It was unusually hot here yesterday, but the WoodenBoat School’s visiting-sailors were enjoying the cool morning breezes in Great Cove. Sometimes, they wandered through moored boats:
Above,. you see three types of boats in the WBS fleet sailing yesterday: from left to right, it looks like we have a small shellback sailing dingy, a 12 ½’ Haven and an 18’8” Mackinaw. The Haven is Joel White’s more versatile center-boarded version of the Herreshoff 12 ½. ( I think her name is CRACKERJACK.)
Sometimes, they caught a good wind and struck off into the open waters of the Cove. Here’s the Haven again:
As far as I can tell, Great Cove was named by early European settlers here around the late 18th century. They gave it a literal geographic description of its shape in relation to nearby smaller coves. Because it has an adopted local descriptive (“toponymic”) geographic name, there apparently is no official record of any one specific name-giver or date of its first official mapping as Great Cove.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on July 3, 2026.)