Captain’s book boatloads of fun

“WITH RECKLESS ABANDON,” by Capt. Jim Sharp, Devereux Books, 2007 paperback, $18.95

Jim Sharp was obsessed his whole adult life. He couldn’t keep his eyes or hands off them.

In his book “With Reckless Abandon,” Sharp admitted she “was the closest thing to an object of worship. … She was more than attractive in a thousand different ways. She had history, intrigue, humor, challenge, personality all trundled together. Just a look this old girl and I was hooked,” he confessed.

Of course, anyone who knew the retired Camden schooner captain would realize that he was talking about not women, but his long line of boats and ships. The book has a four-page appendix just dealing with the Sharp “fleet.”

Sharp is best-known for his long love affairs with the celebrity schooners Adventure and Bowdoin.

The book reads like love letters to his old ships.

“Sailing the Adventure to me was like sailing a living museum. It was all hemp rigging, deadeyes and lanyards, and heavy canvas. I gloried, too in the great height and patina of those enormous wooden masts. There was no sound of our going save that of the hiss of the water sliding under our stout oak hull. She infected me with her soul and made me her slave,” he said.

Obsessed.

Sharp, now retired, was born in 1933 in Philadelphia. Neither a childhood bout with polio, nor the family lending business would keep him from the sea. Not that he didn’t try.

He took a few watches at the Terminal Finance company before his heart decided that “there has to be more to life than this.”

He had already had his baptism aboard a 20-foot knockabout sloop, a 14-foot ketch, then a fiberglass racing dinghy. But in 1959 when he fell hard for the 45-foot racing yawl Malabar XI, he took off for southern waters and the chartering life, leaving the loan office to the competent secretaries.

In 1963, Camden boat owner Dayton Newton cruised through Florida boatyards looking for younger captains to take over his Camden schooners. Since the Florida boat business crashes in the summer and a lot of single, young, lonely girls took those Camden cruises, “I jumped at the chance,” Sharp said.

He worked as a mate aboard the schooner Mattie and picked the brain of 80-year-old skipper Fred Morey, then 70-year-old Ross Eaton. “You can always tell a true master when he shows his colors. He always does it in a quiet confident voice. The novice, unsure of himself, has to rant and rave and embarrass the recipient of the order,” he said.

Sharp listened and learned but longed to return to the warmer climes. But when he got there he realized that he had fallen again, this time for Maine’s “rocks, the pine trees, the afternoon so’wester and the attitude of the real old-time people like Captain Ross.”

He heard that the ancient schooner Stephen Tabor was for sale in Camden. He met Capt. Havilah “Buds” Hawkins and got some good advice along with a lifelong friendship.

Sharp scraped up $12,000 and had himself one more boat. On the maiden voyage he found himself accidentally locked in the Taber’s head, while the boat had several leaking problems.

But he survived and grew to love the business. So when the Adventure came up for sale in 1965, he bought that too. Now he had three boats and a new wife.

The Adventure’s history was irresistible. “It seemed to me that because of the expertise of Captain Leo Hynes, she caught more fish, made more money for her owners and was more successful than any vessel of any type until her retirement in 1953,” Sharp said.

In 1969, the Sharp fleet expanded to welcome the famous Bowdoin. Although Admiral Donald MacMillan had sailed the tough old Bowdoin on 26 expeditions above the Arctic Circle, she lay forgotten, a damsel in distress, rotting at the Mystic Museum docks. Sharp rescued her, and towed her to Camden for extensive surgery.

Somehow he kept the fleet running with help from old salts like Orville Young and Capt. Erland “Cappy” Quinn from Eagle Island. “Cappy was of island stock, tough as nails had always built boats and possessed that old Maine hardworking grit that was fast disappearing in this couch potato world. If I could choose a grandfather, it would be Captain Erland Quinn,” Sharp said.

Sharp chronicles the growth of the Camden schooner fleet and the constant battles with the Coast Guard and selectmen, one of whom opined that “the schooners do nothing for Camden. They take the tourists away from town so the money is not spent here.”

The book includes a fascinating cast of characters and boatloads of adventure (no pun intended) including a visit by the FBI, then by Hollywood for the filming of “Captains Courageous.”

One highlight was aboard the Sharp schooner Roseway (another obsession purchase) for the 1986 trip to New York City and the birthday of the Statue of Liberty. (I was aboard the Bowdoin for the event.)

“We were privileged to be a part of this awesome spectacular that will probably never occur in that same rich, extravagant style. The new century, terrorism and a much more dangerous world and the stringent rules of Homeland Security have changed the face of New York Harbor. I doubt we will ever see such a collection of wind ships parading majestically under the torch of the Statue of Liberty.”

The Maine coast is not likely to ever see a captain quite like Jim Sharp, with his fabulous obsession for so many sailing vessels.