How much lobster in a season? And other fun fleet facts from the Maine Windjammer Association
Once a year, the Maine Windjammer Association collectively totals up a myriad of fun facts and figures for the season. When we look back collectively on miles sailed, guests hosted and lobsters consumed, it’s pretty amazing to learn what kind of an impact the Maine Windjammer Association has not only on the economy but on the memories of thousands of guests each season.
We asked the eight Maine Windjammer Association captains to total up facts and figures from zany activities like the number of bow-sprit dives, loaves baked and dishes washed to more serious fun facts like how many guests were hosted on board, and here’s what they had to say…
The eight Maine Windjammer Association members estimate….(and mind you, these are estimates)
They served up 12,150 lbs. collectively over the course of the 2018 sailing season. Between on-board dinners and bakes on the beaches, that means well over six tons of lobsters were cooked and plated up for Maine Windjammer Association guests. Many a Midcoast Maine lobsterman and woman were happy to see the Maine Windjammer Association vessels sail into their harbors!
- They sailed 17,700 nautical miles collectively during the 2018 sailing season. Let’s see, if the circumference of the earth is 24,901 miles at the equator, that means that the Maine Windjammer Association boats sailed more than 68% around the world collectively. To put that into perspective, they sailed the equivalent of seven times across the USA! Now that’s a lot of sightseeing!
- They hosted 4, 432 guests on board the eight windjammers. That means if you took the entire population of eleven Maine towns, including Allagash, Amity, Brooklin, Cambridge, Caswell, Chebeague Island, Cutler, Lowell, Mount Chase, Stockholm and Southport, Maine, you’d still have room for more people on a season’s worth of Maine Windjammer Cruises. One captain even told us that six of those passengers ended up moving to Maine.
- And those folks on board attempted or played an estimated 1870 songs along the way! According to one of the captains, this included one cello, three guitars, one Celtic harp, three fiddles, a pennywhistle, a banjo, and a harmonica just on his boat alone. We know for a fact that there was also one ukulele (played while hanging upside down), and a few more harmonicas on board too. From Irish to Bluegrass and plenty of folk and oldies, tunes bellowed from the eight Maine Windjammers all summer long.
- More than 2675 loaves were baked throughout the season…and only two burned. All loaves were baked in woodburning stoves in tiny galleys. Who knows how many cords of wood were “kneaded” to bake all that bread!
- It’s estimated that 502 dives were attempted off the bow sprits of the Maine Windjammer Association vessels throughout the season. Add to that at least 35 awkward cannonballs, 7 disastrous can openers, and at least 14 front flips for the real numbers. No one dared to estimate how many bathing suit bottoms fell off when they hit the water, though.
- At least 7948 pillowcases were cleaned and changed, but the thousands of dishes washed were too many to estimate. We know of at least one washing machine that bit the dust after all of those sheets and pillow cases were washed in the 2018 season. Just how many hands were chapped from doing dishes is a little harder to estimate.
- On a more serious note, an estimated $1,566,000 was spent in Maine’s Midcoast on direct Maine Windjammer Association cruise expenses. All eight of the captains focus their spending for food, goods, mechanical services, fuel and goods at Midcoast Maine businesses. This figure does not include the money spent by Maine Windjammer Association guests before and after their stays. That would be millions more. The Maine Windjammer Association is based in Rockland and Camden and so too is their spending. Their strong community spirit is focused not only on the waters they sail in but the communities in which they live.
Smiles? Countless! There were too many to even estimate in the 2018 sailing season.
Visit each of the Maine Windjammer Association’s individual vessels online at their websites by clicking below.
(Photos courtesy of Schooner Heritage and Theresa Stultzman)
Category: Press Releases
Tags: maine sailing, Maine Windjammer Association, Maine windjammers, MWA, windjammer cruises
