Canvassing the Coasts / New England

ABOARD THE SHENANDOAH — Few skippers can coax 150 feet of schooner into port under canvas alone, make her hull lightly kiss wooden dock pilings and scarcely kick up a splinter. Capt. Robert J. Douglas is one of them.

Douglas is in his 34th year as master and captain of the Shenandoah--his obsession with yellow pine, white oak, sail power, and doing things the old way. For most of the visitors and residents on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., the island’s Steamship Authority diesel and steel ferries comprise the world of boats. For Douglas and two dozen guests, Shenandoah is the island flagship whose only agenda is determined by wind and tide.

Built in 1963 at the Harvey Gamage boat works of South Bristol, Maine, the Shenandoah was modeled by Douglas after a Civil War-era revenue cutter (the Coast Guard ship of the time)--a design known for sleek lines and exceptional speed in finicky winds. It was also a favorite with slave traders.

“That’s exactly why the government liked them too. Captains charged with running down rum smugglers and pirates usually caught what they chased,” says Douglas. Steven Spielberg, impressed with the ship’s authenticity, shot some of his new film (working title, “The Amistad”), about a 1838 slave-ship uprising, on board the Shenandoah.

Between Memorial Day and Columbus Day, hundreds of thousands of tourists are ground through Martha’s Vineyard’s daily mill of ferry, food and T-shirt shops. The Vineyard in summer is no tranquil, laid-back place.

But instead of traffic noise, guests on the Shenandoah get the groan of creaking oak and cloud and sky shows that sway behind a silhouette of rigging and spars.

Monday mornings aboard the Shenandoah are predictable. Most guests have spent the night on the ship and are antsy to get under way. They pester Douglas and the crew with questions of itinerary. “Will we make it to Nantucket today? What about Newport (Rhode Island) tomorrow? Are we ever going to see the mansions?” The answer of “We’ll see” is sincere, but small mutinies brew when the schooner lays at anchor past noon.

“It usually takes a couple of days for passengers to break into the rhythm of what sailing in a Civil War-era ship means. We can’t crank on the diesel and hope for cocktails in the port of choice,” says Douglas. “We move the way cargo and passengers moved 150 years ago.”

*

AThis six-day cruise, last September, was my second aboard the Shenandoah, so I knew what kind of time machine I was getting onto. Even before we left port, I was certain that the 25 other passengers, including my 12-year-old son, would quickly adapt to the 19th century.

And just a couple of days later, one first-time sailor told me, “It took until the second night to get into that rhythm of not caring about where we might, or might not, go. It actually was such a relief to be unburdened of having to plan.”

Shenandoah is a square topsail schooner. She’ll do 12 knots (15 mph) with no fuss at all, yet has no auxiliary power other than a diesel-driven yawl-boat--a kind of open, wooden tug stored aboard the ship. When the wind fails altogether, the yawl-boat nudges Shenandoah into anchorage.

A ship of this size and vintage needs tending around the clock, and passengers are invited to participate. At 7 sharp each morning, the decks are hosed down and the brass polish comes out. Breakfast won’t be served until this rite is complete, so guests have an incentive to join in.

To raise and lower several tons of sail, all hands are needed on deck. Under the orders of the bosun, the nautical equivalent of a drill sergeant, a dozen passengers line up on either side of the deck, heft a thick Manila line in hand, and wait for his commands. Inches at a time, the telephone-pole-size boom and sail rise skyward.

For the more energetic, the crew will give lessons on coiling lines and making them fast. For the intrepid, going aloft at the end of the day to help stow the topsails is a true test of acrobatic skills. But just lazing on deck with a drink or snuggling in with a book also are passenger options.

If Shenandoah has a port of choice it is Tarpaulin Cove on the shore of Naushon Island, just a few miles off the Vineyard’s north coast. The five-mile-long island is among the privately owned Elizabeth Islands, a Forbes family holding since the mid-1800s. Special arrangements allow anchorage at one of the most pristine coves left in New England. Occasionally, deer will act as escorts for evening beach walks. Site of a defunct lighthouse, the cove once served as a 19th century mail depot when Vineyard Sound was the main thoroughfare for the New York-to-Boston clipper trade.

From Naushon Island, Shenandoah commonly haunts Buzzards Bay and makes anchor in the small Massachusetts port towns of Mattapoisett and Marion, coastal communities with long maritime traditions that tourism and real estate development have yet to profane. When winds are perfect, calls at Cuttyhunk Island or Mystic, Conn., are occasional surprises on weeklong voyages.

Douglas concedes that he prefers the hidden bays and coves, but the cruise is typically marked by overnight stops at populated ports such as Block Island (off Rhode Island), New Bedford and Edgartown, Mass., where revitalized waterfronts offer nautical museums, shops and traditional New England chowder houses. Exactly where and when the ship will make a port call depends upon the serendipity of wind and tide.

On our first day, we anchor about half a mile off Naushon Island’s Tarpaulin Cove. I work my way up the rigging to the cross trees, a spot high on the mast. I nestle myself in the shady side, lean back on the ratlines, and settle in with a soggy magazine.

I hear splashing below and see my son swimming behind a dory, rowed by one of the crew. I try to reassure myself. My kid’s a good swimmer; he’s had years of lessons; he’s trailing right behind the dory. Parent paranoia is unfounded. But I can not chase away the notion of tomorrow’s headlines in the Boston dailies: “Coast Guard rescues floundering child at sea: Father error blamed.”

Before my obsessing can go any further, the mate’s whistle pierces the languid air. Douglas barks commands in a language of buntlines, clew lines and staysails. His crew scuttles up the rigging and wiggles by, paying me little attention. This is New England, and Douglas anticipates the undisciplined behavior of its weather much as parents try to head off cranky kids. A nor’easter is on the way, he tells us. We are incredulous. It feels tropical, sultry, more like Bermuda than Boston. But Douglas insists we head for New Bedford, the 19th century whaling capital, and the only port sheltered from what he predicts will be a two-day blow.

By the time the sails are set and anchor hauled, the wind has picked up and Shenandoah is clipping along at 8 knots (a little under 10 mph--4 or 5 knots in summer breezes is her typical speed). To take advantage of the fair weather while it lasts, the mate sets up the bosun’s chair off the bowsprit, a long wooden spar that juts out like a swordfish bill on the ship’s nose. His plan is to secure fearless volunteers in a trapeze-like harness and lower them into the wash at the front of the ship.

One at a time, the brave hike out on hands and knees, scoot down a line, and drag in the surging bow wave. Among the first is a local teenage girl, her face a dual portrait of terror and determination.

Before she is lowered down, the mate waxes philosophical. “Every day you put your trust in quarter-inch cables and seals in the brakes of your mom’s car. Your life depends on the strength of some unknown pieces of metal and rubber. Now you’re going to put your trust in yourself, in your own arms,” he says, sounding like a Kung Fu master. She pulls through the ritual, unscathed and beaming.

The weather starts to get dirty just as the last volunteer takes the dunking. In another hour we reach New Bedford harbor as a sheeting rain breaks out. Overnight the wind turns to a gale, pitching whitecaps over the breakwater, bouncing tired, rusting fishing vessels on their moorings. Shenandoah hardly sways. We hunker below at night, trading chanteys on an old pump organ, listening to a crewman croon bawdy sailor songs.

*

Early the next morning, Douglas sits on the boulders of the New Bedford harbor breakwater and looks out at Shenandoah rocking in a gray drizzle. He says that modeling Shenandoah after a 19th century revenue cutter was more than a simple desire to recreate a historical replica.

“I wanted to preserve a tradition, pass on the skills to sail her, keep alive the camaraderie of crew, the mentor system. One of my greatest satisfactions is seeing young men sign on in the most humble crew positions and climb through the ranks until they’ve wrung more water out of their socks than I’ve sailed on,” he says.

He also says that a prime goal was to give Martha’s Vineyard kids a chance to live part of their maritime history. Several island elementary schools are now incorporating weeklong sails into the fifth- and sixth-grade curriculum. The program has been successful enough that Douglas has hired a local boat builder for a half-million dollar refit of the Alabama, Shenandoah’s cousin ship, which for years has bobbed mastless in the harbor.

By midafternoon, the nor’easter is past. With a familiar rhythm, the crew sets sail, and now, accustomed to the drill, most passengers pitch in, heaving on lines to the mate’s cadence. The wind freshens to 20 knots from the west, and Shenandoah heels hard to her side. Steam spurts from the galley as coffee water splashes on the coal stove.

The schooner’s sails stiffen and lines groan. “There’s nothing like the sound of hemp rope and that much canvas stretching while the water surges by. By sunset, Shenandoah is at anchor in Cuttyhunk Island harbor.

*

A century ago, sailors on similar ships made do with hardtack and a measure of grog, but Yankee gourmet is the rule aboard Shenandoah. Platters of stuffed bluefish and striped bass, broiled clams and oysters, Yorkshire pudding, roast pork with plum sauce, steaming corn bread and fresh Vineyard vegetables are normal supper fare--laid out in all-you-can-eat boarding house anarchy. Breakfasts of buckwheat flapjacks and French toast made from ship-baked bread roll out each morning.

That everything is fixed on a coal and wood stove in a six-by-six-foot galley is nothing short of miraculous. Most meals are served below deck in the amber light of the main salon on twin-gimbaled tables, which stay level no matter how hard over Shenandoah may heel. Crew, captain and guests huddle together, close shouldered. One evening meal is enough to attest that the chef is the most important crewman under the skipper, but Douglas maintains otherwise. “No, our chef ranks above captain. I skipper a restaurant under sail,” he says.

Space aboard any windjammer is tight, but Shenandoah’s 11 private and semiprivate cabins use each niche to accommodate 29 passengers in spartan style. As a concession to modern times, each cabin is lit by electric lamps, and opening skylights pour sun and sea air below. But true to her historical period, one promptly accommodates to washing in a small basin, mastering on-deck hand pumps and portioning hot water from the galley stove.

Evenings roll slowly on Shenandoah. The dishes cleared, some of the passengers linger in the galley, helping with mountains of plates and silverware. The two-arm chowder pot, scraped empty by 30 greedy diners, is brought on deck and given a final rinse in the sea. A guitar and fiddle come out and go tandem on a dance tune.

One woman from Ohio, well into her 60s I’d guess, is maneuvering up the rigging. Counting aloud she makes it to the 18th batten, a kind of thin wooden step on a ladder of wire guy lines. That’s about 40 feet above the deck. She turns around, beaming. Her daughter, far below on deck whirls her motor drive for a dozen pictures of mom aloft.

“I kind of shamed your mom into it,” concedes one of the crew. “I told her how 10-year-olds who’d never been on a boat before hike up all the way to the top of the mast.”

With a pallid look, the daughter turns to Douglas for reassurance. “We’ve had even older folks go aloft,” he explains, “And the most serious injury we’ve had in 30 some years was a twisted ankle--a lady once tripped coming aboard.”

Back on deck the newly fearless mom goads her daughter. “Now your turn. I’ll take the pictures,” she says. “No chance, Mom. I’m sure you can’t work this camera,” she answers, her lie billowing like Shenandoah’s spinnaker.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

GUIDEBOOK

Set Sail for New England

If you go: The Shenandoah is operated by the Coastwise Packet Co. (P.O. Box 429, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568; telephone [508] 693-1699). 30 passengers, maximum, in variety of single, double, triple and quadruple cabins. No running water in the cabins but hot water available from galley. Ferry service to Vineyard Haven and parking are available at Woods Hole, Mass. For ferry information call (508) 693-0367.

Itineraries: Six-day trips from Vineyard Haven, late June through mid September. Begin on Monday morning and return Saturday afternoon. Passengers can spend Sunday evening on board before departure. Day sails from Vineyard Haven harbor certain weeks in July and August

Costs: Six-day trips $750 per adult, $600 for children 10-14, includes meals. Day sail, $85 per person, including lunch.

For more information: The Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism, 100 Cambridge St., 13th Floor, Boston, MA 02202; telephone (617) 727-3201. Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce, P.O. 1698, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568; tel. (508) 693-0085.