It’s always a treat when WoodenBoat Magazine brings its WoodenBoat Show to town. The five-mile journey doesn’t require much gas, the lodgings cost about the same as they do every night, and local knowledge makes finding a parking spot much easier, even in tourist-clogged Mystic. The Mystic Seaport, with its wealth of nauticalia, provides a superb venue, although I can’t say how it compares to other host locales, since I have been too lazy to follow the show elsewhere. I just wait until it comes around again, and it does.

Egret atop her matching white Volvo station wagon click images to enlarge

I had tossed Egret atop her matching white Volvo station wagon, thinking I might see the show from the water, too, when suddenly I realized that all I needed to be guerrilla exhibitor were signs in the back windows of the car. A good spot in the parking lot or on a nearby street might reach almost as many people as a booth, and at a fraction of the cost. I doubled back to the computer and whipped up a bit of blatant self-promotion, starting with “BUILD THIS BOAT!” and finishing with “See articles about Egret at duckworksmagazine.com.” A few dabs with the glue stick and I was off. I am still struggling with the ethics of this approach, but as we walked toward downtown for dinner Friday we could see someone in the lot looking her over and reading the signs. Saturday she was parked on Oak Street with her stern sticking far enough out into the sidewalk on Greenmanville to catch an eye, and as I was locking the car someone asked me “Who designed this boat?”

It did not occur to me until after the fact to report on this festive occasion, so the coverage is by no means comprehensive. I was merely there to look and learn and see old friends, but I had a camera in hand and there was good light, so photos were taken and a few words have been written to go with them.

Friday I was on land and didn’t shoot a lot, but after dinner the sunset was hard to ignore.

Gammin’ with Uncle Thad

Mystic River

Saturday I put Egret in the water at about 18:30 and chased some boats that were out for an evening sail. At first it seemed that mizzens were mandatory.

Calico Jack

Not all the scenes were backlit. One hundred and eighty degrees away, the boats alongshore were bathed in the increasingly golden evening glow.

Valora

I was not the only aesthete out hunting the good shots. One was on land, dodging between the sheds as the light spilled out of the clouds. Another was being ferried about in a red and white skiff. He had to be cropped out of some of my photos, and I suppose he had to cut me from some of his, but we tried to stay out of each other’s way. I didn’t quite catch his name: Mendlowhich, Mendlowhatz, I forget. He does calendars.

Stalking the Wild Photograph

This photographic feeding frenzy was precipitated, I think, by the embarkation of the goliath Beetle cat, Kathleen, from her berth, and by the anticipation that a bank of cumulus would give way to another flood of illumination, which it did.

Kathleen

After Kathleen’s promenade I paddled back around Lighthouse Point and found some of the best boats in the last light. The sandbaggers on a double-decker trailer were from another maritime museum. Brilliant is a 1932 Sparkman & Stephens schooner maintained by the Mystic Seaport. To the right of Brilliant in the third of the final photos is Walter Greene, a wood sister ship to Sidney Herreshoff’s originally fiberglass Arion. The last is the boat I could be most comfortable in, Thad Danielson’s Albert Strange yawl Sea Harmony.

Sandbaggers Bull and Bear

l-r: Pampatar, Brilliant, Walter Greene

I don’t know whether the stealth exhibition of Egret convinced anyone to order plans, but I did have an excellent time at the show (that’s the point, isn’t it?) and I was fortunate to have had such good light, and so many fine boats at which to point a camera.