What a weekend it was in Yorktown, VA, when Sail 250 tacked and jibed into port on the York River as part of the America 250 celebration. Yorktown, the site of Cornwallis’s surrender and the beginning of the end of the Revolutionary War, was just one of many backdrops across Virginia that celebrated both naval and America’s history.
-
- LCAC with Godspeed in foreground.
-
- Yard Patrol boats.
With tall ships like a replica of the Godspeed, one of three ships that sailed to Jamestown in 1607, a Navy LCAC, that’s Landing Craft, Air Cushion, an over beach fully amphibious landing craft capable of carrying a M-1 tank at speeds of over 50 knots, and four Yard Patrol Boats on display, visitors boarded, toured, and enjoyed historical and modern-day maritime history.
Work Boat Life Dredger land display
Land Displays included work boats like crab and oyster dredgers that worked the Chesapeake Bay for over 60 years. Smaller, open, deadrise boats were operated spring and summer with one stern operated dredge. In the mid-1960s larger open deadrise boats with two stern dredges arrived, enabling a more economical way of life. Crab dredging was banned in 2008.
How are you enjoying America 250 celebrations and celebrating our maritime history?
For a fun story on a retired Yard Patrol boat re-envisioned as a family weekend home, revisit the ACBS Weekly Web Watch Story, The Boat that Home Depot Built.
