You couldn’t ask for a better summer weekend to be on a sailboat on the Maine coast. Clear skies, temperatures in the 70s and enough breeze to move 88 sailboats around the marks in Maine’s Penobscot Bay. It was the eighth running of the Camden Classic.
Friday, July 28, the first day of competition, started out calm as the fleet motored out of Camden Harbor to mill around the committee boat, waiting. By noon, the wind had filled in from the north, first at 10 knots and then up to 15 by mid-afternoon. Following a late start, more than a dozen separate divisions were scattered all over this long, wide bay, each on its own course around the marks: schooners, ketches, yawls and sloops.
While the adults were out sailing on the bay closer inshore, nearly 94 high-school-age sailors from a dozen Maine yacht clubs were messing about in 60 small boats: 420s and Optimists. The winds picked up to 15-plus knots in the late afternoon, forcing a few of those in the “green class” to retire. But it was a great day of sailing for both fleets.
Back ashore, the kids folded sails and headed to Lyman-Morse for pizza and a talk by Ronnie Simpson, skipper of Shipyard Brewing, the Open 50 in the 2023-2024 Global Solo Challenge single-handed, non-stop round-the-world race.
As the afternoon wore on, the classic fleet began arriving back in Camden Harbor. Dozens of classic yachts began rafting up, six abreast along the docks at Lyman-Morse’s recently rebuilt shipyard. On the promenade along the docks, flanked by restaurants, bars and nautical boutiques, a live band was playing, Dark and Stormies were poured, food was served and the day’s race was relived all over again.
Saturday’s forecast looked even less windy, but by noon, the land had heated up enough to draw in a southerly sea breeze, 12 to 18 knots, and things got under way. The Vintage Class featured a dozen of yachting’s historic thoroughbreds, including the 68-foot 1938 Sparkman & Stephens yawl, Back Watch; Gleam, the 1937 12 meter of America’s Cup fame; Marilee, Ken Colburn’s 1926 Herreshoff-designed NY40; Chris Bouzaid’s Bijou, a 44-foot classic 30 Square Meter; Peter Cassidy’s Siren, a New York 32, and Isla, another New York 32.
Additionally, six topsail schooners headed off in another direction, followed by five Concordia wood yawls, seven Dark Harbor 30s, a dozen in the Modern Tradition, along with 30 boats in the PHRF divisions.
By late afternoon, the fleet began rafting back up at Lyman-Morse’s docks, and it was party time while the officials sorted out the results. Classic yachts, their owners and crews gather each summer in various ports throughout New England to race, but mostly to be together.
“It’s not for the race they come,” Jane Coombs told me a few years back. In 1967, she and her late husband, Kenny Coombs, helped launch the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta, an annual gathering of vintage yachts in the West Indies. It has been ongoing for 57 years. “It’s these classic boats that bring them here,” she adds. “The competition is just an excuse to be together.” And they’ll all be back here in Camden next summer – the boats, the owners and their crews. You can find this year’s results and information on 2025 at www.CamdenClassic.com.