How
I got that boat out of the yard after she had been sitting there for
11 years is a story in itself. The short version is that I rushed
up to Maine, hastily hung new garboards, and launched CHRISSY into
Friendship Harbor. She promptly sank like a stone, but she took up
on the next tide. Then, while I was getting ready to rig her, my parents,
who were attending the Friendship sloop regatta in nearby Boothbay,
got word of my adventure, dropped their vacation plans, and towed
CHRISSY back to Essex with their sloop RESOLUTE.
Once we got CHRISSY home, I dragged her up in the creek beside our
shop and let her sink there while I went back to running charters
from KIM. When the charter season ended, I hauled CHRISSY up out of
the water and took the lines from her hull. I carried the resulting
off-sets with me on my last trip in the Merchant Marine, hoping upon
my return home to rebuild CHRISSY and get her inspected to carry more
than six passengers. While I was on that trip, I studied the Code
of Federal Regulations pertaining to small passenger vessels and prepared
a complete set of drawings to submit to the Coast Guard. Although
it turned out to be impractical to get CHRISSY certified, the experience
I gained doing those drawings would later prove to be an essential
part of my education.
On the other hand, I don’t value the feelings I had when I got
off that ship and learned that since CHRISSY didn’t have a builder’s
certificate, I couldn’t document her for coastwise trade without
an act of Congress. Also, I was told that because CHRISSY wasn’t
documented, I couldn’t use her commercially. Luckily, in the
eyes of my baby boy all of this meant nothing, and so when his mother
headed back to school, Alden and I started patching CHRISSY together
with no idea where it would lead us. |
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That
spring, between my other jobs and chartering KIM, I jacked CHRISSY’s
shape back into her, hewed some donated locust trees into new deadwood,
retimbered her below the waterline, and then put some enormous floors
on top of the timbers to hold her shape when I let the jacks go. As
early summer approached, I discovered that because CHRISSY originally
had no auxiliary power (and I had removed her retrofitted engine),
she could legally carry up to six passengers without being documented.
Of course, only a lunatic would attempt to run scheduled charters
without an engine. I began working on her post-haste.
In an absolute fury one afternoon, using 16-penny spikes, a Sawzall,
and a pile of wood from a broken-up Chinese junk, I shortened CHRISSY’s
cabin, put in bulkheads, extended her cockpit seats to a new bridge
deck, built a new working platform, and even installed a bilge pump.
Then, over the next few days, while I was hanging new garboards and
broadstrakes, a bunch of friends and relatives showed up and slathered
CHRISSY from top to bottom with paint.
Although CHRISSY had literally been patched up with old junk, she
looked good, and she proved to be a remarkable boat even without her
engine. Our first voyage was back to Friendship, and it was on the
return trip that I noticed her uncanny ability to steer herself. She
went all the way from Seguin to Wood Island with no one at the helm.
My customers loved CHRISSY’s somewhat excessive character, and
by the end of the season she had paid for herself and her repairs
four times over. |
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