Brest, France: Largest wooden boat gathering in the world features Norwegian boats

Mark your calendars!

July 13-19,2012 is the next Brest Maritime Festival in the region of Brittany, France. The festival features more than 2,000 historic ships from 30 nations and expects 700,000 spectators. I was warned by friends who attended the last one to plan ahead if you need to use the toilet. Lines were 2 hours long at times! A little challenging for you beer drinkers:) I'm going to do my best to be there and hoping others from USA and Canada will be there too.

Here's a Google Translate version of the story announced in Afterposten Norway today for fellow English speakers: I'm sure my Norwegian friends can improve this translation, but it's the best I could do this morning.

Norwegian Culture a Hit in France! 1100 years after Rollo made the landings in Normandy, Norwegian sailors again shut down the French coast. This once peaceful - in the coastal city of Brest

Click to read more ...

Denmark, spidsgatter heaven

Every harbor, every boatyard, every sail club has them! Spidsgatters, the pointy-ended, double-ender designs that captured my heart like they have so many others all over the world. They were developed as a racing class in the 1930s, evolved from North Atlantic fishing boats but with cabins and very tall masts. Today, the term covers many varieties of double ended designs and they were everywhere I visited in Denmark this month. Designs included gaff-rigged open boats still in use in club sailing programs (at least 3 hauled out and ready for winter maintenance at Frem and KAS this month); racing class boats (Bel Ami and Skarven in the yard near KAS); unclassed beauties (countless boats from Gilleleje to Dragor and including Svendborg, Walsted Boatyard and the Danish Yacht Museum in all range of condition) as well as fiberglass models used for both fishing (no mast) and cruising (with mast and with or without motor). Ancient in concept these beautiful double enders contine a tradition of sea-going people all over the world (think dug out canoes, Viking ships, Inuit kayaks). The Danish word for harbor is Havn and every time I followed those signs, I was thinking "heaven".

International search for Danish Spidsgatter history

Sitting in the opalescent light of a fall morning in France, I can't help but pause from my writing to watch the dew from the night shimmer one last time as the mid morning breeze shakes it from the waving grass blades. Since dawn, there've been a dozen emails to Denmark, two to the US and three back from DK confirming appointments as strangers become friends in my search for Pax' history. Today's email uncovered an elder boatbuilder from Samso who may remember the boat and a man north of Copenhagen who remembers her from his time on the junior sailing team at KDY (Royal Danish Yacht Club). He sailed with the two daughters of the first owner on record in Denmark, so far.

There are many changes to Pax since she was in Denmark.

Click to read more ...

Wooden boats in France

Northern France is ringed with coastal communities built on rich maritime heritage.  I love Normandy's northwest peninsula farmlands, port cities like Bar Fleur, Cherbourg and St. Vaast and the wild coast with their layered history, stunning light and open spaces. Hon Fleur, where the Impressionists gained such great inspiration (and painters still paint the harbor daily) is a special favorite.  Thankfully, I've got family friends in the region who are excellent "local" tour guides, game to explore backroads and patient translators.  Together, we've driven many country roads, walked beaches, explored marinas, hedged farm roads, dark forests and historic castles. Yesterday, while in St. Vaast, I was struck again by how many people stop and take photos of wooden boats.  With such a close proximity and long history of boating (both fishing and pleasure craft) in this region, understandably, there are a majority of steel and fiberglass boats in the marinas and on the tidal flat moorings. 

But as we walked the docks, there was the "last 3-masted wooden ship" Marite and several smaller boats that look like traditional fishing boats, but empty of gear as if ready for tourists.

Click to read more ...

Meet your elders today. MidSummer may be too late.

This morning I received news that Ole Crumlin-Pedersen, the passionate, energetic and visionary founder behind the Roskilde Viking Museum in Denmark passed away. When I visited the museum for the first time in 2009, I was struck, as everyone seemed to be, by the sheer size, the unexpected familiarity and the relatively easy access to to these boat skeletons made possible by the dedication and creativity of the museum supporters and staff. Like dinosaurs if you own a lizard, I felt immediate connection owning a Danish double-ender, to these giant pointy-ended boats and walked around them in awe at the fact that they had been both preserved through ingenious Viking methods thousands of years ago and today. I'm on my way to Denmark again next week and while I missed meeting Ole, I am hoping to meet some of the elders who built, sailed and exported my spidsgatter to the US. It's not the best season to travel to Scandinavia, but MidSummer may be too late. Tribute to Ole Crumlin-Pedersen as announced by the Viking Ship Museum:

He was a pioneer, who through his professional engagement and an almost unbelievable capacity for work developed an entirely new area of archaeological fieldwork. He changed our view of the world of the past, and gave us new glasses with which to view history. The Viking Ship Museum at Roskilde stands as the most striking trace of what he leaves behind. Ole’s remarkable career began with the five Viking ships from the Roskilde Fjord, and the construction of a museum around them. This was a pioneering job, which demanded ingenuity, new thinking and co-operation across disciplinary borders. The result was worthy of admiration, and the methodology became the model for work with archaeological ship-finds throughout Europe.