It’s All In A Tide

Photo by Steven Callahan.

A sight one rarely gets these days is of boats drying out on the hard for routine maintenance, and when one does, it’s usually a pretty small vessel. But this summer, the steel-hulled charter schooner Margaret Todd gave people driving through Hulls Cove on Mt. Desert a pretty dramatic view. Owner Captain Steven Pagels has long been a fan of shallow draft, so he fit the Margaret Todd with dual centerboards when it was built in 1998. So even at 151 feet, the schooner can crawl up on the beach for a routine bottom scrape when the tide is high. As the water slides back out, the schooner sits on her box keel and, with her relatively flat bottom sections, requires minimal blocking. This facilitates a quick setup for work and a quick getaway when the tide flows back in. Shortly after this photo was taken, the Margaret Todd returned to nearby Bar Harbor where she takes tourists for a spin around Frenchman Bay several times a day.