Whale Ho! Bringing Out the Best of Sag Harbor

“What little time we were not on lists and equipment or in grudging sleep we went to the pier and looked at boats, watched them tied to their buoys behind the breakwater — the dirty boats and the clean painted boats, each one stamped with the personality of its owner.”

John Steinbeck, the great American novelist who spent his final days in Sag Harbor, and was one of the founders of the Old Whalers Festival, penned those words in an essay he wrote in 1941 near the Sea of Cortez titled “Boat-Shaped Mind.” He added that “a man builds the best of himself into a boat — builds many of the unconscious memories of his ancestors.”

There is no singular owner of the whaleboats used for racing at HarborFest, but they do reflect the soul and memories of an entire community. It was 1964 on the heels of the second Old Whalers Festival when Steinbeck and his committee of friends purchased a half-dozen “miniature whaleboats,” which are the same 14-foot rowing vessels we use today. The boats, which hold two rowers, a tiller and a person who throws a harpoon toward a fake whale off Long Wharf, have been kept afloat thanks to minor repairs over the years and a major amount of donated materials, time and labor.

That was until the boats started to truly show their age at last year’s festival, with water seeping through the hulls and the usual wear and tear having become much more of an issue. Earlier this year, the HarborFest Whaleboat Committee and The Sag Harbor Express, both of which I lead, joined with the Sag Harbor Chamber of Commerce and its president, Ellen Dioguardi, to launch a fundraiser to “Save the Whaleboats,” with an event at Baron’s Cove that brought in $13,000 in a single night to help pay for the boats’ restoration.

That financial launch gave Rick Pickering and his team at Ship Ashore Marina, where the boats and our large white whale have been stored for the past 30 years, the go-ahead to restore three of the whaleboats. Pickering said the hull to deck joints on the boats were coming apart, so the decks were removed and PVC backers were riveted to the inner sides of the hulls before the decks were put back on using a gelcoat and PVC rub rails to clamp the deck to the hull.

The floor timbers were beginning to crack apart, so they were unbonded from the hull and new floor timbers made of fir were bonded to the hulls using epoxy. A layer of fiberglass mat was installed inside to hold the floor timbers in place and strengthen the hull.

The seats and flotation boxes on the ends of the boat got a new layer of glass mat over the plywood and the keels and bottom bow areas were ground out and laid up with appropriate glass. The hulls and decks were sanded, faired and gelcoated, and the seat thwarts were repaired as needed, with new seats fabricated from mahogany. The floors were fabricated out of heavier plywood and fastened to the timbers. The oarlock sockets got new bushings and were reinstalled with new screws to decks. The rudder gudgeons were straightened as best as possible and refastened to the stern with new screws. The interiors were painted with bilgekote paint for durability.

Durability, longevity and strength. I like to think those words reflect the best traits of the Sag Harbor community, and our fall festival.

Whaleboat racing has been around in Sag Harbor, now, for more than 60 years, and hopefully these repairs and a continued interest in racing will lead to 60 more years of this unique Sag Harbor tradition. Because as Steinbeck wrote in his “Log From the Sea of Cortez,” a “man, building this greatest and most personal of all tools, has in turn received a boat-shaped mind, and the boat, a man-shaped soul.”

Whale ho, everyone! See you on Windmill Beach.