The skipjack has a long tradition of the Chesapeake Bay. But, these days there are only a handful or so left to ply the waters. One such vessel is the The Nathan that takes tourists out to recall that Chesapeake experience. Delmarva Public Media's Kevin Diaz has this report.
RUSH: Once there were hundreds of Skipjacks that roamed the waters at the Chesapeake Bay dredging for oysters. Now there are only a handful or so left. One such vessel is The Nathan; moored in Cambridge and maintained by volunteers. Delmarva Public Media's Kevin Diaz climbed aboard to take us back to that era.
ROWE: This is the captain's cabin, and this would be where they would cook and where they might even sleep if they were going to be out for more than a couple of days. And everything happened. Pretty tight quarters.
DIAZ: We're in the Captain's quarters on the Nathan, a skipjack built in Cambridge in the 1990s to keep the tradition of the Chesapeake maritime culture alive. The cabin is barely the size of a utility closet, but there are chart plotters and modern electronics making it safe for 21st century passengers. Bob Rowe, a volunteer on the Nathan, explains:
ROWE: We're a Coast Guard inspected vessel. So there's a lot of things we have to have. The emergency beacon, the fire extinguishers, life jackets...
DIAZ: Rowe, like a lot of volunteers, was attracted to the mystique of the watermen who lived off the bounty of the bay.
ROWE: I just love being out on the water. I love sailboats and this is really authentic and the lifestyle of a waterman. I'm never going to be a waterman, but I'm on a real waterman's boat and we are keeping the tradition alive.
DIAZ: The tradition is being kept alive by the Dorchester Skipjack Committee, which owns and operates the Nathan of Dorchester... a Skipjack you can usually see tied up at the Long Wharf in Cambridge. It started in the early nineties in response to a president's call for a thousand points of light in America. The Nathan is one. The boat splashed in 1994, and with the help of grants, donations and paying passengers in the summertime, the Nathan has been sailing ever since. That's a long time in skipjack years. Skipjacks were traditionally built to last only for the career spans of the watermen who sailed them. Their typical fate was to be beached, stripped for parts and left to rot in desolate creeks around the bay. Today only about 20 remain, and of those, perhaps only about a dozen are seaworthy.
JOHNSON: This is the last Skipjack built on the bay.
DIAZ: That's Pat Johnson, president of the Skipjack Committee.
JOHNSON: And the reason it was built is because it does represent a period of Chesapeake Bay Maritime history. When this was the main boat on the bay to dredge oysters, a thousand of them is estimated. They were built very easily by watermen in their backyards. Because the construction is fairly straightforward. It's not got a rounded haul like some of the other boats. It has a very flat bottom.
DIAZ: The skipjack's construction was also determined by the challenging nature of the Chesapeake Bay Fisheries, which has seen their ups and downs over the years.
JOHNSON: As oysters were depleted over the 150 years, where oysters were was very shallow water. So in order to continue to oyster, they needed a shallow bottom boat to get into the three to six foot water.
DIAZ: The committee has put hundreds of thousands of dollars into refitting and rebuilding, getting help from local marinas and the Richardson Maritime Museum in Cambridge. On our visit, the Nathan was up on the hard, getting ready for its annual up rigging, when sales are bent on for the season. By April, the Nathan will be back in the water taking visitors out on the broad Choptank River, which empties into the Bay. So what brings them? Again, Pat Johnson:
JOHNSON: I think the allure is a couple of things. One is just getting out on the water, being able to go out and be out there. And the Choptank [River] is so ideal for that because it's really unused. It's just us. But I think once people get out there and they see what these boats do and we sail, the engine goes off and it's quiet. It's that beautiful peace that you get on a sailboat.
DIAZ: Out here, it's like going back in time. For Delmarva Public Media, this is Kevin Diaz.
