Tippy
Tom Price, model maker at the United States Naval Academy, moves from the history of the sandbaggers to look at their less unruly kith and kin: the Chesapeake Bay log canoes
The beautiful Chesapeake Bay, slicing deeply into America’s east coast, is 200 miles long from the Atlantic Ocean to the mouth of the Susquehanna. It is at heart a drowned river, fringed with lesser rivers. Its eastern shore is low and fertile, bisected by waterways leading to farms and towns that in the past relied on sailing watercraft for trade and travel. Its winding tributaries, harvested for
their abundant oysters, crabs and fish, are narrow and shallow, so upwind ability and a good deal of sail is bound to be essential. The centreboard came early to Bay craft
because of the shallow waters. Maryland and Virginia’s eastern shore have retained much of their bucolic personality and the many small towns cling to their waterman heritage. Watermen, being sailors, naturally
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took pride in their boats and sailing skill, so it wasn’t long before they would race each other for fun. The most iconic and earliest of the
unique Chesapeake watercraft is the Chesapeake Bay Log Canoe. These singu- larly beautiful and fast vessels, once work- ing craft, have evolved into purely racing boats and in summer race from June to September (by design, when the water warms up and the inevitable swimming after a capsize is tolerable). The nearly 20 surviving racing canoes represent a mov- able feast, towed behind an assortment of support boats, to regattas on Maryland’s eastern shore’s beautiful, farmland fringed rivers – Chester, Miles, Choptank and Tred Avon. The towns of Cambridge, Saint Michaels, Oxford and Rock Hall form a backdrop for the canoe racing. You can clearly see Maryland’s early ties to England by its river, city and county names!
Origins and essence The log canoe, an evolutionary relative of the single log Native American canoes, is the earliest native Chesapeake craft and they are unique survivors, perfectly suited to the Bay’s rivers. The ultimate refine- ment of the type are the racing canoes, some starting life as working boats and others built purely for sport. The boats today all proudly carry the date
of their build on their foresail. The first recorded log canoe racing was in 1845,
although informal racing was begun even earlier by watermen. Maryland and Virginia watermen soon joined multiple logs together and shaped them into larger canoes. By the 1800s the log canoes’ builders,
restricted in length and diameter by the logs they could obtain, were pinning together three and occasionally five logs athwartships. It is always an odd number to have a strong centreline log, able to be pierced by a centreboard slot and with- stand the mast loadings. The essential features, though, are their
narrow beam and fine bows and sterns. The canoes have every feature that makes any- one with an eye for a boat take a second look. Dangerously low freeboard topped by a perfect sweeping sheer. Two extremely fine canoe ends with the stem graced by a strongly curved longhead under a tapered slightly reverse curved bowsprit. The early smaller canoes were sloops,
but as the boats grew larger the sail area was divided onto two unequal length spars in what is basically a schooner rig, but with a taller forward mast called the ‘fore’ and the shorter aft spar being the ‘main’. Masts were set at a bold 12-15° aft rake and sup- port a veritable cloud of sail topped by a slightly ridiculous ‘kite’ for good measure. The hull forms are shallow while the
obligatory centreboards have recently evolved into longer, more finely shaped, high-aspect foils. A fascinating aspect of the log canoes is
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