07/08/2026
The good news is that the Landing School may yet be rescued. But on the day I heard the bad news, I wrote the following:
May 21, 2026
Today I learned that The Landing School is closing. The class of 2026 is the last class. I am really taking this hard. I am crushed, I feel like somebody punched me in the gut.
Even though I graduated 40 years ago, did many many more years of college and graduate school, and have lost my closest friend from those days (Timm Smith, also class of 1986) I feel a strong connection to the place, the mission, the idea. I have never lost a school before so this is new to me, but not the idea of it. I know people who have lost their schools.
Without a doubt, LYDS (yes, we had more than one name and abbreviation formal and informal) technically cemented -- epoxied -- my life trajectory. It was one thing to be endlessly fascinated by boats, dreaming about them, sketching them, sailing them as much as possible; it is quite another to be able to acquire a formal education in their design and engineering.
Discovering the school was a matter of chance, and my father communicating that chance. My last year of high school was an academic disaster. (Hey, but I did graduate, and I can thank my girlfriend and now wife for getting me across that finish line). From a family of Penn, St Joe's and Princeton graduates, I found myself utterly spent and D O N E with school. I didn't even apply to college. One day my father calls me up and says he was at a dinner party and learned about a yacht design school in Maine, his friend's daughter graduated from it. Would I like to drive up there and look at it?
YES!
School? Sure. But not a regular school! I think it was already summer. We moved fast. Met John Burgess. Apparently I was suitable. $4800 tuition or something, find a place to live (the Sylvain Mansion in Kennebunk) get driven up and dropped off by dad in the Volaré, ride my racing bike to school every day down route 35. First frost last week of August. Hurricane Gloria, let out early rode home without pedaling, snow starts falling a month later...living in Maine.
Well, it was hard! But I was so overwhelmingly excited. It was in fact a dream come true. Truly. I look back and pinch myself.
"Today we will draw a shaft strut." "What is a neutral axis?" "Today we will learn about Arms and Levers." KT-KQ curves, Moments of Inertia, BM=I/V, Lloyd's Rules, ABS rules, BuShips, Walter McInnis, Nefertiti, Ted Hood, Scalded Hawks, Plymouth Barracuda...Cities Service coastwise, gas-tight flashlights, tankers exploding in the Seaway, ullage, innage, thievage, Design Spiral, Preliminary Design, the Maldives, boats with "tail feathers" Tuna Clippers, improvised model testing, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Schooner WESTWARD...all these little snippets of memory of my mentors and what they said and taught, flooding randomly back.
Reg Butler. Cy Hamlin. Every day, 7 to 4, Reg was our main teacher. Cy had his office next door, and he did lectures frequently. He covered all sorts of topics. Reg all sorts of other topics. They are my mentors. I cannot overstate how important they were to my success--long term. They were both talented but also kind, but not doting, patient but appropriately severe when necessary. "You all are the worst class I have ever seen with propeller calculations." I stayed in touch with both for their entire lives. Many many letters back and forth with Reg. Some with Cy, but phone calls. Cy was always clearly delighted to catch up. And stopping by, the last time I saw him on campus he took me on a walk around all the latest construction.
Their knowledge was immense and overlapping and interesting and complementary. Reg was one of the early graduates of Castine, as a deck officer. He had real bluewater experience, followed by working at Eldredge-McInnis, Ted Hood, and John Alden. He had SO MANY stories! And he was a story teller. Someone complained one day to Reg that he was talking too much (he left it to us to figure out how to both talk and get our work done.) "In a design office there is always interruption and chatter. Best to get used to it now." Yes that was his (paraphrased) response! Absolutely classic! Cy went to high school in Pennsylvania not far from my home--that was a random connection. He ended up working with Farnham Butler at Mount Desert Yacht Yard where the two of them developed the "Controversy" series of strip planked cruising boats. He was involved in quite a lot of tank testing in Hoboken at Stevens, I cannot remember how. He had his own consulting firm, "Ocean Research Corporation" and did really interesting design projects around the world for fishing boats and other things under UN development contracts. The Maldives were especially interesting. He developed a successful boat based on the strengths of the local experience, which replaced a badly inappropriate heavy diesel ship type from Europe. When Pete Seeger wanted to do the CLEARWATER, he came to Cy. So that is legendary. When HIOBS needed a pulling boat for their program, Cy took the Monomy Surf Boat and evolved it. Later after I graduated, he wrote a really good book and beautiful hand sketches fill it. Just like the ones he did on the board. When I sat with him for one of my project critiques--perhaps it was my final--he pointed out the good, and the not so good work, but he also told me I had talent, and he clearly meant it. I can still feel that feeling. The idea that he felt that way--that yes, I can do this. Profoundly important. Life changing.
We met titans of industry. Dick Newick. Eric Goetz, Joel White. They all spent entire days with us. An ancient caulker who showed us how to really caulk seams. Others I cannot seem to remember at the moment. Somehow, John Burgess and the rest of the team made great connections even in those early years.
We drew on vellum, made our own desktops, cast our own ducks, made our own battens, learned to true up our triangles, even how to blueprint by taping to the window and developing in a tube with ammonia v***r. The very beginnings of the library had old RUDDER magazines and every book Uffa Fox wrote. We had all the boats building one hallway away. I spent hours and hours out there learning what that was actually like, too. Hugely valuable to do that! Oh, and we lofted full-size. We learned everything about boatbuilding we possibly could in 11 months.
We learned everything we could. There was a curriculum but if you were aggressive you could go past it. I squeezed every last drop of knowledge out of those two men I could possibly understand. Both of them saw great value in commercial work. Reg said as much and that it was more varied than yacht design. It is not a coincidence that the bulk of my career has been a very varied diet of commercial design: tugs, barges, containerships, research ships, ferries, AT/B and yes even yachts.
The school grew. I was so proud of them doing that. John retired but the school thrived anyway. I was very happy to see that. My Alma Mater went from being a "what's that?" to a "of course!" institution. To me it feels like losing a keystone. There are so many people in the world--not just East Coast US, who cut their teeth at the Landing School. We are all over the place. There are even quite a few Webb graduates who couldn't help themselves and went to LS afterwards!
The sorrow I feel is overwhelming right now, but fond memories are helping to stanch the flow of tears.
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