Cornish Gig

At 6 AM we boarded the Cornish gig Belle Fast for a row on Penobscot Bay. A gig is a "pilot boat," so named because it was the type of craft used to row a pilot out to a larger craft coming into a harbor to dock. They became racing boats because the first boat to reach the incoming craft got the job, the gig.

A cox called the strokes and 6 oar-persons, 3 each side, synchronously pulled a 12 foot oar into the water. We went out beyond the point, paused before rounding the buoy marker where cormorants were nesting and went back again, a quiet hour's row on a blue sky morning where the mist on the shore was just lifting. We had the water to ourselves, the fishing boats already gone, the yachts still sleeping on the diamond smooth water.

A sign on the water read: "Slow--no wake"