By Maine tourist standards, yesterday must have been a bust – a chilly, foggy, windy, rainy day. But, as far as I could tell, that wasn’t the case for the students in this week’s “Elements of Sailing I” class at the renowned WoodenBoat School. They seemed to be having a blast in the funky weather.
As you see above and below, these sailors had plenty of wind, were in what are perhaps the world’s best small sailboat classrooms and had some of the finest instructors there are.
Those classrooms are the keeled 12 ½-foot Herreshoffs (designed by Nathanael Herreshoff) and their center-boarded cousins, the 12 1/2 – foot Havens (an adaptation by Joel White). The classic “12 and ½” is 12 ½ feet in length at the waterline (15’ 10” overall), maneuverable and about as safe as a sailboat can be.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on August 17, 2026.)