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New Book from
Capt Jim's log:
With Reckless
 Abandon

Last of the Great Gloucester Fishing Schooners

Journey to the Edge
of Disaster

Firsthand Accounts
of Sailing Ships
 

Antique Motor/ship
Rekord is at
Sharp's Point South

Windjammer
Cooking

A chronicle, unequalled, of  the Grand Banks dory-fishing schooners. It illustrates in pictures and text the hard-bitten way of the dory man and the schooners that were his life in an industry that has faded away with the influx of modern methods. Depicting and preserving every detail of the fantastic life of the schooner Adventure, Garland energizes this amazing saga of a vessel and her men into a realm of reality  contained in a caboodle of enthralling chapters.

   Launched in Essex, Mass., in 1926, the 121-foot wooden schooner Adventure of Gloucester was already old and worn when she was laid up in 1953. She was the very last American vessel to catch fish by hand from small dories, yet was one of the biggest moneymakers in the history of the fisheries. She then went to her second life as a windjammer on the coast of Maine, where Captain Jim Sharp rebuilt her rig and meticulously restored her to the grandeur she possessed when new. The old Adventure, thrashing along "down east", was renown for her incredible sailing qualities, a virtue which only complemented the record-breaking history she left in the fisheries.

After her years as the Queen of the Maine Coast passenger windjammers, Captain Jim Sharp, in 1988, gave the vessel to the people of Gloucester via the Gloucester Adventure, a non-profit educational corporation that is restoring her to the glory and  dignity held in her fishing career.  Now Adventure is wonderfully doted upon, and loved as a National Historic Landmark to the fisheries and to all men of the sea.

About the author: From an old Gloucester family, Joe Garland is a writer, sailor, and historian who has chronicled his famed home town  of Gloucester in depth and breadth. He once skippered the aged 35-foot schooner yacht Bandit. Captain Jim Sharp, in preparing for this book, had spent years taping, recording and researching the experiences of the old captains of Adventure and the fishermen who went in her.  There is an extremely remarkable collection of historical pictures pointing up the way of life of a dory fisherman.

 

Out on the Banks, Adventure's dory men prepare to take to the sea

The schooner Adventure is a metaphor for a lost era...She was at the height of her career when the engine-powered otter trawlers came on the scene and drove out the dory fishermen...But this book is not a polemic on the curse of modernization. Rather, it is an affectionate look at a vessel that was above the ordinary and that was built, owned, sailed, and worked very hard by men who were well above the ordinary.

"The Adventure and her times are brought alive in a narrative that weaves together her history and that of the fishing industry, her people and the rollicking times they had, and the hyper-salty places that lurk in our imaginations when the lights are out and winter storms pound the ledges...We were born too late, and Joe Garland, aided by a collection of fantastic photographs, tells us why. Boisterousness tempered by reality is the best way to describe his style. You'll pray the story never ends."

Peter H. Spectre
WoodBoat Magazine

To purchase this beautiful book in hard or soft binding or to learn more of the history of Adventure, her current restoration and her thrust as an educational tool, visit:
              www.schooner-adventure.org

        or Email:jsouza@schooner-adventure.org

                             Bound for the Banks, schooner Adventure
                                    leaves Boston Harbor to go fishing,
                                      Captain Leo Hynes, circa 1950

                                   Driving off to the west'ard in half a
                                         gale o' wind and going like a
                                       scalded cat, schooner Adventure
                                           reels off  fourteen knots,
                                      Captain Jim Sharp,  circa 1980

         www.sharpspointsouth.com                                                                                      

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Sharp Aventures
Camden, Maine
� 2006