Tancook schooner

The sail plan for the smaller sizes of transom-sterned schooners was typically gaff-rigged fore and main and one or sometimes two headsails.

[1] Within a few years the characteristic "spoon bow", with its greater buoyancy and fullness compared to the so-called Aberdeen or clipper bow of the Tancook whaler, was standard among the island's four boat building families who collectively produced most of these distinctive schooners for fishing and small scale coastal freighting.

Four boat building families, the Stevens, Heislers, Masons, and Langilles were responsible for the majority of the schooners built between 1900 and 1945.

Mahone Bay was a popular yachting area and the handsome sea kindly schooners made good cruisers when outfitted for pleasure sailing.

Two schooner yachts built by Tancook Islanders that gained widespread recognition among the pleasure boating press and yachtsmen alike were the Vernon Langille-designed Cimba, whose long offshore voyage to the south seas was described by owner Richard Maury,[3] and the Mason-built Blue Lagoon sailed in the 1940s by famed one time rum runner Bill McCoy.