Day: July 31, 2019

Mystic Seaport Museum announces it honored the Dark Harbor 20 class owners with the William A. Baker Award. The award is given to promote the awareness and appreciation of fine examples of one-design classes or boats of like kind, and to foster faithful preservation and restoration, and encourage their continued use.

The owners are being recognized for their effort to preserve and maintain a significant class of American sailing craft.

Antique and classic boat organizations throughout the country typically present awards for the preservation of wooden boats. As a rule, these awards are presented to individual owners or vessels, recognizing some superlative aspect of the work that has been done to keep them up, maintain original status, or examples of fine craftsmanship.

The William Avery Baker Award is unusual in that it is presented to a class association or group of owners. The purpose is to recognize the people and communities that do the bold, arduous, and often expensive work of keeping a large group or class of vessels actively sailing.

The Dark Harbor 20 was designed in 1934 by yacht designers Olin Stephens II and his partner, Drake Sparkman, in response to a request from members of the Tarratine Club of Dark Harbor in Isleboro, ME, for a new sloop for club racing. The resulting boat is a narrow, fin-keel hull with long overhangs and a Bermudan rig. The first batch of 16 boats was built by George Lawley in Neponset, MA, during 1934-5. The design proved to be a success, both on and off the racecourse. The boats are fast, easily driven with particularly good windward performance, and easy to handle.

A second batch of five boats joined the fleet after World War II. All but one of the original Dark Harbor 20s are still sailing, and in 2006 a fiberglass version was added to the class. The new boats were designed and engineered by Sparkman & Stephens to be identical in all relevant aspects to the wooden boats to ensure fair competition.

“The owners of the Dark Harbor 20s are to be commended for their dedication to authenticity and active use of the class. That so many of the inaugural fleet are still sailing is a remarkable accomplishment and yet there is room for a next generation to continue the class for the future,” said Steve White, president of Mystic Seaport Museum. “We are proud to honor the Dark Harbor 20 owners for their continued effort to allow future generations to sail and enjoy these fine boats. As Camden was my childhood home, I had the opportunity to sail the DH20s, loving them all”

The award was presented at a ceremony at the Tarratine Club July 30.

Mystic Seaport is pleased to announce the latest recipient of the William P. Stephens Award is maritime photographer Benjamin Mendlowitz.

Established in 1988, and named after William P. Stephens, long known as the “Dean of American Yachtsmen” and “the grand old man of American yachting,” the award is given periodically in recognition of a significant and enduring contribution to the history, preservation, progress, understanding, or appreciation of American yachting and boating.

“We are deeply honored to present this award to Benjamin Mendlowitz to recognize his life’s work capturing the beauty and craftsmanship of wooden boats,” said Mystic Seaport Museum President Steve White. “Much as the Rosenfeld family chronicled the early and middle of the 20th century of American yachting with their iconic black-and-white photographs, Mendlowitz applies his talented eye and intuitive sense of light and curve to portray the classic boats that remain from the past and to document the important vessels from our generation. His work helped drive the renaissance of wooden boats in America over the last 40 years.”

Mendlowitz was born and raised in New York City and drew his passion for boats and the sea from summers on the New Jersey Shore, where he was influenced by the local traditional boat builders. After graduating from Brandeis University, he embarked on a career in photography with his work appearing in WoodenBoat Magazine and other nautical publications. Through his company NOAH Publications, Mendlowitz publishes the Calendar of Wooden Boats, which has been a staple on the walls of wooden boat enthusiasts for more than 30 years.

Mendlowitz photographs have appeared regularly on the covers of many trade and educational books, and in feature articles and on the covers of the most respected boating magazines including WoodenBoat, Nautical Quarterly, Sail, Yachting, Cruising World, Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors, Soundings, Chasse-Maree and L’annee Bateau (France), Classic Boat, (Britain), Yacht (Germany), and Arte Navale (Italy). His work has also appeared in magazines such as Time, Esquire, Money, People, Atlantic Monthly, Connoisseur, Historic Preservation, Field & Stream, Down East, Yankee, Sports Illustrated, The London Times Magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, among many others.

Mendlowitz’s newest book, Herreshoff: American Masterpieces, created in collaboration with Maynard Bray and Claas van der Linde, was published in November 2016 by W.W. Norton & Company of New York. In 1998, Norton published Wood, Water & Light, a large-format, full-color book featuring more than 180 of Mendlowitz’s finest early images with accompanying text by Joel White. In addition to seven other book published by Norton, two books published by NOAH Publications feature his photography: Joel White: Boatbuilder, Designer (2002), with text by Bill Mayher and Maynard Bray and Aida (2012) by Maynard Bray.

The award was presented as part of the Castine Classic Race Symposium at the Maine Maritime Academy, in Castine, Maine, on July 31.

Previous recipients include Olin J. Stephens II, Jon Wilson, Elizabeth Meyer, Briggs Cunningham, John Gardner, Carleton Mitchell, Maynard Bray, John Rousmaniere, and Louie Howland.