Wonder what has become of boaters Herb and Ruth Weiss, newsmakers for crewing their boat, Ancient Mariners II, at a combined age of more than 200?
Herb celebrated his 106th birthday on Oct. 2. Ruth turned 98 in April.
Her health was worse than his this summer. She received a pacemaker and in September had additional heart surgery in Boston, even though surgeons thought she was too old for the procedure.
Not to worry.
“I went into the hospital a few steps at a time with a cane, like a little old lady,” Ruth said, “and strolled out.”
They both saunter along the water by their Boca Raton condominium. “Herb walked down to the beach this morning and swam in the pool,” Ruth said by telephone in mid-October. He did buy a motorized wheelchair for a family trip to New York City, she said, and was a terror on the sidewalks. “No one could keep up with him.”
His hearing is failing to the extent that hearing aids no longer do much good. Ruth, laughing, said she bought microphones so they could communicate.
Their trawler, Ancient Mariners II, is stored in Portland over the winter, along with Rhyme, the dinghy, an ode to Samuel Coleridge’s 1798 poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” In the summers, they have climbed aboard the boat at a slip at DiMillo’s Marina in Portland and begun cruising north by themselves.
Although neither has a driver’s license any longer, Maine’s coastal waters are forgiving. Herb is at the helm and Ruth stands next to him, navigating. Their first stop by boat traditionally has been at The Dolphin Marina & Restaurant in Harpswell.
Alas, all good things must come to an end. The Weisses, who sold their 36-foot trawler in 2022 and bought a bigger, 41-foot American Tug cruiser, have hung up the anchor and are selling the boat.
Still, they’re having the time of their lives, in part because they’re celebrities everywhere they go in Maine. They’re an inspiration to everyone they meet because their age hasn’t slowed them down.
They had voyaged around the world in sailboats before buying trawlers. Ruth is a Harvard-educated pediatrician. Herb was 15 or 16 years old when he enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
During World War II, Herb was sent to England to install radar with a novel navigation system he and his team had developed at MIT for the Royal Air Force. Until then, he said, Great Britain was losing the air war. He also was part of a team at MIT that helped develop the North American Aerospace Defense Command on the East Coast of the U.S.
They won’t be strangers to Maine. Their son, John, bought a duplex in Camden this summer. He’ll live in the top unit and his parents will have the bottom floor — all the easier for them to carry on their tradition of hosting friends with red wine every day at 5 p.m.
