Old wooden boats need their saviors.
Boat knights Josh Herman, Elliot Peper and Sam Sowyrda, were applying their skills to the Ventura, a Herreshoff Class yacht, restoring its beauty and grandeur—a 70-foot-long true wooden boat with a solid mahogany hull, decks made of Indian teak and an American spruce mast. It was launched in 1920 during the heyday of the Gold Coast era, a sumptuous time for the rich. Originally commissioned by philanthropist George Baker, founder of what is now Citi Bank, it was used as a private duck-hunting yacht.
Now owned by Sail New York for Manhattan forays on the water, its restoration was taking place at Frank M. Weeks Yacht Yard in Patchogue.
The shrink-wrapped cover obscured the activity inside.
“We’re working on the cabin roof right now,” said Herman, a well-known shipwright who’s applied his talents nationwide and locally to such vessels as the Long Island Maritime Museum’s Priscilla, Carmans River Maritime Center’s Elvira, and Mouette, owned privately but restored there. “There’s a lot of busted-looking parts we have to repair, including the seating on top of the cabin roof,” Herman said. “We have the mast and boom to varnish at the Long Island Maritime Museum.”
They’d been at it a few weeks, but the completion would take place “when we’re done,” Herman said. “It’s always more than anticipated. It’s part of the deal.” Their day starts at 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and sometimes beyond.
Herman and Sowyrda live in Huntington. Peper hails from Brookhaven hamlet. Sowyrda is newer on the team with Herman, four years; he was sanding the area the trim would go back on, but Peper has been at it for at least 15 years.
A job site was set up on the boat: a table, band saw, and thickness planer. A wood supplier comes to the site with lengths of wood like white oak and locust, which are measured and cut. Or Herman goes to a supplier and picks the wood. Everything is custom.
“We’re also cleaning up the trim and have to remove it and repair the seating, then take measurements to provide more life preservers,” Peper said. “Sometimes you find rot. But this whole thing has to get Coast Guard approval when we’re done.”
Quality wooden-boat restoration is a kind of alchemy that taps only a few. But those few are well known. Charlie Hart, president of Shellfish Marine, a family-run boatyard in West Sayville for over 50 years, had a hand in Ventura’s restoration as well; they used their crane to pull out the rig. “That yard is one of the best boat machine yards in the country; that’s why you see the ferries they have stored there offseason,” Peper added.
“It’s a culture here on Long Island, repairing wooden boats,” Peper said, looking over at the sun dancing on the Patchogue River. “Wooden boats require TLC and if you give it to them, they last a long time.”
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