The Victory Chimes’s final cruise of the season this month may also be its last in Maine.
The 128-foot sailing vessel immortalized on Maine’s 2003 state quarter is up for sale for $385,000. Although for half a century it has been berthed on Maine’s coast, there’s no guarantee its next owner will keep it there.
For the current owner of the three-masted schooner, keeping the vessel afloat is more important than where it is docked.
“My goal from day one was to keep the ship saved, to keep telling its story, and if that happens somewhere other than Maine, so be it,” said Sam Sikkema, 35, the current owner and captain.
Victory Chimes was originally built to haul cargo, but now sails along the Maine coast on pleasure cruises lasting up to six nights
On Monday morning, while docked in Rockland, crew members gave safety instructions to more than a dozen tourists as they prepared for a six-day cruise. Meanwhile, Sikkema stood at the stern near the wheel, talking about the future.
He said he loves his schooner, but sentimentality had to give way to hard economic realities.
“Really at this point, we just have not been able to make financial ends meet, especially after COVID,” he said.
The vessel needs repairs to its bow to remain compliant with Coast Guard regulations. But all of Sikkema’s savings have gone into docking fees, insurance and other expenses that still needed to be paid when the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to suspend business in 2020.
Built in 1900 in Bethel, Delaware, as a commercial vessel known as a windjammer, the original owner, Robert Riggin, named it Edwin and Maude, after his own children. It spent almost 50 years in the Chesapeake Bay area, working around Baltimore, Alexandria, Virginia and Seaford, Delaware. It hauled a variety of cargo including timber, gravel, coal and even pumpkins.
“If you can imagine it, she hauled it,” Sikkema said.
That changed in 1946, when its then-owner gave it a new name, converted the cargo holds into berths and its job into tourism. In 1954, it moved to Rockland, where it has remained since.
Fifty years later, Victory Chimes secured a place in Maine history. From 1999 to 2008, the U.S. Mint printed quarters celebrating each of the 50 states. In 2003, the likeness of Victory Chimes was featured on Maine’s quarter.
Daniel Carr, a coin sculptor and president of Moonlight Mint, a coin company based in Loveland, Colorado, was involved with the designs of the state quarters for Maine, New York and Rhode Island. Carr said he is not from Maine, but in May 2001 he had a co-worker, Jim Pendleton, who had family in Rockland, and suggested including the Victory Chimes’s image.
The final design features Pemaquid Point Light overlooking the rocky coast with Victory Chimes sailing nearby.
Should Victory Chimes leave Maine, the state would join New Hampshire in losing a major facet of its state quarter. New Hampshire’s Old Man of the Mountain, a rock formation featured on its state quarter minted in 2000, collapsed in 2003.
Moving Victory Chimes out of Maine would not change the coin’s value.
Carr said state quarters were never meant to be collector’s items. A coin’s value to collectors is tied to its rarity, and the state quarters were produced in mass quantities. For example, the mint produced nearly 500 million of the Maine state quarters.
“Today, they don’t have that much value,” Carr said.
For nearly two decades after the mint released the coin, the Victory Chimes continued to cater to tourists with scenic cruises along Maine’s coastline and to its islands. This is the fifth season Sikkema has spent aboard the Victory Chimes, four of those years as captain. This will be the schooner’s final season under his ownership, officially ending on Oct. 1.
He hopes proceeds from the sale will prevent him from going bankrupt at the end of the year.
“It’s gutting. You spend a lot of life and love making this go,” Sikkema said.
While he would like to see Victory Chimes stay in Rockland, he said “I would rather not see it languish and die here.”
Sikkema said he doesn’t know if he would stay on as captain should the schooner leave Maine.
“Depends on how that goes,” he said. “If somebody wants me to go with it, and that works out, I’d consider it.”
The final cruise of the Victory Chimes is scheduled to begin on Sept. 27.