Sailing on an Oyster Schooner

Sailing on a Tall Ship

Schooner AJ Meerwald, built in 1928 was origunally used as an oyster fishing ship. When the heyday of the oyster business was over, the ship was bought by the Meerwald family but eventually fell into disrepair. The Meerwald family donated the ship to the Bayshore Discovery Project in Bivalve, NJ who completely restored it in 1996. The ship is currently used as an education and training vessel and provides two and a half hour cruises to tourists. The ship is 115 feet long. The sails are 70 feet high and contain 3,562 square feet of sails. Several of our club members bookd passage on the ship during our Wildwood weekend.
	Left, the AJ Meerwald sitting in port awaiting the crew's arrival for our voyage. One of the coolest things about the AJ Meerwald is that the people who book paggase get to work as a deck crew when it comes to hoisting the sails. It takes a lot of manpower to haul the canvas sails up to their full 70 foot height. Below, the volunteer crew prepares and then hoists the sails.



The sail goes up to it full 70 foot height.	Laura, our expectant moter-to-be

Judy	Donna

Liz and Charlie	Tamarah
Since the Meerwald is an education vessel, the crew members	told us more than we could ever want to know about oysters.
Next it was time to lower the sails as we returned to port. The pictures below show the first mate doing her thing.


While we were waiting for the crew to arrive, Liz and Charlie found their new vacation home. They said they were going to visit the real estate agent as soon as we returned from the cruise.	What good is a new vacation home without an appropriate yacht for personal use? Liz and Charlie plan to restore this beauty we saw on the cruise.
The group as we were getting ready to go back to the hotel

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