Listen To Ron Tell It Just The Way It Went Down
Video- Schooner Adventure Homecoming Trip From Bath Maine Circa 1987 From Ron Gilson
My View of Life on the Dock
My View of Life on the Dock
Listen To Ron Tell It Just The Way It Went Down
Good Morning Gloucester 
Ron, that was a wonderful reminiscence. Of course the next day was a great one too; the rest of us board members all joined the vessel in Sandy Bay, we hoisted the sails, pulled up the anchor and sailed in a freshening breeze around the Back Shore, around Eastern Point, rounded Ten Pound Island and came booming on in to the Inner Harbor, carrying all sail. The breakwater was covered with people waving banners and cheering, the fireboat came out to salute the Old Girl, and dozens of pleasure boats skittered all around the schooner as she made her way back home. When Jim Sharp had her within a hull’s length of the Fish Pier berth that had been set aside for her, he dropped the anchor, spun the wheel to starboard, and Adventure whirled around, swung up alongside the pier, and stopped an inch from it, as though Jim had done it every day. A great vessel and a great skipper. Hard to believe that was 25 years ago!
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Why was the vessel condemned? Sounds as if it sailed so beautifully.
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By the way, Ron, Adventure sailed back to Gloucester in August 1988. Joe Garland organized The Gloucester Adventure, Inc. beginning in 1987 and asked maybe a dozen of us to form the board and plan for the vessel’s return. The initial group included Joe, you, me, Bill Chapin, Cal Morser, Doug Parsons, Sinikka Nogelo, Dave Marsh, Skip Ross, Daisy Nell, Carolyn O’Connor, and Peter Bent. If I’ve missed anyone, sing out. We planned the homecoming, started fundraising, Daisy Nell wrote a song, Quincy Bent made a video, and we started planning for a vessel that would be a dockside attraction geared to showing how fishing under sail was the backbone of Gloucester. We had pancake breakfasts on board every Sunday. We got the Coast Guard to give us limited permission to sail, but sailing wasn’t the objective. Now there’s a new Adventure board, committed to “Sail Adventure Forever.” This was neither our goal nor our desire. Maritime Gloucester and the Cape Ann Museum are now the place to go to learn about Gloucester’s heritage of fishing under sail.
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Pat Fiero was on the board too.
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Schooner Adventure is still very much concerned about teaching about Gloucester’s fishing history as evident by our current education programs including:
1. Guided walking tours of Gloucester’s Working Waterfront – highlighting the various fishing companies and supporting industries (offered every Saturday July – Sept)
2. Traveling Dory Program which is a school assembly program teaching about the history of Gloucester’s fishing vessels and methods (for grades 3 and up)
3. Skippy’s Adventure Program – another school assembly program utilizing our new children’s book, Skippy Finds Adventure, which shares the story of the dog which lived on Adventure for 15 years and what life was like on her dory fishing schooner (grades Pk-2)
4. Our monthly Gloucester History Sharing Program at the Rose Baker Center which are history presentations and discussions eliciting memories of old Gloucester from our wonderful seniors.
Our Sail Adventure Forever campaign is to raise the last needed funds to completely finish the restoration of Adventure which is now over 3/4 completed. This campaign is also to endow a maintenance fund so Adventure will always be seaworthy. Once passenger certified, she will offer day sails out of Gloucester to share the experience Ron descibed – schooner sailing on an 122 foot authentic fishing schooner which is twice as big as our sister schooners in Gloucester Harbor.
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Beth, I have no quarrel with the choices the Adventure Board has made. Much more practical than the romantic dreams of the founding board of directors. Send me an email at capeann1@comcast.net so we can carry on this conversation. Tom
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Awesome story Ron…. Thank you sharing … GMG is very luck to have you !
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That near touch and go in Portsmouth was surely a great moment for Jim Sharp. I can feel the thrill and tension from the way Ron tells it. Jim Sharp’s 2006 book, With Reckless Abandon, adds credence to the description of this maneuver.
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