1930 Schooner MISTRESS

After MISTRESS launched in July of 2006, I sat Skip down and showed him the slide show I made which shows all the work he did over the six years he spent rebuilding her.I had a tape recorder running so I could capture his words.This first picture I took when MISTRESS arrived in our back yard in May of 2000 after she was trucked in from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.His first words were, “She’s a great looking boat.”So many people came to see her shortly after she arrived in St. Augustine and I asked Skip if he remembered what others thought.He said, “They all just figured I was crazy. Except for Rick.I think Rick always knew she would sail again”.

We first learned about MISTRESS from a small ad that read, “Schooner for Sale”.Skip contacted the owner who sent four pictures of her.Excited at what we saw he called again and asked if she could send a video of MISTRESS during the haul out scheduled for just a few weeks away and when we received it, we were certain this was the boat we had been waiting for.  We flew to Milwaukee and found a beautiful wooden schooner with great lines but in need of work, an interior we would not feel bad about tearing out, and after explaining to the owner how Skip would rebuild and restore her we agreed to purchase her.We knew Skip would be doing a major rebuild on any boat we found because our dream was to sail around the world and given that dream, he would want to make her strong enough for even the southern ocean.She had spent most of her seventy years sailing on the Great Lakes and even participated in many races.After forty years at the South Shore Yacht Club, arrangements were made to have her trucked to Florida to start a new chapter in her life and in ours.

Kathleen

aboard

Schooner MISTRESS

About once a year, we invited great people to come to our home/boatyard type back yard, telling them it was a working party and we would supply the food and drink.Not everyone in the beginning understood what this meant, but being good friends and all, they came.Most of the time, all we needed was a collective effort for twenty minutes to a half hour of their time to accomplish the task Skip had planned.This picture I shot during the first Mast Party we had, shortly after MISTRESS arrived.Everyone who came helped to lower the foremast, which was stored in the yard and then the main we raised from the deck to act as a ridgepole for a tarp to cover MISTRESS.When I showed Skip this slide, he commented on how fortunate we were to have such good friends who gave many hours to help us over the six years it took to rebuild her.I asked him if he remembered during the fifth year when I insisted on having a party for our friends without any MISTRESS work.I told him, “Skip, peoples are starting to get afraid to come over here.Every time we offer food and drink to our friends they ask what work clothes are required to attend.”He remembered the party well and said, “Yeah.That was a great party.We must have had over 300 years of boat building experience in the yard that day.”

When MISTRESS arrived, I was at work.I received a call from our son Tim who told me she was on the truck in front of our house.I said I would be right there and begged my boss to leave early.It took me just 30 minutes, however when I arrived I found that Skip, Tim, and the truck driver, Tommy had unloaded her in twenty minutes and the driver was gone.Within the week, with a long clear hose with water in it, Skip, Tim and some friends determined MISTRESS was bow up, by 6”.Skip says, “It took a 3/4” block under the forward keel block to level her right out”.

Of all of Skip’s talents, to me, his ability for forethought and the way he handles prep work are some of his best strengths, especially when it came time to ask for help from the hands of good friends.He worked diligently before hand to make sure everything was ready and our friends would not have to sit and wait to start on any project.  He might put 10, 20, or even 40 hours into the prep of something so when the time came to do the job, that prep work would insure work was done as quickly and efficiently as possible.There are many stories, which I can tell where Skip spent more time on the prep, than the job itself.The flush chain plates and the transom are two of those stories, but we will save that for another time.

During this time, Skip was finishing up rebuilding our kitchen and he longed to work on MISTRESS, however, the kitchen cabinets, which he made from select quarter sawn yellow pine had to be completed first.Once done, which took about a month or two to complete, he was set free to be with his MISTRESS and I had my kitchen.The house, now completed, rarely saw Skip and his tools again over the next six years.“The damn thing.”, he would say, (meaning the house) “No matter how hard or long I work on it, it is never going to float”.

This picture I took on October 1, 2000.Skip decided to work on the port side first because the rot on this side was much worse then the starboard side.He said, “I went around her hull with a claw hammer and pulled out all the bad stuff.You can see rot under the paint because it blisters.I then ground off the paint to see how extensive the damage was.Where paint shows blisters, there is funkiness going on and MISTRESS had funkiness going on all over the place.There were little bits and pieces, here and there, and patches on top of patches.I cut out the rot and many of the patches and replaced it all with new.I started from the top and discovered mahogany planks, therefore; we purchased lots of mahogany, which I used to replace all the bad stuff.It was not until I started working under the waterline that I discovered her original planking was Douglas Fir.I guess over the seventy years of her life, whenever a plank needed replacing, mahogany had been used”.

Restoring the soul of this wooden boat turned out to be a race against time and the elements.Rot ravenously fed off the warm, wet Florida weather, growing in leaps and bounds.It almost proved to be more than Skip could keep up with. By the time Skip finished restoring the port side, the starboard side was in much worse shape then the port side had ever been.

During this time, Skip also gutted the interior and removed the gas engine, which would eventually be replaced with a new diesel engine.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I think this picture nears that of a novel, but I will elaborate none the less. This picture shows her starboard side. I took it about one year after her arrival just after Skip had finished the port side and was discovering what he would need to do to restore this side. This is also about the time I learned what a bung is and how to make them from mahogany. Certainly, this was a waste of Skip’s time and talents and it was just a small thing I could do to help him along. Thousand upon thousands of them were made, used to fill in all the fastener holes. Both Björn and Frisky, our labs, refused to help Skip. No matter how hard he tried to teach Björn to retrieve certain tools left on a workbench while Skip was up on scaffolding, it never came to fruition. Bjorn simply used the, “No opposable thumbs” excuse.

Skip says, “After one year of MISTRESS being in Florida she had deteriorated pretty quick where water had gotten into her”. I asked, “Do you think it averaged about one year to restore each side, two years to restore the hull”? He answered this way. “Well, during those two years, she got new frames, planks, sheer clamp, bilge stringer; all new keel bolts, floor timbers, and her first transom. I also had to remove the deck back by the lazarette because there was not enough room for me to get into that area to fix those frames”. Additionally, Skip was gutting the interior and fixing anything there that needed his attention. He said, “I was working on about five or six foot sections at a time. I would remove the interior, frame it, fix whatever else was wrong, and then move onto the next five or six feet. It worked out to be about eight hours for each frame. Remove one, fill all the holes, laminate up a new frame, and then fasten it into place. Eight hours a frame times about 48 frames a side.” My calculations put that at 768 hours, just over 19 weeks worth of work for her frames, assuming you were working 40 hrs a week.

The large, old, steel rudder he also removed during this time. It would receive a lot of Skip's attention before it was returned to its rightful place. I showed Skip a picture of the old stern tube, but could not remember what it was for and asked him about it. He said, “That is the thing I worry about now where the shaft goes through”. I remember what he means and will share it with all of you later because it will be several years before he is back again working on that section of MISTRESS.

8pm Correction: Originally stated to be teak bungs.

Master Shipwright corrects the Admiral.

Skip reads my correction and wants me to add, "It is the 21st day of the tenth month in 2007, right? That's my one day".