Dark Moon

On the western horizon, during  a brief period between sunset and moonset, the astronomical new moon, or dark moon, occurs at the moment of conjunction in ecliptic longitude with the sun, making our moon invisible from Earth.

For many this may mark the beginning of a new month, while for some of us on the central Oregon coast last weekend, it heralded the eighth annual Toledo Wooden Boat Show.

For the first time since this show began, Doryman did not display any boats but spent the weekend visiting and riding on other people's boats.

Here we see him giving pointers to Jerry and Ely who are members of the Teak Lady Society, committed to the maintenance and upkeep of the Port of Toledo's two classic Teak Lady sailboats, MaZu and Che Hon.

These fellows spent the entire weekend giving free sailboat rides.

Good job, if you can get it!

There were all the usual suspects and a few new faces in a crowd that was having a lot of fun despite the occasional threat of rain (which never happened).

Here, two dories duke it out for a photo finish at the end of an all comer's race. The girl on the left won.

My favorite from this show is Mark's brand new Lightning racing dinghy, built in the strip plank method.

There was also Gus Loomis' fresh-from-his-shop CLC Skerry.

Bob and his brother Dick Mitsch built and newly launched an Iain Oughtred Whillyboat.

And Chuck Gottfried christened his Kingfisher rowing scull after a couple years of painstaking and detailed effort.The hull is made of 3mm mahogany plywood with decks of heat shrunk Dacron and weighs only 40 pounds.






There were lots of old friends and new. I'd like to thank them all for a great time on the water!

A special thanks to Chuck and Shay who let me crew on their Bristol Channel Cutter, Baggywrinkle. That's me hanging in the ratlines.

As promised, the slideshow: