Jacob Pike’s Rebound, Tuna, Sharks & Wind Power

The sardine carrier Jacob Pike is pictured alongside the O’Hara’s fish pier in Rockland in this 1987 photo taken by Everett L. “Red” Boutillier. The photo is part of the Boutillier Collection at the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport. Photo Courtesy Penobscot Marine Museum

Jacob Pike: Gone but not forgotten

A descendent of the captain for whom the historic Jacob Pike sardine carrier is named is leading an effort to reconstruct the vessel, which sank last winter in the New Meadows River in Harpswell.

When the vessel was essentially abandoned by its owner, the Coast Guard lifted it from the bottom and hauled it to a salvage and demolition yard. That’s when Chebeague Island resident Summer Rugh, the great-great grandson of Capt. Jacob Pike, stepped in to try and save the vessel. While Rugh was unable to stop the Coast Guard from destroying the Pike, the Coast Guard saved artifacts from the vessel, which will be made available to his Jacob Pike Organization, according to a story by News Center Maine.

“The vessel itself was a pollution hazard,” said Lt. Pamela Manns with the Coast Guard. “Despite efforts to clean the wreck, its wooden boards, saturated with oil, continued seeping into the surrounding water.”

Rugh had hoped to preserve the piece of family history, but the Coast Guard says the boat wasn’t theirs to give away since it belonged to someone else. Rugh told News Center that he planned to launch a website soon to raise money for the reconstruction project.

Built in 1949 at the Newbert and Wallace yard in Thomaston, the Pike was commissioned by Moses B. Pike, the owner of the Holmes Packing Corp. in Lubec, who named the vessel after his father, sea captain Jacob Clark Pike. The vessel spent many years hauling herring in the midcoast, initially to canneries and later as bait for lobstermen.

Ferry staff shortages

The Maine State Ferry Service needs more ferry crew members. Commuter and freight service to islands in the bay has been plagued by cancellations due to staff shortages for much of the past year, prompting officials from six separate island communities to ask Maine Gov. Janet Mills to intervene in the workforce crisis.

The cancellations disrupted travel to and from several midcoast islands, affecting both year-round residents and seasonal visitors.

The requests came from representatives from Frenchboro, Islesboro, Matinicus, North Haven, Swan’s Island, and Vinalhaven, according to a news story in the Portland Press Herald.

Paul Merrill, a spokesman for the Maine Department of Transportation, told the newspaper that the administration continues to look for solutions to the staffing issue.

“Earlier this summer, we engaged a second maritime staffing agency as a short-term solution to improve the reliability of the second boat to Vinalhaven,” he said in an email to the newspaper. “We continue to work on longer-term solutions.” The ferry to Vinalhaven, which is the busiest, serves 70,000 passengers each year, according to the news story.

The ferry service, which includes seven boats that run daily from Rockland, Lincolnville, and Mt. Desert Island, has not been fully staffed for much of the year, according to the reports.

When ferry routes are canceled, residents can miss medical appointments, school sporting events, and other plans on the mainland. Additionally, some freight hasn’t gotten to island communities in a timely manner.

Courtesy Stephens Waring Design Photo by Alison Langley

A first glimpse of Wisp

In August, 2024, Artisan Boatworks of Rockport launched Wisp, the latest design from Stephens Waring Design, in Camden. You will find more about this cold-molded daysailer-weekender in our January/February 2025 issue that will feature profiles of several boats recently built and launched in Maine, including the newest ferry serving Matinicus.

No-go on fishing shack rebuild

South Portland does not plan to rebuild the iconic fishing shacks at Willard Beach that were swept into the sea last winter, according to the Portland Press Herald.

Rebuilding the fishing shacks, which date back to the 1800s, was supported by many residents. But at a recent meeting, City Manager Scott Morelli reported that the state and city code office had concerns about rebuilding while complying with National Flood Insurance program restrictions and shoreland zoning requirements. The newspaper quoted a memo from the city’s code enforcement director outlining the issues: “The shacks were clearly in a flood velocity zone,” Barb Skelton wrote in the memo. “When comparing the plans, it becomes clear that the structures cannot be built in their former location without costly engineering to design them because they would need to be elevated to the base flood level of 12 feet plus 1 foot.”

She continued, “They’d have to be rebuilt differently and to flood standards so, at this time, staff is not going to be moving forward with any sort of recommendation or proposal to do any sort of rebuild of the shacks.”

Raise the breakwater?

The city of Rockland has asked the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a feasibility study to increase the height of the Rockland Breakwater, according to a news report in the online Village Soup. The request from Harbormaster Molly Eddy followed increasing frequency of storm surges that flood the breakwater. The combination of sea level rise of the past decade and sinking of the granite blocks along the nearly mile-long structure has resulted in the top of the breakwater being regularly submerged at monthly high tides, she noted in her letter to the federal agency. While the breakwater is still dampening some wave action, “the harbor infrastructure has secured significant damage the past two winters resulting in considerable interruption to commercial marine commerce,” the harbormaster’s letter read.

Rockland Harbor is home to at least six boatyards and marinas, a commercial shipyard, a major marine construction company, the U.S. Coast Guard life-saving station for Penobscot Bay, and a terminal for the Maine State Ferry.

The 4,300-foot-long breakwater was built by the federal government beginning in 1881 and completed in Nov. 1899.

Wind energy leases

The federal government plans to auction leases for eight swaths of New England ocean on about 850,000 acres for commercial wind farms. The leases for areas of the Gulf of Maine, including two off the coast of York County, were to go up for sale on Oct. 29, according to a report in the online version of Mainebiz and a press release from the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The area under consideration is smaller than what had originally been proposed in order to avoid offshore fishing grounds, sensitive habitats, and vessel transit routes, the release noted.

If fully developed with wind turbines, the eight areas could generate roughly 13 gigawatts of energy, enough to power more than 4.5 million homes.

The areas scheduled for auction are separate from where the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has executed its first U.S. floating offshore wind energy research lease with the state of Maine. Located 28 miles off the coast of Maine, that 15,000-acre area is poised to host up to 12 floating offshore wind turbines, with a potential to generate 144 megawatts of renewable energy, according to a report by the online maritime news site, gCaptain.

The research initiative aims to study the potential of floating offshore wind energy, its environmental impacts, and its compatibility with existing ocean uses, as well as testing and refining turbine technology developed by the University of Maine and its partner, Diamond Offshore Wind.

Big tuna

Sam Cassida was fishing for striped bass with clients in Penobscot Bay when he caught a 576-pound bluefin tuna.

According to an account in the Bangor Daily News, Cassida, who is captain of Waterdog Charters in Belfast, had his tuna gear with him in the charter boat when some fellow striper guides alerted him that there were bluefin in the area.

Cassida told the newspaper that although he has caught tuna before, he’s never hooked one in Penobscot Bay. It took two hours to land the big fish, which had to be towed to the docks since it was too big to fit in Cassida’s 22-foot Great Lakes Cruiser.

The tuna yielded about 300 pounds of meat for Cassida’s freezer.

Money for Maine

Millions of dollars are flowing into the state to fund various initiatives to help the state and local communities adapt to climate change and sea level rise. Some of the money has been aimed at helping communities rebuild after last winter’s devastating storms. Some has been directed at planning for the future, including a recent $69 million federal grant that will fund an initiative called Resilient Maine, according to a press release. Proposed by the Maine Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future, the goal of the project is to help underserved communities in Maine develop and implement new ways of protecting themselves from flooding, storm surge, and extreme weather events.

The money, administered by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will come from the federal government’s Climate Resilience Regional Challenge, a competitive, $575 million program funded through the Inflation Reduction Act.

Several nature-based demonstration projects will be conducted, including living shoreline projects, as well as regionally significant coastal resilience projects on the Popham Peninsula in Southern Maine and in the West Branch of the Pleasant River in Downeast Maine.

Funding will support a full-time person to work with coastal municipalities and tribes to determine commercial fishing access needs; prepare for working waterfront investments; and help municipalities and tribes acquire funds allocated to improve waterfront infrastructure for the public and commercial fisheries and aquaculture needs.

Climate-driven insurance rates

Maine homeowners are facing the second-largest home insurance rate hike in the country, and climate change is to blame, according to an industry analysis quoted in the Portland Press Herald.

While Maine is one of the most affordable states for home insurance, premiums are expected to increase 19 percent this year, from an average of $1,322 to $1,571 annually, according to the Massachusetts insurance analysis firm Insurify. More than a quarter of Maine ratepayers are expected to see their premiums go up, the newspaper reported.

Only Louisiana is expected to see a higher jump at 23 percent.

It could take 18 to 24 months to see the anticipated hikes, the report said, as most homeowner policies have a 12-month term.

The states most prone to severe weather events have the highest premiums, Insurify said. The firm analyzed insurance quotes from top carriers as well as how often and by how much insurance companies implemented rate increases through late 2023 into 2024.

The 2023 expected payout for damage from catastrophe claims was nearly eight times that of an average year, according to the news story. The firm doesn’t see signs of improvement right away, especially given the Maine coastal storms in January and April.

A need for island ambulance vessels

A working group looking into ways to bring healthcare to Maine’s island communities is considering “ambulance vessels” as a possible solution, according to a report in the online Maine Monitor.

Getting medical care to Maine’s islands has long been an informal arrangement that relies heavily on the Maine Ferry Service, lobstermen, the Coast Guard, the Maine Marine Patrol, and LifeFlight.

Rob McGraw, executive director of Atlantic Partners EMS, an agency charged with appointing representatives to the Maine EMS Board, told the Monitor that a regional stakeholder group of lawmakers and community members has begun discussions about emergency boats that could take critical-condition patients to the mainland. The team is creating a draft to be shared with island community stakeholders for review and approval before moving forward.

New aquaculture facility

Development, design, and engineering of a sustainable aquaculture workforce innovation center run by the University of Maine will proceed this fall. The UM System Board of Trustees approved moving forward with the design process for the 14,200-square-foot facility last summer. It is expected to open in late 2025, according to a press release.

Maine’s congressional delegation secured $7 million in the Fiscal Year 2024 federal budget to construct the center. An additional $3.35 million will come from the Maine Jobs & Recovery Plan.

The center will support sustainable economic development, food security, and climate and community resilience through innovation in the aquaculture sector. The center will also foster collaboration through a partnership with the Penobscot Nation and other Wabanaki Nations.

Algae dollars bloom

Down the coast from Orono, the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences has received a $7 million grant from the National Science Foundation to build the Maine Algal Research Infrastructure and Accelerator. The award will assist with building state-of-the-art research infrastructure, which will streamline algae innovation in the agricultural, aquaculture, and pharmaceutical industries, according to a press release from U.S. senators Susan Collins and Angus King. Collaborating with Bigelow Laboratory in the effort are Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, University of New England, Colby College, Southern Maine Community College, Maine Center for Entrepreneurs, Gulf of Maine Ventures, and the Maine Technology Institute.

“Not only will this research help drive new approaches to commercial algae use, but it will also open the door to workforce opportunities between local farmers, algal companies, and our premier research institutions,” the senators said.

Boat marketing partnership

New Harbor Boats has partnered with Brewer Yacht Sales to enhance the marketing and sales of the company’s boats. “This is a significant milestone,” said Ed Sutt, CEO of New Harbor Boats. Built at Front Street Shipyard in Belfast, Maine, the New Harbor 28, a modern take on the classic Wasque 26, features a 2-foot stern extension to accommodate outboard power and other contemporary enhancements. It was designed by Geoff Van Gorkom of Van Gorkom Yacht Design.

Brewer Yacht Sales, with over 25 years of experience, operates from 18 locations spanning from Maine to Florida.    

✮