The M/S Mount Washington
A Lakes Region icon...and a really good time
Okay, I have a confession to make. I don’t own a boat. I can’t drive a boat. I kayak and I canoe (theoretically…if someone else has one and offers), but despite living in major port cities much of my adult life, I’ve never really gotten into boating. So this piece is for others who like me, want to know what it’s actually like to spend a day on the water without owning a boat.
There’s a horn.
You hear it before you see her, most days. Deep and long, the kind of sound that used to mean something specific to river towns and ports of call and doesn’t mean much of anything anymore except on this lake, where it still means the same thing it meant in 1940. The Mount is coming through. Get out of the way or wave.
From the shore, its fun to watch how people react to it. In Wolfeboro, even lifelong residents stop what they’re doing and glance to the lake. Sometimes you’ll see people scurrying because they came over from Laconia on the morning run and have been shopping and eating for the last two hours and need to make sure they can get back to where their car was left. As one of the Mount Captains likes to jest, if you miss the Mount, its a long swim back to Weirs.
The M/S Mount Washington is 230 feet of white hull and three decks, and local knowledge and opinions about what exactly it is vary widely. For some, it’s a tourist trap, something for the airbnb-ers or leaf peepers to do. For some, its a family tradition. Some think of it as another neighborhood hangout; I met a distinguished older gentleman once who told me its where he takes his dates which made me chuckle…and sort of wince. What if it’s awful and you’re stuck in the middle of the lake with this person! For others it’s a piece of history; older than the Titanic, there is a certain air of a bygone era aboard. Really, it’s all of those things. That’s sort of the point. Not everyone needs one thing from the same experience, and the Mount doesn’t ask you to.
Here’s what I mean.
On a weekday, she runs three trips between Laconia and Wolfeboro, scenic daytime cruises with a narrated tour that will tell you which island belongs to which mostly-forgotten New Hampshire family, some of the Abenaki tales about the lake and how certain areas got their names, and at least one story you’re not sure you believe about a mink farm that lost its entire annual yield in a single Nor’Easter once upon a time. A few nights a week she becomes a dinner cruise, buffet lines and a bar and someone playing music you can dance to if you want, or just listen to from a deck chair with a drink in your hand, which is what most people actually do. Some nights she’s booked for something private entirely, a wedding or a corporate thing or somebody’s fortieth birthday, and you’ll see her lit up from the shore and wonder whose night that is.
Weekends bring the action. There’s a Sunday brunch that’s become its own tradition for people who’ve stopped needing an occasion. It’s all popped champagne corks and bloody mary’s and omelets made to order. There’s a princess tea party for the six-year-olds in tiaras, a Prohibition-era murder mystery for the adults who want to accuse a stranger of being a jewel thief over dessert, and a haunted cruise in October that leans harder into the ghost stories the narrated tour only hints at during daylight. I’ve witnessed the Princess Tea. I will say only that a room full of diminutive princesses drinking from china cups while their dad or grandfather sneaks away to get a gin and tonic is pretty cute.
If the Mount feels like too much boat, you have options. The Sophie C. still runs the mail, an honest-to-god floating post office delivering to islands that have no other way to get letters, and you can ride along and watch it happen. If you want something smaller and more yours, the Winnipesaukee Spirit is available to charter, an intimate version of the same water for a rehearsal dinner or a retirement send-off or twenty people who wanted the lake without the logistics. And, rumor has it there’s a returning vessel to the fleet. I’ve heard many a story from Wolfeboro area residents about the epic sunset cocktail cruises that the M/S Belle used to host. She’s been in repairs all season but the company keeps promising she’ll be sailing the lake again this season.
And she’s inspired more than cruises. There’s Mount Washington merch in gift shops from Weirs Beach to Wolfeboro, at least a couple of local breweries have put her likeness or her name on a can, and I have personally watched a wedding photo shoot happen on her gangway, bridesmaids in taffeta trying not to slip on wet decking while a very patient photographer waited for the light. Politicians visit her for fundraisers and photo ops. Season ticket holders bring everyone who visits to take a ride.
But the part I actually love has nothing to do with any of that.
Most of the captains and crew live on this lake, on the shore or seasonally out on one of the islands, and it shows in how they run the boat. They hail people. A friend cooking out on a dock, another boat passing close, somebody they clearly haven’t seen since last September. They have a story for every cove and if you’re lucky enough to catch one of them walking around, they’ll point out sites of past boat accidents, where jet skis have no business going, and who exactly owns that mansion with the 5 separate wings and 3 boat houses. There’s a house on the Wolfeboro to Weirs run that fires off a mock cannon shot every single time the Mount goes by, and every single time, somebody on deck laughs like it’s the first time they’ve heard it.
I was aboard a few weeks ago, evening run, close to six o’clock. The light was doing that low gold thing it does out here in July. I looked over toward one of the islands and saw three kids sprinting down a dock, full speed, straight into the water. It’s the kind of shot you’ve seen a hundred times, on a postcard or in a beer commercial. This one wasn’t staged for anybody. It was just a Wednesday, and they were just doing what you do when you live somewhere like this. The water helps sound carry, so I was treated to one of them coming up giggling and another shouting, “No fair, you were supposed to wait for me.”
Almost every trip, somebody standing near me on deck squints at Governor’s Island and asks what one of those big places costs. I tell them the truth, which is that the newest ones are selling for somewhere near $15 million, and then I tell them the other truth, which is that there are still more modest homes out there if you’re willing to take on a generational camp that hasn’t been touched since 1954. You either update it, plumbing and wiring and all, or you learn to love it exactly as it is, a small preserved argument for how people used to spend a summer. Both are valid.
That’s the experience, really. A big white boat that’s somehow become shorthand for an entire way of being on this water, whether you’re a visitor who wants two and a half hours of lunch and scenery, or a local who’s lived here your whole life and still can’t resist waving back when she blows that horn. So don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t enjoy the big lake without a boat of your own. We all have the Mount.
If this made you think of someone who loves this lake, or someone who’s never been on it and should be, send it their way.
🧭 Jenn
Keys to the Lakes
