This month’s ‘Top Knot’ – Places to Eat (from $ to $$)

1. Brass Compass Cafe (Rockland) – Try the Seafarers Crab Meat Omlet for breakfast; or the Lobster Club for lunch
2. Cafe Miranda (Rockland) – You can’t go wrong with a few appetizers to share, there are lots to choose from
3. Home Kitchen Cafe  (Rockland) – Breakfast or lunch; but we love their variety of Omlets and the Huevos Rancheros for breakfast
4. Owls Head General Store (Owls Head) – Best. Burgers. Around. Try the 7-napkin Burger!
5. Bricks (Rockland) – Any one of their Wood-fired brick oven pizzas. A favorite  is the Navarro w/garlic herb butter, fresh spinach, and sliced chorizo sausage
6. Suzuki’s (Rockland) – We love everything on their menu – delicious!
7. The Slipway (Thomaston) - Try the Monk Nuggets w/chipolte lime aioli; Poi Boy; or the Mahogany Clams & Mussels over Linguine
8. In Good Company (Rockland) –The Walnut & Fontina Beef Tenderloin is a must; or if for a light diner pick several of their appetizers
9. Shepard’s Pie (Rockport) – You can’t go wrong with the fresh or wood-roasted oysters
10. Francine’s (Camden) – Capt Jon says the Steak and Frits are his go to menu item

Happy eating in midcoast Maine!

This year we are happy to have 6 designs available including the newest addition of “Autumn Moment” showing the 1927  built wooden boat hauled out on a late fall afternoon. Also two of our best sellers are back - “Evening Colors” showing the  Maine windjammer sailing toward the snow-covered hillside of Owls Head Lighthouse and “Rounding the Mark” with the schooner whimsically sailing around a Christmas tree. Each set of 10 cards is printed on recycled paper using wind power and comes with white envelopes.

The full list of available cards including “Sailing Toward Unity”, “Santa’s New Ride”, and “Winter Solstice” are available on our website.

New brochure by Mimi Steadman & Co and Tim Seymour

After tweaking language and going through hundreds of photos we had Mimi Steadman & Company put together a design we love. (If you are looking for a new brochure or print material give Mimi a call!)

The photos used in new design we feel really captures what it is that happens aboard the Riggin. This would not have been possible without wonderful photos from Kip Brundage, Frank M. Chillemi (the Riggn’s photography instructor), Dana Degenhardt, David Delperdang, Ben Krebs (of BK Photo), Carol Latta (of Amazing Maine), Elizabeth Poisson (of Rocky Coast Photography), and Edward Riggin.

Here are a couple of the photos that appear in the new brochure!J&E Riggin New Brochure

Carol Latta (www.AmazingMaine.com) - Owls Head Lighthouse

Ben Krebs (www.benkrebs.com) - Breakfast

As an added incentive for booking a charter in June or September this early in advance we’ll give you a 25% discount off the listed price or 10% in July and August. Just give us a call before September 30^th to reserve your windjammer charter.

A trip on the Riggin be the perfect place for next year’s family reunion, a birthday or anniversary celebration. Why not charter the Riggin as your venue? Our schooner charters are not limited to just family get-togethers. We also do class reunions, team building, weddings, class trips and themed trips w/any kind of focus such as food/cooking, fishing, wildlife/nature, inspirational or crafting (knitting groups). Give us a call and we’ll help you come up with a plan for your next get-together!

We know not everyone is on Facebook, where we’ve kept fans up-to-date as information comes in, so we thought we’d share today’s events in a post so you don’t miss out on all the fun! Below is a breakdown of posts from the MWA and photos from Capt Annie (that she took and sent in between cooking for everyone!) The race is made up of 4 classes – Coaster, Leeward, Windward & Visitors and has 15 participating vessels this year:

- MWA boats – American Eagle, Angelique, Grace Bailey, Heritage, Isaac H. Evans, Lewis R. French, Mary Day, Merchantile, Mistress, Nathaniel Bowditch, Stephen Taber, Timberwind, Victory Chimes
- Visiting boats - J&E Riggin, Spirit of South Carolina, Koukla

Race has started and we are all off to a low wind meander!

• The race began today at 11 am off Western Island (near Castine) and will race to the Northeast tip of Butter  Island (with a slight variations based on class).
• By 1pm Captain Kip of the Victory Chimes was reporting they were leading the 3 masted race… they are the only 3 masted vessel participating :)

Swim call during the race - not a good sign, but SO fun!

• 3pm – The association reports in-  ”The Schooner Mary Day has won the Windward Class. Congrats Captain Barry! Currently the Stephen Taber‘s out in front for the Coaster Class, but it’s still too early to tell. Leeward Class could be a close finish. Current conditions: 12 knot breeze out of the SW”

Getting really close to the Angelique as we begin to round the first mark, the R2 bell off Green Ledge.

Got some WIND! Passing Great Spruce and headed toward Butter and the finish line... and, um, in the lead!

• 3:30 – the association reports in again – “The Angelique has won the Leeward Class and the J&E Riggin has won the Visitor’s Class. Congratulations Captain Mike and Jon, respectively! Meanwhile, the Coasters are still battling it out…”

Capt and crew doing the happy dance after crossing the finish line FIRST! Love to all of those who were unable to be with us this year.

Update: When we made this post live yesterday the results for the Coaster class had not been decided yet. At 6pm it was announced that the Stephen Taber took the honor for the Coaster class.

 

Tomorrow morning we set sail for the first windjammer cruise of 2011. The cabins are painted. The rigging is done. The sails are in place. The galley is stocked. The bunks are made. With the hoist of the sails we’ll be feeling the salty Maine breeze on our faces for the first time this year – a moment we’ve been looking forward to since last October.

So as we leave the harbor for the first of many adventures this summer we leave you with this thought…

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
–Mark Twain

When Captains Jon & Annie took over stewardship of the Schooner J&E Riggin in winter of 1997/1998, as part of the package of boat and business, they inherited a one page website; that winter they upgraded to a multi-page site. A lot had changed on the web since 1989. Even 10 years later changes were still happening as travelers researched their vacations more online and less in traditional print – and it hasn’t slowed down since.

It was 7 years before the website would be worked on again. With the launch of a new and updated website in 2005 they were looking good on the web.

It’s now 6 years later. Looking back at the first website we laugh at how outdated it looks. Websites have come a long way since they first started appearing in the early ’90′s. As we went into this project we took years of notes, comments and recommendations into consideration. We wanted to make something functional, easy to navigate – a website that showcased the historic schooner, delectable food, breathtaking scenery and the camaraderie that is a huge part of our windjammer vacations. We hope you find this new site both helpful and easy to use.

What we love most about this site, it’s not just one thing. We love that every photo on the site was taken by one of our passengers; we love reading all the letters and emails you send us with comments and compliments about your sailing vacation and that now line the right side of every web page; we love the new colors reflect the warm feeling we get when you step aboard; and we love that we’re able to keep doing what we’re doing because you come back to sail with us time and again and recommend us to your friends and family (over 65% of you every year)!

So go have a look at the new Maine Windjammer website and let us know what you think.

We are now to the point in outfitting where we need to start getting all the lines up followed by the spar being put in place and then the sails. We are inside our 30 day countdown – 16 days til board for our first trip of the 2011 season!

The schooners at Windjammer Wharf, Stephen Taber, J&E Riggin & Nathaniel Bowditch, get ready for the season by taking their winter covers off.

And the deck sees the 'sun' again

Mouse prepares for a trip aloft to get the rigging started.

Toni gets lines and pulleys ready to go

Up and up and up he goes - Mouse climbs the ratlines

Tagged: Alan Castonguay, ratlines, Rockland Windjammer Wharf, Schooner J. & E. Riggin, Schooner Nathaniel Bowditch, Schooner Stephen Taber, Toni Ridout, winter cover, Wooden Boat Maintenance ]]> http://mainesailsblog.com/2011/05/12/winter-cover-comes-off/feed/ 0 Lady E Rockland Windjammer Wharf Schooners J&E Riggin's winter cover is off! Alan Castonguay aka Mouse gets harnessed Toni gets lines and pulleys ready to go Going aloft http://mainesailsblog.com/2011/04/22/new-water-barrels/ http://mainesailsblog.com/2011/04/22/new-water-barrels/#comments Fri, 22 Apr 2011 17:28:58 +0000 J&E Riggin http://mainesailsblog.com/?p=1491 ]]> Since today is Earth Day and recycling fits perfectly in theme we thought we’d share our latest recycling project – whiskey barrel to water barrel.

If you’ve sailed with us before you have seen the water barrels that sit on deck.

Behind these two lovely blonde fairies you can see two of the water barrels on deck.

They have served us well for the last 10 years but last year the metal rings finally gave out. This put Captain Jon on the hunt for new barrels. We were lucky enough to find someone here in Maine that has them shipped by the tractor trailer full up from Kentucky.

Before they will be ready to use for water this season they need some sprucing up. Scraping down the outside will expose the natural wood (oak) color to which we will protect with varnish as we do on all the exposed wood on the Riggin, aside from the deck and cabin tops which get oiled. Next the metal bands will get painted black as they were on our old barrels.

The crew has been quite excited to get started on this project, though they needed to wait for a rainy day (the days we do barn project and are not on the boat). This day came on Wednesday.

When I arrived at the office the crew had already started working on the barrels. I walked into the barn and Cap came over with a plastic tub with wood shavings saying “smell!” Now normally when someone walks up to you and tells you to smell something common sense tells you not to, but this was Cap so what the heck! Wholly Whiskey Batman! It was amazing how the smell of Kentucky whiskey has absorbed through the oak staves so when the crew scrapped the outside layer of wood all the shavings smelled like a distillery. Some of the stamped labels on the barrel heads were in pretty good shape so we kept them, they’ll make for a great story.

For fun: The Clermont Springs Distillery that our barrels came from produces whiskey and bourbon for Jim Bean. Last year they celebrated their 75th anniversary.

“For 75 years, the Jim Beam Clermont Distillery has stood strong amidst the Kentucky landscape,” said Jeff Conder, vice president, Americas Operations, Beam Global Spirits & Wine. “Today, we celebrate the role the Distillery has played in shaping Jim Beam Bourbon into the world’s number one-selling bourbon and its continued significant contribution to Kentucky Tourism through our commitment to a multi-million-dollar tourism development project.”