Katherine MehlsOriginally designed for racing in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the Baybird Sloop by W. Starling Burgess found a true home in the summer sailing camps on Cape Cod’s Pleasant Bay beginning in the 1920s.
Originally designed for junior racing at the Corinthian Yacht Club in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the Baybird Sloop was a product of the restlessly creative naval architect W. Starling Burgess (see WoodenBoat Nos. 71–74). The Marblehead sailors, however, soon found that the very flat sheer Burgess drew for the gaff-headed sloop made the boat a wet ride in their blustery home waters. The type was, fair to say, less than successful—until sailors in the thin waters of Pleasant Bay on Cape Cod bought 20 or 30 of the boats (the story varies) and brought them down from Marblehead. This group fanned the embers, and soon the Baybird’s popularity was ablaze, especially in summer sailing camps in the shallow bays centered on the elbow of the Cape.
The flame never fully extinguished in the ensuing decades, and the Baybird’s modern supporters fervently hope it will soon undergo a second rekindling with a return to wooden construction. The pretty towns of Chatham, Harwich, and Orleans are surrounded by a tangle of bays, and people here take a keen interest in preserving the lifestyle of Cape Cod. Their love for this area is evident, and by some alchemy the Baybird tradition has become bound together with it.
The shallow and sandy waters are ringed with salt marshes and sinewy channels leading to hidden ponds. It can blow here, but winds can be temperamental and fluky. The bottom is rarely out of sight: it isn’t uncommon to see sailors jump overboard so they can push a boat grounded on a bar off to deeper water. The waters are protected, however, so the Baybird’s flat sheer seems to be no issue. A centerboard and kick-up rudder give the boat 6″ of draft, making the type an excellent choice for daysailing and racing here.
Katherine MehlsSuzanne Leahy of Pleasant Bay Boat and Spar Company in South Orleans, Massachusetts, built a new cold-molded Baybird in 2010, hoping to rekindle an interest in wooden-hulled boats of the class.
Boatbuilder Suzanne Leahy, who grew up in Marblehead, discovered Baybirds after moving to Orleans from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1993. Possessed of the wiry energy of a coiled spring, the former sculptor (she holds a master of fine arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania) found boatbuilding—sculpture come to life—by working as a volunteer with John Brady at the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia. She fell for it hard. Then, after a vacation to Cape Cod, she planned a way to forge her boatbuilding experience and the Cape into a new lifestyle for herself. Then she “met someone,” moved to Orleans, tried finding work in boatyards, and ended up working five years in a hardware store—a great way to get to know the locals. She later started a business, now called Pleasant Bay Boat and Spar Company, focusing primarily on wooden boat building and restoration but also on hollow spar and flagpole construction. Along the way, she became active in the Friends of Pleasant Bay and later was instrumental in restoring a historic Coast Guard 36′ motor lifeboat (see WoodenBoat No. 212). Boats, the Baybird among them, became as important to her as the Cape itself.
“I was meeting people who talked to me about the Baybird, but I hadn’t noticed it at all,” she said. “This is the story of my life—I just stumble into these things.”
In 2010, she built STARLING, the first new wooden Baybird sloop in more decades than anybody can remember, maybe even since the original boats were built at Marblehead.
Katherine MehlsThe Baybird STARLING, named after her designer, is a comfortable racing daysailer for a skipper and crew. The teamwork involved in sailing it is what made the type so great for use in Pleasant Bay’s numerous sailing camps—and her builder hopes to revive that use.
She took the lines off the Cape’s only surviving wooden example, PURA VIDA. (The only other known wooden survivor is in Maine.) She faired them to what she and other Baybird aficionados believe to be as accurate a reflection of Burgess’s original design as can be attained, since the original plans are lost. At the same time, she joined others in launching a new Baybird Class Association to nurture the type and control its specifications.
Leahy hopes her cold-molded version will help to revive one part of Cape Cod’s history by steering more sailors toward wooden-hull heritage. Because this is a one-design class, requiring tight control over specifications, the association has granted Leahy the exclusive right to build the type; plans aren’t available for purchase.
Tom JacksonWith two halyards for the gaff-rigged main and one halyard for the jib, the Baybird’s rig is uncomplicated.
It was probably wise of Leahy and the nascent association to permit modern methods and materials, as they have done, to bring the boat into a new century. STARLING is cold-molded, using an inner 3 ⁄8″ layer of white cedar strip planking followed by two 1⁄8″ veneer layers of Spanish cedar on opposing diagonals for a
total thickness of 5⁄8″. The hull, very fair and stiff, is sheathed inside and out with Dynel set in epoxy. The deck is 1⁄2″ okoume plywood, also sheathed in Dynel in
epoxy. The white cedar side seats are comfortable, with a low coaming of laminated mahogany making hiking out easy and comfortable when necessary. The cedar floorboards make an unobstructed cockpit, easy to move around in and providing many ways to shift crew weight to find the right balance.
The centerboard trunk is neatly trimmed with mahogany, and a wooden mainsheet jam cleat is mounted on its aft end. Inside, however, the centerboard is made of 1″ ultrahigh molecular-weight plastic faired to a foil in cross-section.
Tom JacksonA bronze gooseneck fitting clamps around the hollow Douglas-fir mast, avoiding holes for fastenings.
The rig, too, is modernized, with the mast built hollow using the bird’s-mouth method of fitting together staves for glue-up (see WoodenBoat No. 149). The standing rigging is high-tech, low-stretch synthetic line. The boom is intentionally left solid, adding a bit of weight to the foot of the sail. The gaff, however, is hollow, and instead of wooden jaws it has a saddle, a carbon-fiber lamination that allows the gaff to slide up and down the mast. The boom’s gooseneck fitting is cast bronze using straps that encircle the mast and therefore don’t require fastening holes bored into the spar’s lovely bright-finished Douglas-fir.
I sailed with Leahy in August on the first day of the annual Arey’s Pond Catboat Gathering, in waters she has come to know well. I had sailed with her first at The WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport with not enough time, not enough wind, and too many boats, after which I formed an idea to join her again in the sloop’s home waters, which I’d never seen. Here, the Baybird shone. In the shifting winds of Pleasant Bay, we tacked easily, dodging the shoals—most of the time.
Tom JacksonA purpose-made mainsheet jam cleat on the after edge of the centerboard trunk is handsome and works well.
Leahy has a fine eye and has built a fine boat. The boat has all the hallmarks of a classic daysailer—comfortable to handle, fast, nimble, and placing a premium on the teamwork of a skipper and crew who know each other and their boat well and sail often. It tacks easily, is responsive, and has a very well-balanced helm. It’s unusual these days to see gaff rig on a boat of this size, but it is powerful and close-winded enough to surprise many a dinghy racer. The boat is a joy to sail. Such boats tell what they need, and an attentive crew quickly learns to listen.
Old-time sailors tell Leahy that they sail the boats very flat, not even inducing heel in light airs, as is commonly done on light racing dinghies. They keep crew weight far forward, and they don’t strap the mainsail in too tight. In the camps, “they were never allowed to bring the boom in over the stern quarter—that was a rule, and even farther outboard was better,” Leahy said. They also used about 80 lbs of lead ballast in the boat, and told her that they remembered adding more ballast in the camps to account for the fact that their sailors were young and light. Racing against one boat in the hands of an old-time skipper, “we were watching them fly. That’s the only way to sail them. It’s completely not rational. It defied reason. The sail was old, full of holes, but the guy was flying. I was trying everything to catch him.”
Suzanne LeahySuzanne Leahy took the lines off one of the last two surviving wooden Baybird boats to reconstruct W. Starling Burgess’s original design, plans for which do not survive. She and others also formed the Baybird Class Association, with the intent of reviving the type and keeping control over its specifications. Plans for the type are not for sale; Leahy is the sole builder authorized by the association.
The beauty of racing, and the reason why it is such a great teaching tool, is its instant feedback on experimentation, not to mention the way it teaches people the mental habit of paying constant attention with ease. The Baybird is an excellent platform for that kind of sailing and that kind of learning, which is why the type took off so well in the sailing camps of the Cape.
“Because so many people learned sailing there, they have memories of what the bay used to be like,” Leahy said. “It was in them to try to keep the bay like this forever. The memories they’ve described to me were just magical.” Some families have summered here for four generations, and sailing catboats and gaff-rigged sloops has always been part of their lives. May it always be so.
Pleasant Bay Boat and Spar Company, P.O. Box 1174, 80 Rayber Rd., Orleans, MA 02653; 508–240–0058. The website also has information about the Baybird Class Association. Note: Google lists the company as Permanently Closed
Katherine MehlsDuring the annual Arey’s Pond Catboat Gathering, held each August on Pleasant Bay, Baybirds—most of them ‘glass—are active participants. Supporters hope more gaff-rigged wooden boats of the type will help Cape Cod hold on to what they see as an important part of the area’s historical legacy.
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