Old School: Wood and Glass

Old School, tied up at the Winter Harbor lobster boat races, 2016. Old School was built with the simplicity and sensible design seen in older wooden boats, said Chris Pope, who finished the boat in 2015. Pope built the boat as a lobster smack to help serve the Swan’s Island Fishermen’s Coop.

He spends part of the year on Swan’s Island and the rest in Freeport where his boat shop is located. His son lobster fishes at Swan’s Island until well into the school year.

The hull is a 38' Holland extended to 41'. The beam is 13' 2" and it has an 11' 9" open stern. Old School is powered by a 380 Cummins turbo diesel and runs a 28" square, left-hand wheel with a #4 cup on a 2" shaft. The boat won the MA Class in the Maine Lobster Boat Racing Association 2016 season.

The original lobster smack plan, as plans often do, sailed into changed circumstances by the time Old School was launched and it has not been used to ship lobster. However, the heavy-duty stainless steel hydraulic boom installed behind the wheelhouse is still in place. It can quickly lift anything up to 500 lbs., said Pope.

From the vertical grain Douglas fir deck, to the tricked-out wheelhouse, to the accommodations down forward, Old School makes a simple attention-to-detail statement. The electricals and hydraulics on board a boat can be an incomprehensible maze of wire, tubing, switches and grime in a dark, cramped space. Old School’s mechanicals room looks like a 3-dimensional wiring manual. Everything is color-coded and labeled, wires and tubes are bundled and cable tied to the walls, connections are clean with dedicated units spaced and laid out on gloss white walls in a brightly lit separate room.