Sailboat

Students from the Children's Guild who sailed the bay and collected litter from the Inner Harbor shoreline throughout this month found a creative outlet for the trash they brought back to their Glen Burnie school: turning it into a sailboat. The 20 children, who are coping with autism and emotional disorders, converted their stinky collection into a work of art Wednesday, sculpting a sailboat from cardboard, soda bottles and Styrofoam. They decorated its hull with cast-off candy wrappers and snack bags and filled its jib with smiling photos of themselves, taken during their four-week summer course, which showed them their role in protecting the environment.

A blaze Sunday at an Edgewater marina destroyed a storage shed and damaged three sailboats. Anne Arundel County Fire Capt. James Rostek said 94 firefighters responded to a four-alarm brush fire at 1:59 p.m. at the Holiday Point Marina in the 3700 block of Beach Drive Boulevard. The fire was under control by 4 p.m., and extinguished by 5 p.m. No civilian or firefighter injuries were reported, Rostek said. The cause of the fire is under investigation. The outbuilding destroyed was located on marina property, Rostek said.

An Edgewater man sleeping on his sailboat in the South River awoke early yesterday to find the boat ablaze. He abandoned ship and swam across the river to safety, Natural Resources Police said.John D. Biggie, 45, suffered minor burns to his arms and legs while trying to fight the fire with an extinguisher, a police spokesman said. He was treated at Anne Arundel Medical Center.Natural Resources Police said Biggie was having trouble with the electrical equipment on his 31-foot boat while sailing on the river about 8 p.m. Monday.

A 25-year-old boater missing for a month was found Monday when his body washed ashore near Annapolis, according to police. At about 8 a.m., Maryland Natural Resources Police were called to the 2200 block of Chesapeake Harbor Drive, where they identified the body of Tyler Cordrey of Eden. Cordrey had been missing since Dec. 17, when a sailboat he was riding in with two others capsized near the Sandy Point lighthouse in the Chesapeake Bay. "We knew Tyler had not made it," his father, Keith Cordrey, also of Eden, said Tuesday morning.

For several years, the concept of boat shows has been changing, with an eye toward introducing people to boating as well as to a wide range of boats and gear.On Thursday, the United States Sailboat Show opens at the city docks in Annapolis, and it, too, has a new approach toward the old problem of getting new people hooked on sailing."The whole industry has been having trouble getting new people interested -- especially in the sailboat market," said Jeff Holland, who has been associated with the United States Sailboat Show in Annapolis since the early 1970s.

After months of generally lean times in the sailboat industry, it looks as if spring has really arrived, in more ways than one.For atleast one of the area's bellwether marine firms, things went so welllast month that the good news is rippling out across the industry, bringing what appear to be realistic hopes of renewed health and strength and replacing dire predictions of overall disaster.Interyacht, the Annapolis area's largest yacht brokerage -- and perhaps the largest company in the nation specializing in brokerage yacht sales -- posted a record sales month in March.

A man who had been living on his sailboat at the Annapolis City Marina for the past year was found floating in Spa Creek yesterday off the 400 block of Severn Ave., Annapolis police said.Thomas Wilus, 43, was pulled from the water about 11 a.m. after a woman walking near the vicinity of Fourth Street and Severn Avenue saw the body.Wilus, originally from Colorado, was last seen about five days ago. He had not been reported missing, police said.Police said there was no sign of foul play, and that Wilus might have fallen off his boat, which was docked near where his body was found.

A 60-foot Naval Academy sailboat sank early yesterday after colliding with a coal barge in the Chesapeake Bay, throwing one of 12 crew members overboard and prompting a rescue by tugboat operators.Midshipman 2nd Class Judy Creed was treated at the Naval Hospital-Patuxent River for hypothermia and released.The cause of the accident was under investigation by U.S. Coast Guard and Naval Academy officials.Coast Guard Lt. Gary Merrick said the sailboat, American Promise, may have had some kind of problem with its rigging when it ran into the bow of the 365-foot barge.

The United States Sailboat Show comes to Annapolis at the end of the week, and the United States Powerboat Show takes over that city's municipal docks and harbor the following weekend.Both shows are opportunities for powerboaters and sailors to see what is new and innovative in the marine industry -- from high-tech sportsfishermen and lavish cruising yachts to the latest in small-boat radar.The shows, billed as the largest in-water shows in the world, come at a time when the boating market is weak.

Greg Schaefer knelt over the white sail stretched out on City Dock Saturday and carefully added his name to the growing list of people opposed to a luxury tax on yachts.He had driven his family to Washington from Nampa, Idaho, only to find the doors to the U.S. Capitol locked because the government had run out of money. So he came to the United States Sailboat Show in Annapolis, angry that the Bush administration wants to tax boats to help solve the problem."We already pay more than anyone else," he said.

Ray Beaty wove Christmas lights around the rails of his sailboat. An inflatable, motorcycle-riding Santa was strapped to the bow. Beaty and his 9-year-old stepson, Tyler Hall, were at the Stansbury Yacht Basin marina on Friday afternoon to prepare his 1969 Tartan 27 for the Middle River Parade of Lighted Boats on Saturday - a tradition that is returning after a break last year. For nearly a decade, watching Christmas-themed boats was a regular post-Thanksgiving event for Baltimore County's waterfront communities.

Charles Erwin Brookes, the retired chief of W.R. Grace's Davison Chemical division, died of a heart attack Nov. 1 at the Bay Medical Center in Panama City, Fla. The longtime Gibson Island resident was 86. Known as Charlie, he was born in Orange, N.J. His son, Stephen Brookes of Washington, D.C., said his father came from a "family of very modest means. " At one time, his parents addressed envelopes by hand for a business to make ends meet. At age 12, Mr. Brookes won a scholarship to St. Mark's School in Southborough, Mass.

The 27-foot sailboat was David Ward's new toy. He had bought it only hours earlier from a man in Middle River and on Sunday was sailing it, with four friends as crew, to its new berth in a Fells Point marina. Then things started to go wrong. The boat's tiller snapped in the choppy waters of the Chesapeake Bay, and Ward cut the engine while he replaced the broken part. But when he tried to restart the motor, the battery was almost flat — useless. Drifting near the Patapsco River about a mile north of Fort Howard, Ward pulled out his cellphone and dialed the number of a towing company, just as any motorist on firm ground might do. The man who got the call was Capt.

Students from the Children's Guild who sailed the bay and collected litter from the Inner Harbor shoreline throughout this month found a creative outlet for the trash they brought back to their Glen Burnie school: turning it into a sailboat. The 20 children, who are coping with autism and emotional disorders, converted their stinky collection into a work of art Wednesday, sculpting a sailboat from cardboard, soda bottles and Styrofoam. They decorated its hull with cast-off candy wrappers and snack bags and filled its jib with smiling photos of themselves, taken during their four-week summer course, which showed them their role in protecting the environment.

Two elderly men were rushed to local hospitals after their motorboat capsized Saturday afternoon in the Patapsco River southeast of Fort McHenry, fire officials said. Baltimore Fire Department Capt. Roman Clark said the men, ages 83 and 72, were travelling in a motorboat in the Ferry Bar channel about 12:10 p.m. when they were thrown into the water. Clark said a sailboat that was coming toward them was able to pull one of the men out of the water, but the other could not get on board.

AGE: 34 SALARY: $150,000 YEARS ON THE JOB: 15 How he got started: : While still in high school, Griff Bell took a summer job working for a sailboat rental company near Annapolis. He grew up along the South River, boating with his family, and it was the perfect job as well as one he could keep once he began attending college at Frostburg State University. In his sophomore year, he had an opportunity to buy the business, which at the time had four sailboats. He ran the business during his summers off from school.

ANNAPOLIS -- Every October for the past 21 years, this city has filled with sailboats, sailing equipment and sailors intent on seeing the latest and the greatest the world's sailing market has to offer.This weekend, even given the flat state of the economy and the impact of user fees and an excise tax, should be no different, as the 22nd United States Sailboat Show ties up at the city docks.For the sailor there is virtually everything imaginable on display in the water or on the docks -- from an 88-foot steel schooner to the first new Laser introduced in 20 years.

In the 1970s, while gas and diesel fuel were in short supply in the United States, a considerable segment of the boating population switched from powerboats to sailboats. In the early- and mid-1980s, sailboat production in the United States and Canada continued to increase.In the late 1980s the industry entered a tailspin, with production of new boats dropping and the used boat market floundering in a high tide of sailboats no one wanted or could afford to buy.International Marine, a leading supplier of marine accessories and original equipment, says that its annual study of U.S. and Canadian builders shows the sailboat industry hit low ebb two years ago and last year made a 22 percent overall increase beyond 1991 figures.

The sailboat called Windward wouldn't be going aground, in a good way, for another hour yet, but Russ Ward was happy to wait. Whenever the time came, he'd be watching as his prized 48-footer left the chilly waters of Back Creek for the high-and-dry. "I want to be here if you drop it," he told the dock master at Bert Jabin's Yacht Yard in Annapolis. Ward was joking. He actually felt relaxed. For one thing, his baby is insured to the tune of $500,000. More to the point, he has faith in the men who'd soon hoist, spray and move the boat across the yard before nestling it into an above-ground wintertime berth.