Flipping through the October/November 1994 issue of Wooden Boat Magazine, you’ll come to a piece written by Mary Ann Radford. In it, she tells the story of building a boat named Tall Cotton. The brainchild of her spouse, Thurman, became the wooden schooner built in York, Maine by Paul Rollins.
Why build a traditional wooden boat when we have the wonders of modern materials such as fiberglass? Why fifty-six feet long on deck and seventy feet with the added bowsprit? Why a knuckle bow gaff rigged wooden schooner with top masts?
Well, Mary Ann said, “You can always tell when people think you’re nuts.”
To build the boat, they scrounged up parts from wherever they could. They even had a crate of parts labeled “Mythical Schooner”.
Later, she wrote, “It’s perfectly clear now. We were not nuts, but crazy!”
Tall Cotton launched in 1992 and was sailed by Mary Ann and Thurman for many years. In 2006, it was sold to Roger Woodman who used the boat for commercial fishing. He also changed her name from Tall Cotton to ALERT.
In January of 2013, Bethany McNelly-Davis and Perry Davis bought ALERT. They keep track of how long they’ve had the boat by the age of their older child, Margaret, who was born four months later.
Aboard the Schooner ALERT, Bethany reads the Wooden Boat story aloud from the magazine.
I meet ALERT’s crew by their office before heading out on an afternoon voyage. By “crew”, I mean Bethany and her spouse Perry who are the captains, their two young children, their dog, and Erin, their soon-to-be twenty-five year old first mate. By “office”, I mean old green Ford Ranger pick-up truck in the parking lot of Cook’s Lobster and Ale House on the tip of Garrison Cove near the Cribstone Bridge on Bailey Island.
Bethany, who grew up at her family’s business, Sea Escape Cottages on Bailey Island, is tall, with a boxy figure and straight brown hair. She wears red and teal rimmed glasses, red and clear stud earrings, loose fitting beige corduroy pants, and Chaco sandals with a green strap. Her shirt is a striped long sleeve shirt with ALERT’s logo custom painted on the front. The logo features Poseidon's trident with a rigging knife and marlin spike crossed below. “ALERT” is hand lettered in bubbly craft paint across the top.
Perry, a Colorado native, has a small build, light skin browned by the sun, and a full red-brown beard. He wears Dickies jeans rolled up at the ankles, a belt with a golden whale belt buckle, and a khaki shirt with “Schooner ALERT” stitched into the corner. He also wears Chacos, but with a slightly different green strap design.
Their office operates out of the back of the Ranger with brochures, pictures, and shells displayed in the truck’s bed. The truck has a cap over the bed, butterfly string lights on the roof rail, and dark green patches of paint on the body. Bethany works out of the office sitting on the tailgate, coordinating customers with cell phone calls, and writing people’s names in a reservation book. Leaning against the corner of the truck is their advertisement -- a whiteboard colorfully packed with information. The top says, “Your chance to sail on a modern, leak-proof, rat-free ship.”
Perry says, “The ‘rat-free’ is stolen from the movie Yellowbeard, which is a movie with good actors that you’ve never heard of.”
Next to the Ranger is their black Subaru Outback whose license plate reads, ALERT. Their one year old child, Calypso, naps in a car seat in the Outback while Margaret, who is four, explores the shoreline with Erin.
Margaret is wearing a navy blue long sleeve shirt with same logo as Bethany’s painted on and hot pink iron-on letters spelling “ALERT” across the top. She covers her shirt as she puts on her ladybug life jacket.
Bethany and Perry gave Margaret the middle name Danger, “Because it will be cool forever,” as Perry says. Then to name Calypso, they struggled a little. Perry suggested Molly Mayhem, but Bethany didn’t like the Molly part. Then, Perry suggested Cora Calypso, but Bethany didn’t like the Cora part. So instead, they just made Calypso the baby’s first name.
Schooner ALERT will sail with anywhere from zero to the boat’s legal capacity of twenty-eight passengers. They would sail with just crew if someone who lives on the water wanted to hire ALERT to see them sail by. On this trip, we will have just one other passenger, a woman named Lisa on a day off from being a summer camp counselor.
Together, we all walk past the restaurant, through the fishing wharf, and onto the dock. The usual spot Schooner ALERT docks was taken by Aucocisco III -- a Casco Bay Lines ferry that goes between Portland and Bailey Island -- so Perry parked the boat on the other end of the dock.
The boat has a bronze green and black outer hull with golden lettering spelling “ALERT” at the bow just below the wooden bowsprit. Two large masts tower above with many cables and lines reaching down from the top. Off-white sails, ready to be filled with wind, sit folded on wooden booms.
I step onto ALERT and see her beautiful wooden decks. The thin deck planks feature teak bungs throughout which are small wooden cylinders placed in holes to cover up screws fastening the wooden planks. The trim and cabin painted white are a bright contrast to the natural gray teak deck and dark hull. A large orange donut-shaped life raft sits on top of the cabin towards the front. In the cockpit, green cushions provide seating for us while Perry takes the helm at the stern. He stands on the starboard side of the three foot wide wheel. Occasionally, while sailing, he will sit on the backdeck and steer with a foot. Next to Perry, behind the wheel, is a large and beautiful white conch shell. In front of the wheel is a fancy-looking compass mounted in the middle of the cockpit.
As we prepare to leave the dock, Perry gives a quick safety speech including, “Don’t go on the backdeck because there are tripping hazards and other torture devices.”
Behind Perry on the backdeck is a sliding pulley set, or block, with many lines, called the main sheet, to adjust the position of the main sail.
We are headed out for a four-hour afternoon sail. Though the better business model is doing four two-hour tours each day, Perry says he’d rather be able to sail for longer on four- and six-hour tours to. They compromise by generally doing a morning and evening short sail with a longer afternoon sail in the middle. They also do a variety of specialty trips throughout Casco Bay and the Maine coast.
Lisa asks, “Do you sail seven days a week?”
Bethany replies, “Yup. We sail every day we can.”
Perry starts the engine, and we leave the dock. In order to navigate out of Garrison Cove, we turn sharply, just clearing a floating dock with yellow lobster traps stacked on it.
I note how small of a turning radius the boat has as we make the sharp turn to the left, or port.
Perry replies that it is actually impressive because “she likes to turn starboard better than port.”
We quickly raise the sails and head off into the foggy Harpswell Sound. The boat has two masts with large sails on each as well as three smaller sails at the bow. The two large sails, the mainsail and foresail, each have a wooden piece, or gaff, that is raised on the top edge of the sail. The gaff and the sail are raised by two lines, one at the front and one at the back. The throat halyard is the line at the front of the sail which raises the front end of the gaff, or throat, which slides up the mast. The other line, the peak halyard, raises the back end, or peak, which ends up higher than the throat.
I haul the throat halyard while Lisa hauls the peak halyard. When raising these kinds of sails, which are gaff rigged, both halyards are pulled at the same speed so the gaff is horizontal. Once the throat reaches the top, the peak halyard is hauled up more to raise the back end of the sail all the way up.
Once raised, Erin and Bethany coil the long lines hauled in on the deck then hang them out of the way on the pin rails.
The large sails have lines hanging loosely around them on either side in a sort of triangular formation called lazy jacks. Though they look useless now, these lines help keep the sails from falling every which way when the sail is being lowered.
Bethany and Erin raise the three triangular sails at the front. The jib is the middle one, with a sail called the jumbo just behind it and a flying jib higher up in front. The jumbo is the term used by fishermen, though many other sailors call it a staysail.
While raising the sails, Margaret wants Bethany’s attention. Finally, Bethany returns to the cockpit of the boat and says, “Sorry, I just had to go pull on some ropey bits.”
Sailing has a lot of very technical terms.
We sail up Harpswell Sound slowly and calmly as there isn’t much wind in the fog. We head up the western shore of Orr’s Island. At the southern tip of Reed Cove, we can just make out Wyer Island at the Bowdoin Coastal Studies Center. As Perry turns the wheel, the sails swing to the other side of the boat, and we head down the western side of Harpswell Sound.
Bethany goes below deck to feed Margaret and Calypso lunch. Their dog also stays below and naps. Bethany imitates their dog’s attitude toward people, saying, “Remember when you had snacks? Yeah, you were cool then. Now you’re not.”
Meanwhile, Perry tells stories with an understated humor. He has a friend named Animal, and Perry only just learned his real name. Perry’s family has an outdoor gear store, and they have a dog bed made out of swimsuit material scraps. He used to be a raft guide on rivers in Colorado. The rivers were different every day because the waves change, but they were also in some ways the same every day. He used to drive a ferry back and forth from Port Clyde to Monhegan Island.
Lisa recently visited Monhegan and met someone named Barbara who Perry remembers.
Perry says, “Oooh, she’s a riot.”
To which Lisa replies, “She’s a hoot.”
Perry says, “Oh, I’m sorry, a hoot. I misspoke.”
There is a momentary glimpse of blue sky above!
The masts of the boat extend higher than where the mainsail and foresail stand. These taller masts, or top masts, are designed to hold smaller sails above called topsails. Bethany says that this is the first year ALERT has had topsails. It’s a twenty-five year old boat and this is the first year she can sail fully rigged.
Erin gets a harness from inside the cabin, puts it on, and climbs up a rope ladder going from the side of the boat to the top of the main mast. While aloft, she raises the topsail.
We continue to sail around Harpswell Sound and snack on homemade pistachio Amish friendship bread.
Calypso spills plenty of crumbs in the cockpit, and Bethany says, “It’s how we treat the decks, with Amish friendship bread. It’s a very expensive treatment.”
There is a lot of time to entertain Margaret.
She spits off the side of the boat and asks Perry if it was the low side. Apparently, they are training her not to spit off the high side of a boat where it will fly back onto the boat or herself.
Margaret and Erin read Arthur’s Really Helpful Bedtime Stories, and Bethany sings “American Pie”. Margaret asks how she learned to roll her tongue, and Bethany reenacts Margaret practicing in the mirror. Then we all get caught up in a game of hide-and-seek between Margaret and Erin.
It can be hard to find a four year old when they are half covered by a sweatshirt and essentially out in the open. Especially when you are looking everywhere but where they clearly are.
Margaret hides in the cockpit under a blanket with a plate of friendship bread on top as a decoy. Erin hides behind a mast. Margaret hides in the life ring. Erin hides in the netting below the bowsprit, completely out of sight. Margaret hides on the railing behind the coiled halyards. Erin stands on the boom next to the sail; Margaret walks past her three times but doesn’t think to look up from the low gaze of her eyes.
We pass close to shore and a child yells, “Hi!” from a house window. Perry responds by picking up the large conch shell and blowing one, surprisingly loud blast.
When not on the boat, the McNelly/Davis clan lives in the house Bethany grew up in at Sea Escape Cottages by the firehouse on Bailey Island. They live upstairs in an in-law apartment while Bethany’s parents live downstairs.
In the winter, Schooner ALERT stays docked in Rockland with many other schooners. Bethany and Perry enjoy working on boat maintenance in the spring because everyone is out working together. When you go up high on a mast, you just look out at all the neighboring masts and yell across to friends on other boats.
When we near Cook’s Restaurant at the end of our tour, Perry picks up the conch shell again. He gives one long sustained blow and two short ones to say, “We are making way under sail.”
Why build a traditional wooden boat when we have the wonders of modern materials such as fiberglass? Why fifty-six feet long on deck and seventy feet with the added bowsprit? Why a knuckle bow gaff rigged wooden schooner with top masts?
Well, Mary Ann said, “You can always tell when people think you’re nuts.”
To build the boat, they scrounged up parts from wherever they could. They even had a crate of parts labeled “Mythical Schooner”.
Later, she wrote, “It’s perfectly clear now. We were not nuts, but crazy!”
Tall Cotton launched in 1992 and was sailed by Mary Ann and Thurman for many years. In 2006, it was sold to Roger Woodman who used the boat for commercial fishing. He also changed her name from Tall Cotton to ALERT.
In January of 2013, Bethany McNelly-Davis and Perry Davis bought ALERT. They keep track of how long they’ve had the boat by the age of their older child, Margaret, who was born four months later.
Aboard the Schooner ALERT, Bethany reads the Wooden Boat story aloud from the magazine.
I meet ALERT’s crew by their office before heading out on an afternoon voyage. By “crew”, I mean Bethany and her spouse Perry who are the captains, their two young children, their dog, and Erin, their soon-to-be twenty-five year old first mate. By “office”, I mean old green Ford Ranger pick-up truck in the parking lot of Cook’s Lobster and Ale House on the tip of Garrison Cove near the Cribstone Bridge on Bailey Island.
Bethany, who grew up at her family’s business, Sea Escape Cottages on Bailey Island, is tall, with a boxy figure and straight brown hair. She wears red and teal rimmed glasses, red and clear stud earrings, loose fitting beige corduroy pants, and Chaco sandals with a green strap. Her shirt is a striped long sleeve shirt with ALERT’s logo custom painted on the front. The logo features Poseidon's trident with a rigging knife and marlin spike crossed below. “ALERT” is hand lettered in bubbly craft paint across the top.
Perry, a Colorado native, has a small build, light skin browned by the sun, and a full red-brown beard. He wears Dickies jeans rolled up at the ankles, a belt with a golden whale belt buckle, and a khaki shirt with “Schooner ALERT” stitched into the corner. He also wears Chacos, but with a slightly different green strap design.
Their office operates out of the back of the Ranger with brochures, pictures, and shells displayed in the truck’s bed. The truck has a cap over the bed, butterfly string lights on the roof rail, and dark green patches of paint on the body. Bethany works out of the office sitting on the tailgate, coordinating customers with cell phone calls, and writing people’s names in a reservation book. Leaning against the corner of the truck is their advertisement -- a whiteboard colorfully packed with information. The top says, “Your chance to sail on a modern, leak-proof, rat-free ship.”
Perry says, “The ‘rat-free’ is stolen from the movie Yellowbeard, which is a movie with good actors that you’ve never heard of.”
Next to the Ranger is their black Subaru Outback whose license plate reads, ALERT. Their one year old child, Calypso, naps in a car seat in the Outback while Margaret, who is four, explores the shoreline with Erin.
Margaret is wearing a navy blue long sleeve shirt with same logo as Bethany’s painted on and hot pink iron-on letters spelling “ALERT” across the top. She covers her shirt as she puts on her ladybug life jacket.
Bethany and Perry gave Margaret the middle name Danger, “Because it will be cool forever,” as Perry says. Then to name Calypso, they struggled a little. Perry suggested Molly Mayhem, but Bethany didn’t like the Molly part. Then, Perry suggested Cora Calypso, but Bethany didn’t like the Cora part. So instead, they just made Calypso the baby’s first name.
Schooner ALERT will sail with anywhere from zero to the boat’s legal capacity of twenty-eight passengers. They would sail with just crew if someone who lives on the water wanted to hire ALERT to see them sail by. On this trip, we will have just one other passenger, a woman named Lisa on a day off from being a summer camp counselor.
Together, we all walk past the restaurant, through the fishing wharf, and onto the dock. The usual spot Schooner ALERT docks was taken by Aucocisco III -- a Casco Bay Lines ferry that goes between Portland and Bailey Island -- so Perry parked the boat on the other end of the dock.
The boat has a bronze green and black outer hull with golden lettering spelling “ALERT” at the bow just below the wooden bowsprit. Two large masts tower above with many cables and lines reaching down from the top. Off-white sails, ready to be filled with wind, sit folded on wooden booms.
I step onto ALERT and see her beautiful wooden decks. The thin deck planks feature teak bungs throughout which are small wooden cylinders placed in holes to cover up screws fastening the wooden planks. The trim and cabin painted white are a bright contrast to the natural gray teak deck and dark hull. A large orange donut-shaped life raft sits on top of the cabin towards the front. In the cockpit, green cushions provide seating for us while Perry takes the helm at the stern. He stands on the starboard side of the three foot wide wheel. Occasionally, while sailing, he will sit on the backdeck and steer with a foot. Next to Perry, behind the wheel, is a large and beautiful white conch shell. In front of the wheel is a fancy-looking compass mounted in the middle of the cockpit.
As we prepare to leave the dock, Perry gives a quick safety speech including, “Don’t go on the backdeck because there are tripping hazards and other torture devices.”
Behind Perry on the backdeck is a sliding pulley set, or block, with many lines, called the main sheet, to adjust the position of the main sail.
We are headed out for a four-hour afternoon sail. Though the better business model is doing four two-hour tours each day, Perry says he’d rather be able to sail for longer on four- and six-hour tours to. They compromise by generally doing a morning and evening short sail with a longer afternoon sail in the middle. They also do a variety of specialty trips throughout Casco Bay and the Maine coast.
Lisa asks, “Do you sail seven days a week?”
Bethany replies, “Yup. We sail every day we can.”
Perry starts the engine, and we leave the dock. In order to navigate out of Garrison Cove, we turn sharply, just clearing a floating dock with yellow lobster traps stacked on it.
I note how small of a turning radius the boat has as we make the sharp turn to the left, or port.
Perry replies that it is actually impressive because “she likes to turn starboard better than port.”
We quickly raise the sails and head off into the foggy Harpswell Sound. The boat has two masts with large sails on each as well as three smaller sails at the bow. The two large sails, the mainsail and foresail, each have a wooden piece, or gaff, that is raised on the top edge of the sail. The gaff and the sail are raised by two lines, one at the front and one at the back. The throat halyard is the line at the front of the sail which raises the front end of the gaff, or throat, which slides up the mast. The other line, the peak halyard, raises the back end, or peak, which ends up higher than the throat.
I haul the throat halyard while Lisa hauls the peak halyard. When raising these kinds of sails, which are gaff rigged, both halyards are pulled at the same speed so the gaff is horizontal. Once the throat reaches the top, the peak halyard is hauled up more to raise the back end of the sail all the way up.
Once raised, Erin and Bethany coil the long lines hauled in on the deck then hang them out of the way on the pin rails.
The large sails have lines hanging loosely around them on either side in a sort of triangular formation called lazy jacks. Though they look useless now, these lines help keep the sails from falling every which way when the sail is being lowered.
Bethany and Erin raise the three triangular sails at the front. The jib is the middle one, with a sail called the jumbo just behind it and a flying jib higher up in front. The jumbo is the term used by fishermen, though many other sailors call it a staysail.
While raising the sails, Margaret wants Bethany’s attention. Finally, Bethany returns to the cockpit of the boat and says, “Sorry, I just had to go pull on some ropey bits.”
Sailing has a lot of very technical terms.
We sail up Harpswell Sound slowly and calmly as there isn’t much wind in the fog. We head up the western shore of Orr’s Island. At the southern tip of Reed Cove, we can just make out Wyer Island at the Bowdoin Coastal Studies Center. As Perry turns the wheel, the sails swing to the other side of the boat, and we head down the western side of Harpswell Sound.
Bethany goes below deck to feed Margaret and Calypso lunch. Their dog also stays below and naps. Bethany imitates their dog’s attitude toward people, saying, “Remember when you had snacks? Yeah, you were cool then. Now you’re not.”
Meanwhile, Perry tells stories with an understated humor. He has a friend named Animal, and Perry only just learned his real name. Perry’s family has an outdoor gear store, and they have a dog bed made out of swimsuit material scraps. He used to be a raft guide on rivers in Colorado. The rivers were different every day because the waves change, but they were also in some ways the same every day. He used to drive a ferry back and forth from Port Clyde to Monhegan Island.
Lisa recently visited Monhegan and met someone named Barbara who Perry remembers.
Perry says, “Oooh, she’s a riot.”
To which Lisa replies, “She’s a hoot.”
Perry says, “Oh, I’m sorry, a hoot. I misspoke.”
There is a momentary glimpse of blue sky above!
The masts of the boat extend higher than where the mainsail and foresail stand. These taller masts, or top masts, are designed to hold smaller sails above called topsails. Bethany says that this is the first year ALERT has had topsails. It’s a twenty-five year old boat and this is the first year she can sail fully rigged.
Erin gets a harness from inside the cabin, puts it on, and climbs up a rope ladder going from the side of the boat to the top of the main mast. While aloft, she raises the topsail.
We continue to sail around Harpswell Sound and snack on homemade pistachio Amish friendship bread.
Calypso spills plenty of crumbs in the cockpit, and Bethany says, “It’s how we treat the decks, with Amish friendship bread. It’s a very expensive treatment.”
There is a lot of time to entertain Margaret.
She spits off the side of the boat and asks Perry if it was the low side. Apparently, they are training her not to spit off the high side of a boat where it will fly back onto the boat or herself.
Margaret and Erin read Arthur’s Really Helpful Bedtime Stories, and Bethany sings “American Pie”. Margaret asks how she learned to roll her tongue, and Bethany reenacts Margaret practicing in the mirror. Then we all get caught up in a game of hide-and-seek between Margaret and Erin.
It can be hard to find a four year old when they are half covered by a sweatshirt and essentially out in the open. Especially when you are looking everywhere but where they clearly are.
Margaret hides in the cockpit under a blanket with a plate of friendship bread on top as a decoy. Erin hides behind a mast. Margaret hides in the life ring. Erin hides in the netting below the bowsprit, completely out of sight. Margaret hides on the railing behind the coiled halyards. Erin stands on the boom next to the sail; Margaret walks past her three times but doesn’t think to look up from the low gaze of her eyes.
We pass close to shore and a child yells, “Hi!” from a house window. Perry responds by picking up the large conch shell and blowing one, surprisingly loud blast.
When not on the boat, the McNelly/Davis clan lives in the house Bethany grew up in at Sea Escape Cottages by the firehouse on Bailey Island. They live upstairs in an in-law apartment while Bethany’s parents live downstairs.
In the winter, Schooner ALERT stays docked in Rockland with many other schooners. Bethany and Perry enjoy working on boat maintenance in the spring because everyone is out working together. When you go up high on a mast, you just look out at all the neighboring masts and yell across to friends on other boats.
When we near Cook’s Restaurant at the end of our tour, Perry picks up the conch shell again. He gives one long sustained blow and two short ones to say, “We are making way under sail.”