Articles

Harpoon: Into the Heart of Whaling

Heart of Darkness Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2008300 pp, $25.00 Fin, Right, Blue, Sperm, Minke, Humpback: one by one, chapter by chapter in this remarkable book, each species of whale reaches commercial or outright extinction, all the while “managed” by governments and the International Whaling Commission. Over the years there has been no lack of

Continue reading...


Fire destroys Midcoast shipyard

Two partially completed tugboats and a pile of scrap metal were all that remained after a fierce fire destroyed the Washburn & Doughty shipyard in E. Boothbay on July 11. The company, which employed approximately 100 workers before the fire, laid off 65 of them and kept 35 working on a third tug that had

Continue reading...


A Novel Approach to Shore Access

A Midcoast group hopes to buy Merchant’s Landing on Spruce Head Island in S. Thomaston. A small marina since 1973, Merchant’s Landing came up for sale last year (WWF July 2007), threatening the shore access of island owners and others who have used the place for years. Sharon McHold, a member of the Dix Island

Continue reading...


Time to think differently

The announcement in mid-June that the Bush administration would ask Congress to lift the current restrictions on offshore oil drilling was yet another reminder of how out-of-touch this country’s leaders continue to be on energy policy. Forget the fact that drilling wells on the Outer Continental Shelf won’t do a thing to lower gasoline prices

Continue reading...


It’s Your Paper Now

Time to go. Been at this job for 16 years, more or less, since we started The Working Waterfront in the early 1990s. All that time I’ve been the editor, but now we’ve got a new one so I get to say goodbye by writing him a letter. We started small – the first issue

Continue reading...


A Visual Cruising Guide to the Maine Coast

This very straightforward guide incorporates reduced-scale NOAA charts, brief navigation descriptions and aerial photographs to provide clear instructions on how to enter or leave several dozen Maine harbors. It’s readable and straightforward, with the spiral binding that cruising sailors always yearn for as they struggle with their books and charts at the tiller, wheel or

Continue reading...


Venturing

Sail yourself from the Virgin Islands to Bermuda and you’ll encounter a number of working waterfront outposts, places where dedicated individuals provide the services that make this sort of travel possible. Aboard a 44-foot sloop the trip takes a little over six days. In our case it required the services of a commercial marina and

Continue reading...


Depression Perspectives

Where economics are concerned, it can be useful to take a very long view. Concerns about the strength or weakness of markets for lobsters or oil or even real estate get a little more manageable when we remember that all of these things go up and down over time – most commodities have their peaks

Continue reading...


Exporting our Problems

At the risk of appearing as if we’ve taken sides in a reliably contentious island issue, we’re publishing yet another story on island-based energy development. This time the location is the Nantucket-Martha’s Vineyard-Block Island area in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where Cape Wind Associates wants to locate a mega-project, and where the three island communities

Continue reading...


Little Things

The pace of change along the Maine coast may not be rapid, but it’s steady. The changes may not be sweeping, but — like all the little mainland towns and island communities that are this coast — they add up to something very large. Walk into a supermarket just about anywhere these days and you’ll

Continue reading...