MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • February 6, 2022
Belfast’s community rowing program, Come Boating, uses Cornish pilot gigs, a 32-foot-long wooden boat. Come Boating works to help more people connect with the ocean. The annual membership of $25 gets you many days a week rowing on Penobscot Bay in the spring, summer and fall, and – if a rower proves proficient – one or more along the Belfast coast in winter. coxswain Susan Cutting. “These boats are designed and built to race in the open ocean, which is totally cool.” The same style of rowboats built for the job of piloting in schooners in the late 1700s are used today by 86 pilot gig clubs in the United Kingdom. There also are rowing clubs in the United States that race Cornish pilot gigs up and down the Northeast, including the Belfast club.