ROCKLAND, Maine — Andy Zuber gave a laugh as he watched four of his friends hoist the sails above his boat, while he held the attached rope.
Gladiator, as she was named, is a Friendship sloop, built in 1902 in the quiet fishing town of Friendship, Maine. We met Zuber and his blue-hulled beauty in Rockland Harbor about 15 miles from her birthplace. Despite her age, Gladiator was joined by about a dozen other sloops. Their owners had come for an annual test of skills.
Zuber heads the Friendship Sloop Society, granting him the title of commodore. The society was founded in 1961, and its members have raced their boats each summer since.
Though they are an elegant shape, sloops have never been the biggest or fastest ships in any given harbor. Zuber and other members we met with said the boats were relatively cheap to make and purchase, and carried a wide working deck, making them optimal for turn-of-the-century fishermen.
"This was built for fishing, right?" Zuber posed with a smirk. "It was built to get you there and get you back. They weren't really built for racing. It's a pickup truck," he said.
Diane Fassak was the first woman commodore of the society. She spoke with us while sitting at the helm of her own sloop.
"We are not yachts," she smiled. "We are boats."
The sloop captains filtered out of the marina, near the breakwater lighthouse, and prepared to begin the second of three days of regattas.
"The thing we're trying to do here, particularly with the maritime festival this summer, is move everything to the next generation," Fassak added.
Indeed, as she spoke those words, down at the end of the dock, a group of children tied up tiny sailboats after a morning sailing class. And in the parking lot, vendors set up tables to greet visitors for the inaugural Maritime Heritage Days.
Sarah Austin, a former Rockland city councilor, was enthused to add this new festival to the buzz of the 60-plus years of sloop races.
"When you invite people to an event that has music and food and fun things that they can buy as mementos but also chances to get out on the water and enjoy the coast of Maine in the summer, that's not a hard invite," Austin smiled as she looked around the vendor tent.
Organizers said they intend to make the Maritime Heritage Days an annual event.
Back out to sea, no one really seemed to care who won the races. Some dangled their feet off the side of their boat and leaned back in the noontime sun. Others laughed and chatted with family and friends on deck; all while hurdling their historic floating "pickup trucks" around inflated buoys and each other.
