RAYMOND, Maine — On a gorgeous May morning on Sebago Lake, between the usual boat traffic of the day at Raymond Beach, two showstoppers arrived at the boat launch.
Students and their teacher arrived from The Landing School in Arundel with two 17-foot town class sloop sailboats, still smelling of wood varnish.
We met this group back in January when the students, for the first time, flipped the wooden hulls of the two boats they began building in September. "Flip Day" is a celebratory event in boatbuilding. On Wednesday, the boats would touch water for the first time after nine months of building.
"I wouldn’t call it the final exam," wooden boat building instructor Jake Greiner explained. "I would say this is, really, the reward for all of the hard work that they’ve put in over the course of the year is actually getting to go sail in the boat that they might not have really believed they were going to finish when we started out."
It’s like spending an entire school year on one group project. A project, though, with many skills to master quickly.
Maxwell Keas is a poster child for the industry in Maine. A former Coast Guard sailor from Colorado, he was drawn to The Landing School and said he already has a job waiting for him at a boatyard in Boothbay Harbor.
"It feels a bit unreal," Keas said, leaning on the vessel he helped construct. "It’s one of those things where you realize that you’re gonna get to this point but it just looks so far in the future. And then, all of a sudden, it’s happened."
We were surprised to learn, for Keas and nearly all of his peers in the class, this would be the first time they ever sailed.
The group launched their boats, which floated. But as they began to navigate the lake, the wind remained calm. They paddled the boats in search of a gust until the water got choppy and a sustained wind finally arrived.
Each student smiled and grabbed some rope at Grenier's instruction. Keas let out a "yee-haw!" as he leaned over the side to push the hull more upright against the wind.
Both boats are for sale for around $26,000 each — strictly the cost of materials, Greiner said. That is, unless they decide to sail them off into the horizon themselves.