There’s nothing like seeing a classic under restoration.
I ventured to Port Townsend last week and spent time with Pete Leenhouts, a former executive director of the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding in Port Hadlock who is currently restoring Riptide.
She’s a trunk cruiser built in 1927 by Schertzer Brothers Boat and Machine Co. of Seattle.
She is 47 feet, 1 inch long with a beam of 11 feet, 10 inches, and she draws four feet.
She is planked in Port Orford, Ore., cedar riveted to white oak frames over a Douglas fir backbone with western red cedar houses.
Riptide, a Coast Guard-documented vessel, carries her documentation number carved into the interior face of both port and starboard bilge stringers.
She is documented at 17 net tons and 21 gross tons.
This native Northwesterner originally was named Nereiad, then shortly thereafter, Nokare.
Her trunk cabin — the raised cabin aft of the pilothouse — was reportedly added in 1933.
By 1936, when owned by Russell G. Gibson, a director of the Seattle Yacht Club, she had been renamed Riptide.
Gibson, who lived on Treasure Island in Port Madison on Bainbridge Island, owned her through at least 1960.
During that time, Riptide appeared many times in the Seattle boating press, and she participated in many long-distance predicted log races and other boating activities.
The plaques in her pilothouse attest to Gibson’s seamanship skills.
Her original power plant may have been a Hall-Scott gasoline engine, but that has not been verified.
By 1959, Riptide was powered by an eight-cylinder Chrysler Crown gas engine, a common engine for the time, which was likely installed in the late 1940s.
After a succession of owners, she was purchased in 1965 by an individual who took her to Alaska for a few years and re-powered her with a Volvo Penta MD-70A marine diesel engine.
He then sold her to his brother, whose family grew up on Riptide as they spent the next 47 years cruising the Inside Passage.
Pete acquired Riptide last March.
The first step in her restoration process was to haul the vessel out of the water, done in April.
Shipwright Chris Chase began the restoration process, then turned the project over to shipwright Jeff Galey, a 2008 graduate of the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding.
Shipwrights Paul Stoffer and Paul Lyter, themselves graduates of the boat school, have worked on all phases of the vessel’s renovation.
It was evident from the outset that her transom, a number of the frames and some of her planking above the waterline had to be repaired.
As it turned out, 33 of the 120 white oak frames, each measuring 2 inches by 2 inches, had to be replaced. Most of the above-water planking on the starboard side and about two-thirds of the planking above the waterline on the port side also were changed.
Her foredeck and side decks, and the sills under the pilothouse and aft trunk cabin were repaired as well.
The old engine and fuel tanks were lifted out, and all the wiring in the boat was removed.
The engine room is being completely stripped and cleaned before being repainted prior to the installation of new fuel tanks, fuel piping and a remanufactured Cummins 5.9-liter marine diesel.
Caulker John Zimmer, owner of Palouse Boatworks Inc., will re-caulk the entire boat, and she will be painted and varnished later this summer by expert marine finisher Diane Salguero and her team.
Riptide’s ta-daaa moment will come when Pete shows her in the 2015 Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend on Sept. 11-13.
I commented to a friend of mine, Todd Ritchie, that wooden boat aficionados are indebted to the likes of the Pete Leenhoutses of the world who are willing to invest their time and treasure restoring and preserving maritime history.
Soon to Alaska
I stopped at Crozier Craft’s facility west of Port Angeles and spoke with owner Chad Crozier.
He and his crew had just finished building a 34-foot monohull boat with a 12-foot beam that will be outfitted with a pair of 300-horsepower Yamaha out board motors and a 25-horse kicker.
The boat will be put aboard an Alaska Marine Lines barge for shipment to Ketchikan, where the owner will put the vessel to work as a six-pack charter boat.
Plugging the leaks
Platypus Marine, the full-service shipyard, yacht-repair facility and steel-boat manufacturer on Marine Drive in Port Angeles, on Thursday hauled out Eclipse, a 67-foot wooden commercial fishing vessel.
I understand that she developed a number of leaks that Platypus personnel will resolve by recaulking the hull.
Port Angeles Harbor watch
Tesoro Petroleum on Monday provided bunkers to Maersk Murotsu in Port Angeles Harbor.
She’s a 599-foot petroleum products tanker that is flagged in Panama.
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David G. Sellars is a Port Angeles resident and former Navy boatswain’s mate who enjoys boats and strolling the area’s waterfronts and boat yards.
Items and questions involving boating, marina and industrial activities and the North Olympic Peninsula waterfronts are always welcome. News announcements about boating groups, including yacht clubs and squadrons, are welcome as well.
Email dgsellars@hotmail.com or phone him at 360-808-3202.
