50' Burnham Pinky Schooner (2011) - ARDELLE

ARDELLE, named for my grandmother, is a Pinky Schooner I built with my family and friends over the winter of 2010-2011. Pinkies were a type of fishing vessel that developed in Essex from the smaller Chebacco boats in the early nineteenth century. Known for their pointed sterns and high swept bulwarks aft. At forty tons the Ardelle would have been about average size Pinky. While smaller than the later types of vessels used in the Gloucester fisheries, Pinkies were known for being well built, extremely seaworthy, and safe. Pinkies were fast and weatherly and fishing from them was done from the confines of the bulwarks over the rail.

I based Ardelle’s her lines on the Pinky Maine built by Ebeneezer Burnham 1845. The Maine was the last Pinky built at Essex until I launched the Lewis H. Story in 1998. To make her suitable as a passenger vessel we only had to modify Ardelle’s design slightly. We removed the step in her foredeck and carried her raised fretboard all the way aft both to avoid the tripping hazard and make her safer with more reserve buoyancy. We put in subdivision bulkheads for damage control. We installed a small diesel engine for when we need it and made the rudder slightly larger than it would have been on an all sail vessel to compensate for the aperture for the propeller.

Not only is Ardelle good for harbor trips, she is a wonderful boat for whale watching and near costal cruising. She can be handled with ease by two people, has twelve bunks, and can carry a bus load of passengers. We have cruised a lot in Maine up as far as Mount Desert, and in 2012 we took her to Washington D.C. to receive my NEA National Heritage Fellowship.

Ardelle’s Metrics
Maximum Number of passengers-49
Length of Rail-58’
Beam-15’6”
Displacement-40 tons
Gross tonnage-32
Horsepower-65