Schooner

The night was considerably clearer than anybody on board her desired when the schooner Ventura headed for the land.

Designed by Frank Payne's renowned Boston design office, and built in 1928 of longleaf yellow pine, this 82-footer has been a racing schooner — a staysail schooner — since the heyday of Class-A ocean racing in schooners during the late 1920s and early 1930s.

In addition to the square-rigged sailing ships, the schooners were the second largest group of large sailing vessels.

Unfortunately, anyone looking for a schooner today has limited choices. In the used boat market there are always some wooden hulls available, and occasionally ones of steel or aluminum, but fiberglass-hulled schooners are harder to come by.

Boycott any pub that bans work clothes, allows customers to reserve tables or only sells beer in schooners. That is less a pub, more a private members’ club.

Foaming schooners of beer grew ever larger and more numerous as the crimson February suns went to their rest.

At first I refused, but ten schooners later I was ready to take on Jaws with a butterknife[.]

And needless to say, the Western Australia row will eventually be filled in as well, though not before drinking a schooner of the amber nectar in Perth.