My first impression was painful: Here was a sad, water-stained, partially-finished project at the 2018 Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival, organized by The Center for Wooden Boats.
Walking into the CWB’s Seattle boatshop, where gorgeous rowing and sailing boats were on display, I noticed off to one side a forlorn, pitiful thing that had been donated by the widow of a longtime CWB volunteer, Bill Lehman, following his death in 2016. The boat was 14’ on deck, beamy, lapstrake-planked and utterly fascinating. Walking around the hull, it was easy to see potential, but the poor thing was a blotchy mess of bare plywood that had never been sealed.
I knew immediately that the optimistic asking price would drive away 99% of those who even glanced at the hull, since most folks lack the time, experience or questionable judgement required to take on a major build or restoration. (And especially because prudent consumers could buy a perfectly nice, turnkey sailboat for the asking price of this sorry mess.)
Oh, but what a hull design!
I had to know more, and soon learned that Bill Lehman was a student of late-1800’s British beach boats, the small fishing craft launched into waters off the rugged coast of the UK. While I didn’t know Bill, he’d gathered lines of many such boats from maritime museums and other sources, and had sketched out what appeared to be an amalgam of different traditional hull designs—not quite this or that, but a fine mix. Back in 2008 he asked David Kuperstein, a professional builder in Oregon, to come up with a bare shell of hull that Lehman could finish building at his place in Seattle.
Lehman took delivery of the bare hull in mid-2009, and tinkered over the next year, making notes on the planned sailing rig, spars, materials and hardware he’d need. He ordered three sails for the planned gunter yawl, but little progress was made to the hull when his string of hand-written notes ended in 2010.
I don’t know if any progress was made after that, but Lehman died six years later, leaving behind a hull that had not been sealed or otherwise protected from the elements. The hull was exposed to at least some rain or dampness and by the time it was donated to the CWB, the bare Okoume planks had been saturated with water stains, black mold and other discouraging signs.
Naturally, as someone lacking the common-sense gene, I had to have the project. But perhaps mercifully, I couldn’t afford the 2018 asking price and I was already committed to other boatbuilding and restoration jobs.
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