While some beachcombers turn up their nose at a slimy piece of seaweed on the beach, they should not. What keeps that seaweed flexible and slippery is also what keeps our ice cream smooth in our mouths, our lipstick smooth on our lips, and our shaving cream smooth across our cheeks.
Charles Eliot was a noted landscape architect who helped create the land trust model that led to the formation of Acadia National Park. Sailing vacations to Maine with his family when he was young helped inspire his later work.
Henry R. Hinckley was an innovator, an early pioneer in the concept of fiberglass production yacht construction. But when it came to boat names, he found one he liked and stuck with it.
A pair of brothers from Beals tracked down their father’s beloved wooden lobsterboat, restored it, and made it a fixture on the lobsterboat racing circuit, winning the title of World’s Fastest Lobsterboat in 2006.
Have you ever wondered about all those things growing on your mooring ball or pennant or hanging off your dock in the summer? Science writer Ruth Hill explains what they are and how to get a better look.
In addition to building fine boats, three Maine boatbuilders have separately branched out into home construction—waterborne homes, that is. Foy Brown on North Haven, Steve White of Brooklin Boat Yard, and Robinhood Marine’s Andy Vavolotis all built themselves houseboats.
Novelist Alice Greenway sailed a leg in the first-ever Black Sea Tall Ships Regatta last spring. Along with Greenway, the crew of the 170-foot Kaliakra included twenty-five Bulgarian maritime high school students, two teachers, and a dozen seamen.
North Atlantic fishermen called it white frost or black frost. It is common in polar regions (where it is called Arctic sea smoke), but can form over any body of water if conditions are right. Catherine Schmitt explains the science of the winter phenomenon known as sea smoke.
As letter carvers, the bulk of the work of the father-daughter team of Douglas M. Coffin Lettercutter is creating headstones—beautiful, hand-carved life markers with letters that flow into each other, creating words that call out to be read. They consider their work to be among the most caring of human endeavors.
When J/Boats’ Bob Johnstone set out to build a new powerboat for his wife, Mary, he turned to fellow sailors to make it a reality. The result was a fresh take on what makes a good powerboat: the MJM 34z, the first in a series of successful motoryachts for MJM Yachts.
Celeste Roberge, a Maine sculptor whose work can be found in major collections across the country, explores the world, looking for inspiration in the environment. When she finds it, there is no telling how it will eventually manifest itself in her art, which, while conceptual, also is tangible, engaging, and provocative. Art writer Carl Little takes a look at her work with seaweed.
By the late 1960s, gray seals in New England were confined to a handful of isolated colonies. Seeing one was rare, akin to spotting one of the other now-recovered species, such as bald eagles or osprey. Their rescue was the result of the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act, and today, Penobscot Bay’s Seal Island is home to one of the East Coast’s largest colonies.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was happiest on Campobello Island, which straddles the border between Maine and Canada. The 50th anniversary of Roosevelt-Campobello International Park, the centerpiece of which is the former first family’s 34-room, red-shingled summer “cottage,” was in 2014.
Whether they’re small, spare, and bare as a doghouse, or decorated with animal bones or lace curtains with ribbon ties, Maine ice shacks have a little something for everyone. Some people use them just for fishing; others use them as a winter clubhouse.
