Up and coming in Boothbay
Summer is the best season for being the editor of a magazine about the coast, because you can go out on boats and visit different harbors and call it work.
Publisher John K. Hanson Jr. and I spent a day “working” last week in the Boothbay region. Hodgdon Yacht Services President Sandy Spaulding organized our day-long tour. He wanted to show off both the Boothbay region and his company’s facilities.
We started with a visit to Hodgdon Yachts in East Boothbay where the first thing we saw was a huge sailboat bow sticking out of a shed. 154-foot-long Asolare (known as Scheherazade when she was built and launched at Hodgdon in 2000) is back at the yard for a quick refit. That’s just one of many projects underway at this 199-year-old yard that is now making a name for itself in the hi-tech yacht construction world. Other projects in the works there include a cold-molded sailboat and top-secret cutting edge work that no one is allowed to discuss, ever.
Company President Tim Hodgdon, the fifth generation in his family to run the yard, told us some great stories about the region and explained how his yard has connected with mega-yacht owners in Europe to drum up new business building sleek yacht tenders that he calls “limousines.” Tim has some great stores about local characters, as well. One great bit of advice was to look into the Cabbage Island Clambakes. Apparently during the summer, you can buy a ticket and go out to Cabbage Island a five and a half acre island in Linekin Bay for a great boat ride and good food (cabbageislandclambake.com). Other assets in the region, he said, include the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, which now draw thousands of people a year, and the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, which is doing cutting edge marine research.
Next stop for our tour was the former Wotton’s Wharf, now owned by Hodgdon and renamed Hodgdon Wharf. Dockmaster Ian McKay showed us the facilities, including a meeting space, lounge area for visiting boaters and even a small apartment available for transient yachters.
It was a gorgeous sunny day with not too much wind. So our next stop, of course, was the water. Ian took us in for a quick harbor tour of Boothbay — a highlight was seeing Gloucester, Mass., schooner Ernestina Morrissey on the rails at Boothbay Harbor Shipyard, where she is undergoing a massive rebuild.
Then we headed out to Cuckolds Island where the circa 1892 lighthouse has been meticulously restored and turned into a luxury inn (www.innatcuckoldslighthouse.com). Janet Reingold, who helped spearhead the restoration project, later told us the inn’s two suites are pretty much fully booked for this summer and she’s already getting bookings for next year.
Our boat ride took us past the east side of Southport Island and then into the mouth of the Sheepscott, around Pratt’s Island and into Cozy Harbor, home of the Southport Yacht Club whose headquarters are in a lovely historic cape, and the new Oliver’s Restaurant. Oliver’s was built by Boothbay’s Paul Coulombe, a wealthy resident who has poured money into the community, including rebuilding the area country club into a world-class golf course. Oliver’s used to be the site of a diner owned by a man named Gus Pratt. Several people including Tim Hodgdon, told us that Pratt was famous for filling one order at a time, cooking each burger one by one instead of all at once, which meant famously long waits for food. When Pratt’s closed the wharf fell into disrepair. Eventually the town acquired it and Coulombe rebuilt the wharf, now a busy commercial pier, and a new building, which he leases from the town for Oliver’s.
We ate a wonderful seafood meal outside on the deck with Reingold, Sandy Spaulding, and Ian McKay. Allyson Melchreit, who manages both Oliver’s and the Boothbay Harbor Country Club, stopped to say hi. While we ate, we watched a small flotilla of opti’s from the Southport Yacht Club head out into the harbor as part of a sailing class.
Hodgdon Yacht Services, our next stop, was known as Boothbay Region Boatyard until the yard merged with Hodgdon last year. General Manager Matt Elder described a recent refit project and said business was good. As we chatted on the wide wharf there, the yard’s crew was launching an Island Packet sloop, which was headed for the Pierce Yacht Sales rendezvous in Boothbay Harbor next week.
Last but not least by any means, came a tour of the Boothbay Harbor Country Club. The club was founded in 1921 as a 9-hole course. Coulumbe bought it in 2013 intending to make the course world-class and the club itself into a hub for the Boothbay peninsula and its residents. The course now has 18-hole challenging holes designed by Bruce Hepner.
Allyson commandeered a golf cart and took us for a quick tour. I think she might have honed her driving skills at a race track as she handled the tight turns and steep inclines of the cart track quite skillfully while all the time talking enthusiastically about the course.
At the first hole we watched a class of children working on their game. As we drove up to the highest point on the course we passed streams and waterfalls and golfers of all ages most driving carts like us, as well as one gentlemen who plays the 18 hole on foot everyday. Allyson estimated that he must walk almost five miles.
A grand new clubhouse, now being built by the Knickerbocker Group, is scheduled to open in the spring of 2016. Our last stop was the well-equipped Pro Shop where we bought a Boothbay Harbor Golf Course bucket hat that became a prized birthday gift for our 13 year old son. — Polly Saltonstall