Wooden Boats

WoodenBoat ShowMore than 100 wooden boats -- from 80-foot yachts to a 15-foot working skiff -- are on display in the water and on land this weekend when the WoodenBoat Show returns to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels. Sponsored by WoodenBoat Magazine of Brooklin, Maine, this year's show focuses on boats from the Chesapeake Bay region. The skipjack H.M. Krentz, the schooner Imagine, and the museum's buyboat Mister Jim offer short Bay excursions, and suppliers to the wooden-boat market exhibit paint, varnish, tools, hardware, sails, oars, boat building kits and plans.

John B. "Jack" Owens, who had been a principal in the family-owned Owens Yacht Co., the legendary Annapolis boat builder, and later established a real estate firm, died Saturday of heart failure at his Naples, Fla., home. He was 96. Mr. Owens was born in Detroit, where his father was a vice president of Westinghouse Electric Corp. and his mother was a homemaker. After his wife's death in 1918, the elder Mr. Owens moved his children to Spa Creek in Eastport, Annapolis, so relatives could help him raise his daughter and four sons.

The journeys of midwinter often lead classic boat owners to the water's edge, to small marinas where wooden boats are crowded atop blocks and stands along the rutted paths of travel lifts, awaiting another coat of paint, new planking, ribs or floors -- or, eventually, a crew of wreckers who will break them apart."

Clay Dell "Skip" Edmonds, a retired mechanic who served in Vietnam with the Marine Corps, died Feb. 4 of Agent Orange-related leukemia at his Woodbine home. He was 63. Mr. Edmonds was born in Baltimore and raised in Lansdowne. He attended Woodlawn High School. "He was 17 and forged his mother's name in order to join the Marine Corps in 1965," said his wife of 14 years, the former Jeanie Pickett. He was assigned as a tank mechanic to an infantry unit in Vietnam. "He volunteered for three tours of duty during the Vietnam War," said a daughter, Taryn Wilson of Bel Air. Mr. Edmonds was discharged from the Marine Corps in 1977 and remained an active reservist until 1994.

It's a bit like a nautical version of Santa's workshop along the Havre de Grace waterfront.In the abandoned Seneca Cannery on St. Johns Street, 11 boats in various stages of construction lie about the cavernous basement, where 36 men drill and chisel and saw wood, generating mountains of sawdust.They gather here on Tuesday evenings to learn the Chesapeake Bay tradition of building wooden boats in a 12-week course offered through Harford Community College.Peter Steinmetz, a skipjack sailor who came up with the idea for the course, teaches it with two others.

GALESVILLE -- Teri Nilsen was still hooked to the trapeze when the gust hit Gandalf, a sleek Chesapeake 20, as it tacked, forcing the sailboat to heel until it almost dipped its spreader in the water.Nilsen scrambled to windward to add her human ballast to the battle with the wind to keep from capsizing. Seconds later, she had rehooked her line and was standing somewhat horizontally on the rub strip. Beneath her, Gandalf was surging through the 3-foot chop of West River again like the fast and beautiful lady the late Captain Dick Hartge had meant her to be when he built her back in the mid-1930s.

When Ellicott City resident Jack Zuraw had his boat docked on the Wicomico River, people would stop and stare, wondering exactly what they were seeing. The Jolly Dolphin is a 49-year-old three-sail bateau - a traditional Chesapeake Bay boat related to the skipjack - that is rarely seen today. Said Zuraw: "It's opened up conversations with folks who walk up and say, `Oh, yeah. I remember that boat from back'" when it sailed the bay. Abandoned by a previous owner, the boat had fallen into disrepair.

John B. "Jack" Owens, who had been a principal in the family-owned Owens Yacht Co., the legendary Annapolis boat builder, and later established a real estate firm, died Saturday of heart failure at his Naples, Fla., home. He was 96. Mr. Owens was born in Detroit, where his father was a vice president of Westinghouse Electric Corp. and his mother was a homemaker. After his wife's death in 1918, the elder Mr. Owens moved his children to Spa Creek in Eastport, Annapolis, so relatives could help him raise his daughter and four sons.

John Gardner, 90, a nationally renowned boat builder and former associate curator at the Mystic Seaport Museum, died Wednesday in Haverhill, Mass. He wrote five books about small watercraft. His latest, "Wooden Boats to Build and Use," will be published in June.

The Coast Guard has ordered its officers nationwide to perform more rigorous inspections of wooden boats in hopes of catching the sort of flaws that may have contributed to the sinking of the El Toro II.The two-page national "safety alert" revises inspection rules to require, rather than recommend, that inspectors pay particular attention to the nails and bolts in boats more than 15 years old.Inspectors "must" remove any nails, screws or bolts they suspect...

When the bottom fell out of the home construction market two years ago, it took Kevin Hurst, who built them, and his wife Tracy, who wrote loans for them, down with it. The Annapolis family, including 7-year-old twins, had to move into what had been Hurst's business offices. Hurst then turned to building houses for a different type of clients. Birds. A perfectionist who promised buyers of his custom designs only that he would be slow, he returned to his wood-working shop where he could execute that attention to detail on whimsical, magical – and expensive - birdhouses that can now be found in as many homes as gardens.

When Ellicott City resident Jack Zuraw had his boat docked on the Wicomico River, people would stop and stare, wondering exactly what they were seeing. The Jolly Dolphin is a 49-year-old three-sail bateau - a traditional Chesapeake Bay boat related to the skipjack - that is rarely seen today. Said Zuraw: "It's opened up conversations with folks who walk up and say, `Oh, yeah. I remember that boat from back'" when it sailed the bay. Abandoned by a previous owner, the boat had fallen into disrepair.

After being passed down in the same family for 98 years, Annapolis' oldest boatyard was sold to an outsider last week. Debra A. Smith took ownership of Sarles Boat and Engine Shop on Nov. 1. The small marina on Spa Creek was founded in 1907 by Benjamin E. Sarles and had been in that family until this month. "I'm going to take the best of everything and add my own little spin to it," Smith said. "I'll be blending the old and the new." The marina sits on 1.5 acres near the mouth of Spa Creek.

Using a very sharp handsaw, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. is scheduled to slice a 30-foot boat in half Friday. The executive carpentry will kick off this weekend's sailing festival in Chestertown. The three-day event - officially known as the Down Rigging Weekend - celebrates the end of the sailing season for the schooner Sultana, a 97-foot replica of a 1768 vessel. The boat spends the warm months traveling around the Chesapeake and the cold months tied to a dock in Chestertown. Seven other ships - including the Kalmar Nyckel, a replica of a 17th-century oceangoing vessel, the 105-foot Lady Maryland, and new schooner Virginia - will be moored in the harbor to celebrate the event.

THE WATER is warming up, everyone is on vacation, the air is still - and did we mention it is getting hot? But stuffy weather need not precipitate a full retreat to an air-conditioned cube. We've pulled together a few water-related events that don't count on a strong breeze. Listen to tunes at City Dock on Wednesdays at noon. Today's concert features Susquehanna River Valley crooner Don Shappelle. Take lunch and sun block. On July 6, the band will be Them Eastport Oyster Boys, playing songs such as "Good Hat, Good Dog, Good Boat" and "Back Creek Crab."

When he was 8 years old, Don Boehl loved to jump into big piles of sawdust. He and his father scavenged old wooden fruit boxes for white pine that could be made into World War I model planes. Boehl credits his dad, now 86, and a neighbor with instilling in him a love of wood. More than 20 members of the Chesapeake Wooden Boat Builders gathered recently to work on projects as varied as canoe restoration, model building and caning. The members helped one another, teaching and learning with the harmonious hum of chitchat, broken every now and then by laughter or the sound of a hammer.

For most people, the idea of sailing on a wooden boat seems almost, well, archaic.After all, there are all those new, shiny fiberglass boats with more buttons and gadgets than the latest VCR.But for Ray Hartjen of Port Tobacco, a word like archaic would never enter his vocabulary when talking about wooden boats. On the contrary, Mr. Hartjen uses words like "majestic" or "historic."It is the love of wooden boats that has brought Mr. Hartjen to Eastport to lead the restoration of a 55-year-old, 42-foot yawl -- a two-masted, fore- and aft-rigged sailing vessel that was donated to him."

When the bottom fell out of the home construction market two years ago, it took Kevin Hurst, who built them, and his wife Tracy, who wrote loans for them, down with it. The Annapolis family, including 7-year-old twins, had to move into what had been Hurst's business offices. Hurst then turned to building houses for a different type of clients. Birds. A perfectionist who promised buyers of his custom designs only that he would be slow, he returned to his wood-working shop where he could execute that attention to detail on whimsical, magical – and expensive - birdhouses that can now be found in as many homes as gardens.

TILGHMAN ISLAND -- The Stanley Norman is a lucky boat. In other hands, the 98-year-old skipjack might have long since been "run up a gut" -- sailed up a creek, stripped of everything valuable, and left to rot amid the marsh grass when the cost of repairs outstripped the profit its owner could make. But now the Stanley Norman is in the hands of Mike Vlahovich, salmon fisherman turned savior of old wooden boats. In a cold, high-ceilinged boat shed smelling of pine sap, Vlahovich is undertaking something that has not been done in recent years and might never be done again: He is rebuilding, from the spine up, one of the last remaining skipjacks in the Chesapeake Bay oyster-fishing fleet.