The prize for the first windjammer to overnight in Great Cove this year goes to – drum roll and trumpet fanfare, please – AMERICAN EAGLE! How appropriate for the nation’s 250th birthday.
Here you see her yesterday morning at 5 a.m., just as the low dawn light reached the Cove and gilded her gold. Several hours later she was admiring herself in the mirror as her passengers awoke:
Below, you’ll see her resting and leaving the Cove in the haze of mid-day. Between those times, there was a special moment for me.
After breakfast, most of the EAGLE passengers were ferried ashore to explore the campus of the renowned WoodenBoat School; a few people remained on deck. This is not unusual for visiting coastal cruisers. However, while I was sitting on the Cove’s green bank watching the sun-lit schooner swing slowly around her anchor in a nice salty breeze, I heard something unusual.
Then the mystery made itself clear: someone was stumming and plucking a banjo and the notes were wafting off of her deck over to me. It nicely completed a moment of maritime nostalgia. It seems that the EAGLE is on a 5-night cruise ending June 12 that features onboard modern folk music, among other things, according to her schedule.
The EAGLE was launched in 1930 out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, under the name ANDREW & ROSALIE, according to the literature. Her name was changed out of patriotic sympathy during Worl War II. She’s a tidy 122 feet long overall and a high rider. She now homeports in Rockland, Maine. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on June 10, 2026.)