Letters to the Editor 137

No pesky lobster pots on the lake

Steve Cartwright did an excellent job in his article (May/June 2015 MBH&H) on yacht clubs and included some neat, but not easy to find pictures, re: Moosehead Lake Yacht Club. 

Sandy Lommen’s article about cruising on Moosehead also was very good, although she was wrong about the availability of charts. DeLorme has a wall map of Moosehead Lake and used to offer a nicely laminated chart that may still be available at some stores. Humminbird (www.humminbird.com) offers a chart plotter with the chip for Moosehead Lake, which is well marked and easy to use. I rely on it constantly and have yet to ding a prop since I installed it over two years ago.

The steamer Katahdin uses the Humminbird chart plotter on a daily basis for cruises, which is how I found out that one existed for Moosehead Lake.

Otherwise Ms. Lommen’s description of Moosehead was excellent. She is correct that in shallow waters the winter ice may move rocks around. After all, the ice gets well over three feet thick in the winter here. In fact, automobile races are held on the lake ice during the winter. The rocks in the deepest parts of the lake do not change.

Thank you for including Maine’s lakes in your coverage as many folks only know about Maine’s seacoast. We cruised the coast twice, once on a 72-foot powerboat and once on a 53-footer. While we enjoyed it very much, we do not miss the lobster pots!

It is nice to go out on the lake without worrying about lobster pots and it is also nice not to have to wash the boat after a freshwater lake ride. We spent five years cruising the Great Lakes on our 53-foot powerboat, so maybe we became spoiled.

Keep up the great coverage.

Juan A. Galan, Jr.

Vice Commodore

Moosehead Lake Yacht Club

Fish ahoy

I loved the article in the Boat Show 2015 edition about the Herreshoff Fish by Ben Emory. I was a member at Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club in Oyster Bay, New York, for many years. One Fish is still sailing in the fleet there. 

I also bought a Pisces three years ago and love it. 

William F. Whitman, Jr.

Stonington, ME

Camp memories

I enjoyed reading Nancy Harmon Jenkins article “Up to Camp” in the May/June Issue of MBH&H. My mother’s cousin, Howard Henderson, built his camp called Buckhorn on land owned first by my grandfather, Wallace Henderson, and later by my aunt, Edna Henderson Thomas. It was and is a one-room camp with two wood stoves, but no fieldstone fireplace. One stove was used for cooking and the other for extra heat in really cold weather. As time went on, Howard added a guest sleeping camp to the other outbuildings such as an outhouse, known as the Dingle, and a cold storage room built into a rise known as the Dell. To us as children the most notable feature of the establishment was the large wooden swing Howard built between two trees.

My older cousin, Ernest Laird, remembered accompanying Howard and Grandfather when they hauled supplies to build the camp down the Back Road to the Spednic landing using Howard’s father’s (Great Uncle James Henderson) horse and wagon. From the landing all had to be brought by boat to the building site south on the Spednic Shore. The camp was started in the late 1930s. 

Howard’s mother, Great Aunt Mae Tracy Henderson, was a fabulous cook. She kept house for Howard after his divorce from his first wife. His second wife, Doris, and Aunt Mae were not always in agreement as to how things should be cooked, as I learned on asking Doris if she had Aunt Mae’s recipe for oatmeal bread. 

Howard served in the Seabees in World War II in Hawaii. He imported sand by the boatload to create a beach in front of Buckhorn. When I returned from living in Hawaii, I brought him a jar of black sand and a jar of green sand to add to the beach. It wasn’t until my cousin, Michael Thomas, built his camp on Grandfather’s property that there was road access to the camp and electricity became available in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

Thank you for a trip down memory lane.

Pamela Taylor

Forest City Township, ME 

Nice new look!

The new issue just came in the mail and I love it. 

Have you changed something in the magazine? The paper seems heavier and whiter. 

Anyway, keep up the good work!

Emily Lewis

Sherorn, MA & Rockport, ME

My, what sharp eyes you have. As part of our ongoing commitment to print, we have made the magazine ever so slightly wider and have improved the quality of the paper that Lane Press in Vermont uses to print the magazine. Another big change for the year ahead is that we are adding a sixth issue to the five we currently produce annually. This means you will now get your Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors every other month. —The Editors