By Nick Patch, Champlain Longboats Director On the morning of Friday, February 14, with temperatures topping out at 4 degrees on one of the coldest days of the winter to date, fifteen intrepid student boat builders from Middlebury High School and Vergennes middle and high schools along with school and museum staff traveled to Ron and Karen Mceachen’s Bristol forest …
By Meg Salocks, Director of Marketing and Engagement Today marks the first day of an exciting annual project here at Lake Champlain Maritime Museum: the first day of boat building! This year our boat builders hail from two local schools: Vergennes Union High and Middlebury Union High. Our flagship youth boat building program, Champlain Longboats has been engaging kids since …
By Meg Salocks, Director of Marketing and Engagement Last weekend, over 160 Vermont youth rowers, a fleet of longboats built by our boat building students, and our intrepid coaches and Champlain Longboats staff rolled into Boston, MA for the 2019 Icebreaker Regional Youth Open Water Rowing Championships. An annual championship held in the Fort Point Channel in Boston hosted by …
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 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 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 …
By Lisa Percival Recently, on Thursday, September 12, the museum had its annual moonlight row with members of our Community Rowing clubs and staff. Enjoy this account from museum staff member and Community Rowing Club leader Lisa Percival, and photos from participants Pat Jackson, Kris Jarrett, Andrew Rainville, and Mary Micklas. In total, we had a group of 29 rowers …