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"For four years Joanna and I with family, friends and relatives
circumnavigated a wonderful but old and experienced Alden Schooner.
# 456, Mariah, ex Golden Eagle ex High Tide. We sold it. I was quickly
ashamed of the wake she was leaving behind and I had a premonition
that the story was not going to end well. The new owner lost it
in an October storm off of New York. By the grace of the blessed
US Coast Guard on board the Cutter Alert
(who have a fixation on saving us from our Darwinian stupidities)
no one on board died. I was grateful because I was convinced that
Mariah was going to drop a block on the skipper's head and now at
the end she had the pity not to take him and his unfortunate crew
down with her.
The loss of this beautiful vessel was a humbling
and sobering reality. While it was out of my control, I had to choke
down my personal attachment and be thankful for the joy she gave
us. Humbling, because it was only by the grace of God that the outrageous
situations I got myself and Mariah into never exceeded my I.Q, what
was left of the hull strength and the bilge pump capacity. 1977
Cruising World article here.
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We came
ashore to raise a family and it worked out that we settled on the
happy coincidence that meant working on boats and starting a boat
yard in Portland, Maine.
It seems as if I have
been looking at one schooner a year for the last 20 years with out
much success. Either I saw too much and over estimated the cost
of repair and underestimated the value or in any case time after
time I slipped up and some one else snatched the prize ring. God
there were some beautiful boats, but they all were showing their
age. Vessels to bring tear to your eyes but should be coddled and
kept safe from the strain of expeditions on the edge. The list of
boats that just didn't make it to the final cut tears my heart because
any one of them would take your breath away on a reach, fill and
anchorage or frame off a sunset with her mast at the end of another
beautiful day.
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Two things happened that finally
ended our search for an older Alden. The first is that we found "Tar Baby"
for sale. We loved the boat. She was beautifully maintained. Seriously for
sale but honestly only to someone who would love her and could do well by
her. The price was reasonable because there could be no other and we were
set to make an offer. We met the owner and with kids in tow carefully went
through the boat. Boats seem to go through a cycle. Older boats tend to
work them selves into the hands of do-it-yourselfers who rip things out,
do less than effective repairs and generally make such a mess trying to
invent ways to avoid fixing things correctly that there is eventually nothing
solid to restore. We realized that "Tar Baby" was an exception. She was
original, she was not abused and she had many years more of coastal sailing
ahead of her. If we bought her we would have to limit our horizons to New
England and Nova Scotia. OR we would have to take her apart and rebuild
her. When I mean take her apart I mean disassemble with a new boat survey
after reassembly.
| We did this before
on "Prowess" but "Prowess" was ready for it or to die. To do that
to "Tar Baby" would have been inappropriate. WE would not have been
saving the boat we would have been taking the life out of her and
creating something else with out the dignity of her age and experience.
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With her hand on the galley water
pump, Joanna turned to me and said "but I like warm water!" It was right
then we decided that we would look into building our boat. Hell, we owned
a boat yard! We contacted Alden and soon had drawings of famous boats to
paw over. Ever the optimist, Don Perrot, suggested that we might take a
short cut and look at "Etesian" which was on the West Coast and for sale.
She was design #1044. Built in 1982 for an owner who lost his Alden on a
reef in the Caribbean. I think the boats name was "Tara". This new schooner
was designed to the historic lines, but with strip planking and cold molding.
Being a traditional dinosaur kind of sailor, I didn't really understand
the epoxy cold molding approach.
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We never had one
to sail or repair. The ones that came through the yard were either
new, aging gracefully or didn't suffer a mishap. We liked what we
saw in the Etesian plans, but we couldn't tie down the boat or the
owner long enough to get to the mandatory bonding stage. The plans
were great! But in the photographs to our eyes the boat looked slightly
"Off". Little details, easily altered just missed the mark. Unsettling.
Someone didn't have the feeling. Not enough to hesitate but just be
committed to an adjustment down the road. My brother Abbott got wind
of the revised project and thinking it more reasonable signed on.
The project looked like reality and less like financial suicide. I
remember the day the boatyard calendar was clear for a trip, the "Etesian"
was in Washington State laid up for a month or so at a marina. We
couldn't see the boat because the owner had the boat locked up and
didn't trust any local with a key. Essentially I could fly out to
Washington from Maine and look at the outside of the boat or I could
wait until the middle of hauling season to get a call on short notice.
Oh well, it probably wasn't for sale that hard. |
We had heard that there was an
offer so the logistics of bringing the boat through the Canal to the East
Coast by Christmas appeared overwhelming. In a brooding, moment I decided
to look for Alden's Web Page. Up popped an unfinished hull whose cryptic
description rang in my mind and clearly identified it as 1044-b. It had
been built in 1986 and not finished. The builder was Bob Thompson same as
"Etesian". It was in San Diego and in "Great Shape" Seriously for sale.
I completed a purchase sale agreement subject to survey and began to worry
about the consequences of success. Abbott had a meeting there the following
weeks so I found myself with him in San Diego with a pleasant Yacht Broker
who brought us to view the hull.
| She sat in a small chain link fenced
lot next to a highway. High, white dingy, and out of place. The plywood
sub decks were sunburned right through the first laminate, the cap
rail and bulwarks long since stripped of any epoxy or varnish. The
deck openings were uncovered and the inner hull was exposed to the
elements. |
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As
advertised, inside the boat the engine was in place covered by a blue
tarp, the cabin sole beams and a few bulkheads were temporarily attached.
Covering the sole beams was a tangled pile of wood that was the remnants
of a wooden cover. Green powdered shreds of material settled over
the entire interior in silent testament to the power of the sun and
deterioration of the plastic that once covered the boat. A hose lead
under this dunnage to an electric sump pump deep in the bilge. The
floors, hull and keel showed wet with a rim of grime mute testament
to the recent pumping and fact that the builder had not seen fit to
install a bilge plug prior to putting her into storage. IDIOTS! It
didn't take long to determine that The mahogany plywood gussets on
the floors were rotten, but it was very difficult to determine the
extent of the rot. Because the epoxy coating on the cedar strip planking
and mahogany gussets was sound and when the rot on the gussets was
removed it appeared as if the rot stopped at the last epoxy layer
before the floor itself. |
| There was a rotten
strip plank on the port side, which was totally incongruous to the
condition of the rest of the planking. Again the troubled wood seemed
to stop at the epoxy layer. With the exception of the possible effect
of the hot organic soup in the bilge we could accept the boat. It
surveyed with some minor indications of delamination in the cold molding
and the expected recordings of wet in the bilge area. WE noticed that
the builder had used aluminum fastenings between the strip planks,
which we felt was unusual. The bulwarks and caprail were an unusual
interpretation, and the decks were Medium Density Overlay Mahogany
Plywood and pretty toasted. We decided that if we could determine
that the epoxy on the interior strip planking had protected the cold
molding in the bilge we would exercise our purchase and sales agreement
and close on the hull. |
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Travel-lift to
Second Trailer |
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I knew nothing about Alaska
Yellow Cedar but I was beginning to become impressed with it's rot
resistance. We wanted to investigate and the owner agreed that we
could take a couple of cores. Little did we know that another broker
had scooped him up and he had "sold the boat again". We eventually
figured out that they were in a dilemma of holding the "other buyer
and us" at bay trying to screw the first broker out of his commission
by stalling our investigation past our agreement dates. We had the
truck on the way to pick up the boat and the other party was scarce.
When the smell finally reached Maine, we convinced our California
Attorney that the owner was not in good faith and it was with some
difficulty we successfully dotted the I's and closed on the hull.
Unfortunately, in the attempt to avoid being at ground zero in what
was really going to be an interesting situation the original broker
ended up screwed out of his commission. It was exquisitely painful
to have to deal with the fruits and the nuts, but we wish them peace
and happiness. |
| With winter upon us and
some help from a boatbuilder who acted as our agent the newly renamed
Lions Whelp was lifted onto a Joule Yacht Transport trailer and at
65 feet long 15'8" wide and 15' high with a hull weight of 48,080#
made it's escorted dash across the United States. She arrived at Gowen
Marine in Portland. There Joe Schmader lifted it off of the Trans
continental trailer with his travel lift and transferred it to Dayton
Marine's Brownell Hydraulic Trailer. She made the last mile to PYS
and Building #1. For those who knew there was a lot of excitement.
But she was there to sleep. We had a lot of interior design work to
do before we could start work. I felt whole again. Ignoring the work
of several years that lay ahead. I had my hands on a boat, a boat."
-- 1/7/00 |
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Next Step: Rebuilding the
Hull
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