Our Boats
The BAYKEEPER®
A 26-foot Seaway, The Casco BAYKEEPER® has been the official Casco BAYKEEPER® boat since 1994. It is known around the office as Donovan’s Delight in recognition of its donor, Henry Donovan. Our year-round research vessel, its reinforced bow and shallow draft (3 feet) allow it to cut through ice and enter shallow embayments to take water or sediment samples. It has a quiet, fuel-efficient four-stroke Honda 225-HP engine. A davit allows us to hoist heavy equipment such as a bottom grab for sediment sampling. The BAYKEEPER® has been enlisted to support researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Darling Marine Center, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, the Maine Department of Marine Resources, and many other research partners, as well as to monitor the Julie N oil spill cleanup.
The BAYKEEPER II
The BAYKEEPER II, a 21-foot Alcar Environmental, is our Ambassador on the Bay. The boat was specially built for us in 1995 with a 300-gallon holding tank for sewage. The Pumpout Boat, as it’s also known, has removed over 90,000 gallons of raw sewage from recreational boats’ marine toilets for shoreside disposal. Purchased with funding from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and the EPA, it not only pumps out boaters’ heads from July through October, it serves as a model for marinas and coastal communities interested in starting their own pumpout programs and as an additional research vessel. You can always recognize the BAYKEEPER II; on its stern is a “tattoo” of Wanda, a fish holding an umbrella, the symbol for the EPA’s national Pumpout Program (affectionately named after the movie, A Fish Called Wanda). It, too, sports an environmentally friendly, Honda four-stroke 130 HP engine.
The Whaler
The Whaler is how we refer to our invaluable 14-foot whaler that was donated by Barbara Hadlock of Freeport. Easy to hoist and easy to trailer anywhere, it can respond at a moment’s notice to a call for back-up coverage for our Water Quality Monitors or to conduct research in places that aren’t accessible to our larger vessels. Although we’ve owned this boat since December 2000, it’s still waiting for a name. Phyto, Pogie, and Baykeepette have been proposed.
Yogi
Yogi is a small tender left from one of our earlier BAYKEEPER vessels, the Linda L. It is stationed on the edge of the New Meadows Lake and is used by FOCB staff and Bowdoin College students to take weekly and monthly samples at a deep, mysterious hole in the dammed lake. We’ve had this sturdy vessel since 1992.
