Mystery (log canoe)
Mystery is a Chesapeake Bay log canoe built in 1932 by Harry Sinclair in Oxford, Maryland. It is about 34 feet 7 inches long with a beam of 8 feet 8.5 inches and a centerboard. Known for its very tall masts, Mystery is privately owned and races under the number 8. It is one of the last 22 traditional Chesapeake racing log canoes on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. Mystery sits in Kingstown, Queen Anne’s County, Maryland. It was built in a barn as a secret weapon to beat Flying Cloud in the Governor’s Cup, which is how it got its name.
In its early years, Mystery was sometimes used for cruising after being re-rigged as a sloop in the late 1940s. In 1955, John Whittum bought the boat and raced it with a sloop rig before returning it to log-canoe racing, winning the Governor’s Cup in 1962. In the mid-1970s, Whittum moved to Colorado and left Mystery with Francis Schauber, who bought it in 1975 and carried out a major overhaul. He stripped the hull to the logs, replaced rotten wood, and greatly increased sail area, including raising the foremast to 60 feet—the tallest mast for a log canoe under 35 feet—an record that stood until 2012. Mystery has been refurbished many times, including a 1976 overhaul and a 2001 update that added stability-enhancing “cheeks” to the hull.
Mystery’s mast has sometimes been lost in races: a 2008 CRYCC regatta ended with a new mast built for the last two regattas of that season, and a 2013 CRYCC regatta saw the foremast snap again after a brief return to competition. The boat did not race in 2014. For a time in 1946, the owner renamed Mystery Memory to honor his son who had died in World War II.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 00:37 (CET).