Some Background
My parents bought this 1953 41 foot Matthews Sedan Cruiser when I was 6 years old. We lived in a small town in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The introduction of this boat into my life was a magical experience where I learned a love of the sea and being on the water. I had my own aluminum skiff where I could explore the endless marshes and inlets with my dog or try to catch crabs off of the pilings many early mornings to allow my parents to have a weekend late sleep in.
We kept it at the mouth of the Rappahannock River on the Chesapeake Bay at a thriving marina called Windmill Point in White Stone. We would leave on Friday nights from Staunton and slog to White Stone for 4 hours (before the Interstate system) only to head back on Sunday night every other weekend during the warm months as well as many several weeklong vacations taking trips. Some weekends, my dad would want to go down in the winter where we relied on long underwear, space heaters, and electric blankets. Popular summer destinations were Baltimore, Annapolis, Tangier Island and the Eastern Shore, Norfolk, and Yorktown. One summer, we took the boat to Charleston, SC via the Intracoastal Waterway.
Randall at 7 years old sitting on his brother John's lap
on the MaryT.
The biggest memories was how much the boat was a locus for friends and family. This included fellow boaters in the marina as well as the dockside parties while cruising with the Virginia Yacht Club. There were so many great adventures and laughs. We didn't need to go far to enjoy great times. Just up the river is Tides Inn, a wonderful resort in Irvington, VA. We could take a short cruise to dock at the Tides Inn for the night, I'd watch my parents dance to jazz at the Chesapeake Club and we'd have a great dinner there. The next mornings, I could walk around and explore the 120 foot steel yacht, the Miss Ann, that Tides Inn owned.
My father was not mechanically inclined and so he relied on me to keep the systems running from a fairly early age. He was all too happy to set me up at the helm to the destination following the compass & buoys while he read. It was gratifying to have a purpose and be good at it while still young.
With these memories in mind, there I was standing on the shore of the Hudson River in Cold Spring, NY one night in 1995 with my 18-month old son thinking about my ageing father trying to donate this boat to the University of Virginia. I'd had just enough to drink to feel expansive to want to hold onto this cherished piece of my early life and share it with my family. So I took it over from my father and had it trucked to the Hudson in 1998 where we used it for a season - keeping it near Peekskill. Seeing my wife and young sons on the bow as we cruised the river brought tears to my eyes.
....Then reality hit. It was a rickety boat and with two tired engines. It basically fell apart after that year where it was revealed that all of the wooden frames (ribs) were rotted to the consistency of sponge from the level of the bilgewater at the sides in to the keel due electrolysis and the filth of the bilgewater that had sat for the 20 years that I had been away.
Randall with Mary-Powel and two sons William and David
What followed was a long process of restoration that would only be done by an insane or sentimentally nostalgic person. Maybe a combination of both. It would have been far easier to just go buy a fiberglass boat and be done with it. But once back in my orbit, it was a sick member of the family and you do what you can for family. The initial cost estimates to fix the hull were optimistic. When you're dealing with wooden structures like a house or any boat, negative surprises often arrive. When you're dealing with a wooden structure that happens to also be a boat, you're sure to be tempting Murphy for a ton of negative surprises. In the middle of a restoration phase where it's running over budget, the only logical thing is to soldier through to the end. Business schools caution against chasing sunk costs and say that the logical solution would be to stop the job and burn the boat. Well, that theory smacks against anything where there's love involved.
The Restoration Projects
Each link is the photo essay of the particular restoration project.
Expand to see blueprint