By Nick Patch, Champlain Longboats Director On Saturday, November 9, Lake Champlain Maritime Museum’s Champlain Longboats program held its annual Otter Creek Challenge youth rowing race at the Vergennes Basin just below Vergennes Falls. The race had been scheduled for November 2, but we had a record-breaking rain event two days before the race date that made Otter Creek inaccessible …
By Chris Sabick, Director of Archaeology This month, our underwater archaeology team – including myself, archaeologist Cherilyn Gilligan, dive master Ron Adams, and occasionally Willa the dog – has been conducting end-of-season site inspections on the Vermont Underwater Historic Preserve sites. What is the Vermont Underwater Historic Preserve? Operated by the Vermont Division of Historic Preservation and managed by Lake …
By Art Cohn, Director Emeritus, Lake Champlain Maritime Museum Top image: Ensign Phil Lundeberg aboard the USS Frederick C. Davis just two weeks before it was struck by a German torpedo and sunk in the North Atlantic during WWII. On October 3, 2019 the world lost a great humanitarian and scholar and I lost a mentor and friend. Dr. Philip …
By Nick Patch, Champlain Longboats Director This past weekend, Lake Champlain Maritime Museum’s Champlain Longboats program travelled to Hull, Massachusetts to row in The Head of the Weir, a 5.5 mile rowing race sponsored by the Hull Lifesaving Museum. Eight of our crews and boats made the trek south on Friday afternoon. Vergennes High School came with three six-oar crews, …
By Ben Mayock Last Tuesday, very early in the morning, I set out on a mission to Vinalhaven, Maine. Usually when I head to Vinalhaven it is for the express purpose of enjoying the inescapable magic of Penobscot Bay on vacation with good friends, but this time I had a different mandate: go to Vinalhaven to pick up the Lake …
By Charlie Beyer, Champlain Longboats Hi! For those that don’t know me, I’m Charlie Beyer, the Assistant Director of Champlain Longboats. I work with Nick Patch to run the Boat Shop here at the museum and to lead our new longboat construction each winter with local high school students. In the summer I teach kayak building for Champlain Discovery, lead …
By Nick Patch, Champlain Longboats Director This past Saturday, October 5, a total of 206 youth rowers gathered at Perkins Pier on the Burlington waterfront to participate in the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum’s annual youth rowing race, the James Wakefield Rescue Row. This race is named in honor of James Wakefield who, along with his son Jack, on December 9, …
By Elisa Nelson, Schooner Tour and Volunteer Coordinator On the calm morning of September 3, the crew of the Lois McClure took a short trip to Shelburne Shipyard for our Coast Guard-required haul-out and hull inspection. This meant, of course, that Lois had to come out of the water, so we had an exciting (but actually quite slow) morning maneuvering …
By Cherilyn Gilligan, Archaeologist Editor’s note: This summer, we welcomed underwater photogrammetry expert Kotaro Yamafune (Kota, as he is referred to here) to lead courses on photogrammetry for our local diving community and join us as we put this technique to practice on some wrecks in Lake Champlain. Museum archaeologist Cherilyn Gilligan shares her experience and photos from a great …
By Nick Patch, Champlain Longboats Director The week of September 9 was a week to remember for Lake Champlain Maritime Museum rowing programs. On Wednesday we hosted 95 Otter Valley Union Middle School students at the museum’s North Harbor for a team-building day and on Friday we hosted Colchester Middle School in Burlington with another 90+ rowers. All of these students spent …