CAPE MAY — Inge Laine used her nose to see if the vintage fishing vessel ROANN was the real deal.
As she descended the steep stairway into the engine room on Saturday she took a whiff and her childhood memories of her father’s Wildwood fishing boat came back.
It smelled just like Ehlko Friesenborg’s boat, one of 237 such vessels at Otten’s Harbor back in the heyday before condos took over the waterway. There are only a couple left today and they are nothing like the wooden 1947 trawler that was the highlight of the first Cape May Port Commercial Fishing Festival.
“I wanted to see this boat. It smells just like it should,” said Laine.
The memories flooded back. She recalled her father having to undress in a laundry room so the tar from the nets would not get in the house. She remembered going to the boat at night with her father to pump it out. Wooden boats tend to take on water.
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