Some of you who already have us in your Google alerts may have already seen this story, but we thought we’d post it for those of you who haven’t. It’s late as I post this as today was busy with new dock lines, insurance companies, press folks and shipwrights.
I’ll start out with how the school calls me with any messages. "Chloe and Ella are fine, now here’s why I’m calling…." Now I’m saying, "The Riggin will be fine, now, here’s what happened…."
Sometime between 5pm on Saturday night and 10:30 on Sunday morning, 6 of the Riggin‘s lines were cut and 6 were cast off, leaving her adrift. Luckily, there was a very light westerly breeze which gently pushed her into the dock. Her bowsprit then got caught underneath the ramp going down to the floats and as the tide came up, began to put tremendous pressure on the entire rig and forward section of the boat. Jon was headed down to shut off the battery charger and found her completely adrift, bowsprit firmly wedged.
What ensued then was an example of the true meaning of community. Within minutes we had several boat captains and their wives down helping to raise the ramp, free the bowsprit as the tide went out and eventually tie her back up to the dock. Our girls, Chloe and Ella, were taken care of so I could stay down with Jon and help and it wasn’t long before the Riggin was safe again.
We haven’t tallied all of the damage yet, but the bowsprit has a long crack in it, the stem is compromised and most of the metalwork in the rig will probably need to be replaced. It’s not anything that can’t be fixed, it will just take work.
We have no idea who or why. The Rockland Police are working on catching the person responsible and we and members of the Maine Windjammer fleet are offering $1,000 for any information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the criminal.
We’ll have the Channel 6 clip to share tomorrow, but for now here are the Village Soup and Courier Gazette stories.
Annie
