stormy Petrel and Toby. The Toby is currently nearing completion of a restoration in the barn of the “Outsiders Inn” B&B in Friendship by owner Bill Michaud, who plans to be sailing Toby in the summer of 2005. In 1979 Bill and Priscilla Ambrose had the Elsa built by the Maine Maritime Museum’s Restoration Shop in Bath, Maine, using the lines of the Ananannie. The next year local builder Doug Lash built 6 more: Andiamo, Barbara, Claire Madge, Harlequin, RattleYaDags, and Skimmer. Most recently in 2000 Augie Mende of Belfast built Hester C. and Tatiana. Several of the original hulls are still around, although they are largely rebuilt. The racing tradition started in the 30s has evolved into weekly informal races among the catboat fleet, and a once-a-year Friendship Chowder race in which the Friendship Catboats sail as a separate class with a prize of a silver tray inscribed with the name of the winning boat.The newer boats tend to be the winners of these races.

With a length of 16’ 1”, a beam of 5’ 8” and a draft of 4.3” with the centerboard up, the Friendship Catboats are surprisingly good sailers. They point well for a centerboard catboat, run smoothly with the wind, and can even be made to plane on a broad reach in a stiff breeze. The original boats were flat-bottomed, planked crosswise with cedar with a slight rocker curve fore to aft; the side planks and decking were pine; the stem, frames, transom, knees, keelson, coaming and beams are of oak. The 18’ spruce mast is stepped about 18” aft of the stem and supports 130 sq. ft. of sail bent onto the spruce gaff and boom. The large curved rudder is removable with pintle and gudgeon attachments to the slanted transom.

In the summer of 2003 my niece offered me the opportunity to sail the Claire Madge in one of the informal Sunday races, and, without thinking, I accepted. It had been a decade since I had sailed in one of the Friendship Catboats, but the opportunity to revisit my youth in my seventh decade of life was too much to refuse. What followed was a conflictive interaction between my mortal limitations and the excitement of memory and reality of these wonderful sailboats.

A short row in a skiff brought me and Nina, my wife of many happy sailing years, to our craft of the afternoon. My first step across from the skiff to the interior of the Claire Madge revealed the fact that the boat had not been bailed in two weeks. Interior water covered my ankle as the boat listed sharply toward me. The interior of the cockpit is divided fore and aft by a thwart affixed to the aft end of the centerboard box. On each side of the centerboard box are grated floorboards with slatted backrests that lean against the forward coaming of the cockpit. The crew is expected to sit on the floorboards forward of the thwart, when he/she is not required to sit to windward on the deck amidships. Another section of floorboards fits aft of the thwart on each side, so that the skipper has the choice of sitting on the aft section of the deck, or, at a lower profile, on the aft sections of the floorboards. After securing the skiff’s painter to the bail of the traveler astern, we set to the task of bailing. This is no easy task, as it requires the temporary removal of each of the grated floorboards in turn to get at the noxious liquid in the interior, that, without doubt, would soak the seated clothing of skipper and crew as the boat listed to leeward around the race course. Next is the installation of the rudder and tiller to get them out of the cockpit. The rudder weighs about 20 pounds and its installation into the gudgeons on the transom is made more challenging by the fact that one has to kneel on the short afterdeck over the traveler bail to peer downward and forward due to the forward slant of the transom. Once in place the rudder is secured by inserting the tiller through the traveler bail into the slot in the rudder shank. This, then, prevents the rudder from inadvertedly leaping out of the gudgeons in rough seas.

The next step is to lower the centerboard to help stabilize the boat by taking the metal shank and thrusting it downward into the centerboard box. An interesting aside from a recent race occurred when a skipper, Kem Evans, did just this, a few minutes before the start of the race, only to discover that the shank had separated from the centerboard. Without hesitation, even though he was sailing single-handed, he attached a line to his waist, hopped over the side, under the hull, and re-emerged on the opposite side, where he clambered aboard again and drew the circumferal line tight to retrieve the centerboard back into the box, so that the shank could once again be reattached. Quick thinking, Kem!

Raising the single sail is an art as well. There are two halyards: one for the throat and the other for the peak of the gaff. The wind conditions of the day, stiff versus gentle breeze, dictate the tension that one places on each halyard. Most importantly is to tune them so that there are no wrinkles in the smooth surface of the mainsail.

All is now ready. We are ready to cast off. This is another problem. I untie the skiff at the stern, carry the line forward along the starboard side, and now, lying belly down on the foredeck with the two halyard cleats gouging into my midriff, reaching around the mast to grasp the mooring line from the main cleat on the deck between the stem and the mast, I tie a bowline with the painter, remembering to pass the painter forward of the stay. Casting the lines overboard, I lunge aft to retrieve the tiller and be off for a day of racing.

A few preliminary tackings back and forth over the starting line before the starting gun maneuvers us into a prime position to be first over the line at the committee boat end of the line. There were six boats in the race this day, and the Claire Madge had a reputation of sailing in the back of the fleet. Nevertheless, we held our own on the failing NW breeze toward the weather mark. Then the wind vanished completely. My crew, never one to suffer frustration lightly, became ever more salty, until after nearly 10 minutes of slatting in the gentle swell, distant cat’s paw ripples appeared from the prevailing SW breeze direction. At that point we were 200 yards to windward of the nearest boat, so, with the benefit of the first breeze, we rounded that mark, and the rest of the course with an ever-increasing lead, so that we crossed the finish line a full 12 minutes ahead of the next boat. Our egos were inflated far beyond any exceptional skill that we older and wiser sailers brought to this race. Our ages were mostly twice the age of the other crews of the boats in the race. However, we found that our bodies, in having to negotiate the limited spaces over and around the centerboard box and cross thwart, suffered mightily with bumps and bruises that were not part of those youthful memories of sailing in these boats, oh! so many years ago. It was a wonderful afternoon. We were swelled with the feeling that “old age and treachery had once again triumphed over youth and skill.” I acknowledge my victory was not due to any superior skill of mine, my crew, or the innate swiftness of my craft, but due to the ever-present fickleness of the wind and the sea. It is always an inspiration and a joy to go for a sail in the afternoon, but especially in an exceptional kind of boat that has such a history and nostalgia for me as one of the Friendship Catboats.

Back Yard Yacht Builders

A non-commercial association of amateur boat-builder enthusiasts.

All our wooden boats are Stevenson designs.