Fifty-one students, age 8 through 78, attended the Friday Traditional Boathandling Classes. The Tuesday night Traditional Sailboat Racing Series attracted 18 different boats and 50 different participants, crew and skippers, and a following who admired the ballet of sail from the shore and passing craft. Patches, owned by Peter Metcalf and crewed with Shelley Woods of Noank, took first place in both the Beetle Cat and the Portsmouth Handicap Class. In addition to providing daily instruction and coaching in rowing, sculling and sailing, staff and volunteers participated in the Small Craft Workshop, Photo Weekend, media events, and assisted with group boat rentals involving visiting vessel crews, sea cadets, museum guests and Williams Mystic college alums, and we continued the courtesy of making the fleet accessible to backyard builders seeking hands on test drives before committing time and money to construction. But The Boathouse season is much more than numbers and difficult to summarize in a few words.
Visitors come from all over the world and represent a range in boathandling skills.
They offer donations in appreciation, share gifts and bring their dogs. This year they included Waldo Howland and Leo J. Telesmanick, as well as less experienced boathandlers like the family of four who thanked us profusely for the opportunity to sail the Woods Holes Spritsail boat aground week after week. There was a man from Ohio who in the course of rowing his skeptical wife and children to the bascule bridge and back learned the characteristics of a Whitehall first hand, comple-mented his reading and converted his crew. Many children, reaching out in disbelief, exited clutching Bob Watt's commem-orative models and some returned to row another favorite and proudly point out their pictures hanging below the counter. Youngsters Nick Diciccio and Thomas Szafarek who met during a Boathandling Class eagerly demonstrated their new found skills and together rowed the Southport pulling boat, Captain Hook in a fresh southeasterly around and around the docks, laughing and hollering out the stroke to the delight of their relatives and amazement of other students and staff.