the Hawaiian Cornucopia, a 60-ft. 

 schooner that sails to and from the 

 tuna grounds at 7V2 knots; the 

 Norfolk Rebel, and others, like the 

 German-designed DynaShips, that 

 have not been thoroughly tested. 



"I don't see any other solution to 

 the fix these fishermen are in," Hall 

 says of the "sail-assist" idea. "Of 

 course, the first thing a fisherman does 

 is burst out laughing when you bring 

 up the idea of sail. But unless they go 

 this way, I'm afraid they're going to 

 just end up sitting on the dock." 



Hall spent 18 years as a naval 

 architect in the small boat design divi- 

 sion of the Navy Department. He also 

 has 20 years of experience on the 

 water, as a commercial fisherman and 

 charter-boat operator. He works now 

 as a project engineer for Uniflite Cor- 

 poration, a yacht-building firm with a 

 boat shop near Holly Springs. 



Hall has modified the design of a 50- 

 ft. Chesapeake Bay bugeye, the swift 

 old sailing workhorse notorious for its 

 ability to outrun the Maryland Oyster 

 Police during the Chesapeake Bay 

 oyster wars. Hall designed the craft as 

 a sail-assisted diesel trawler. Drawings 

 show a shallow draft, a beam tow 

 (which Hall says would pull a 35-foot 

 shrimp trawl), two masts and three 

 self-furling Genoa jibs. The "jennies" 

 are common on new sailboats over 30 

 ft. 



"The hull shape is very good," Hall 

 says. "It has evolved over the years to 

 be very efficient in the water. The 

 engine could be smaller and would not 

 run as much. And, the difference be- 

 tween the cost of a big engine and a 

 small engine would outfit the boat 

 with sails." 



Hall points out that almost half the 

 time, the winds off North Carolina are 

 15 mph or stronger. 



"This boat would be efficient under 

 sail if the wind is twelve miles per hour 

 or above," Hall says. "I believe a 

 fisherman could use his sails at least 

 fifty percent of the time he was out 

 working." 



Hall figures his boat would cost 

 about $180,000 to build, ready to sail. 

 He admits to a business interest in the 

 idea — he'd like to get a design commis- 

 sion or two. But he has also used the 

 boat as part of his campaign to get 

 more recognition for the fisherman's 

 problems. He writes and publishes a 

 newsletter, The Professional 

 Waterman, and once served three 



years on the Maryland Sea Grant ad- 

 visory board, arguing the need for 

 research and action to help the com- 

 mercial fishing industry. 



"You could say I'm pretty out- 

 spoken about all this," he says. "But I 

 know what these guys are facing. I've 

 been down that street." 



Bryan Blake is a 24-year-old 

 boatwright from Gloucester who has 

 gotten his boatbuilding training on the 

 job — in James Rose's boat shop on 



CSY's yacht-turned-workboat 



Harkers Island, and at the Straits 

 Railway in Gloucester. At the railway, 

 where boats are hauled out for repair, 

 Blake has torn down and put together 

 everything from modern yachts to 

 historic old sharpies and bugeyes. 



Blake's ambition is to build new sail- 

 powered workboats for what he 

 believes will be a new generation of 

 commercial fishermen — a generation 

 that will sail. 



Like Hall, Blake reached into the 

 past for help when he began designing 

 his first fishing boats. He chose one he 

 calls a "Core Sound sharpie," a classic 

 North Carolina workboat with 

 remarkable speed and utility. He had 

 overhauled several old examples at the 

 railway, and knew what went where. 



"My philosophy is that the men who 

 used to build these old boats, they 

 have generations of experience behind 

 them," Blake says. "If we just throw 

 all that out the door, we're making a 

 big mistake." 



Blake is especially reverent when he 



speaks of sharpies built by Ambroise 

 Fulcher, an Atlantic builder who died 

 30 years ago. About 50 of Fulcher's 

 boats are still working on Core Sound. 

 Blake's modified sharpie has 

 materialized as two juniper-planked 

 boats, the 20-ft. Tortuga and the 30- 

 ft. Sakonnet. Both are adapted to use 

 small engines when the sails are im- 

 practical. 



Blake thinks that as the price of fuel 

 goes up, fishermen will find it 

 profitable to use sail once again. He 

 also believes that state officials should 

 look into incentives to encourage 

 fishermen to use sail. He cites as an ex- 

 ample the 25 or 30 skipjacks dredging 

 oysters in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay 

 waters. 



"The only ones allowed to dredge 

 there are the guys that sail," Blake 

 says. 



"So far, the people who take the idea 

 seriously are the guys sixty or seventy 

 years old — the ones who can still 

 remember working under sail. They 

 know it can be done." 



For Paul Lockwood, the interest is 

 not so much in boats, but sails. 

 Lockwood, who has 20 years of ex- 

 perience in yachting and charter 

 sailboats, makes sails for pleasure craft 

 in Beaufort. But he sees, in the next 

 few years, a new market for his 

 product developing among commercial 

 fishermen. 



"I think it's going to take a more 

 drastic increase in fuel prices," 

 Lockwood says, "then you're going to 

 see some fishermen going to the trou- 

 ble and expense of sail. But almost all 

 of them could benefit from it to some 

 extent." 



Lockwood is hoping to supply the 

 sails for these fishermen. To convince 

 them, he's planning to outfit a 

 "demonstrator." 



"Right now, I'm trying to buy a 

 fifty-foot sailing yacht. It is a very 

 heavy-duty yacht, and I plan to rig it 

 out for commercial fishing. We'd ac- 

 tually get a crew on it, maybe 

 sometimes this summer, and let people 

 see first-hand that it will work." 



Lockwood points to a similar project 

 in the Tampa, Fla., area. The CSY 

 Yacht Corporation of Tampa has been 

 especially successful running a leasing 

 service for the owners of the yachts it 

 builds and sells. 



According to John Van Ost, sales ad- 

 ministrator for CSY, the company's 

 leap into sailing workboats was in- 



