Boat with an interesting history

Here's some background information on a boat I visited and photographed this
week. Anybody with an appreciation for well know yacht designers might find
this interesting. This is the first portion of a magazine article, the second
portion will be a descriptive "walk thru". I'll share the second portion when
its done, in the next day or so.

*************

"Nan"



Steve Hemry and Diane Anderson wanted to fulfill a dream of living aboard a
boat. They had made an offer on a sailboat, but decided to do a bit more
looking around before finalizing the deal. Steve recounts how they drove past a
boatyard and noticed an old, 50-foot, wooden motoryacht hauled out for some
major refitting. Steve recalls commenting on the amazing amount of space the
boat appeared to offer. Diane recalls saying, "We're not going to buy that!"
Something about the vessel intrigued them. As they walked around to check her
lines, they noticed a hand-scrawled "for sale" sign propped up in a dusty cabin
window. Hemry and Anderson made a fateful phone call.

"The previous owners were carnival people," said Steve. "They would travel
around the country much of the year and then come home to Everett and live
aboard the boat for the winter. I don't think they used the boat all that
often, but they did say they used to run up to Victoria once a year and stock
up on Canadian cigarettes."

Steve and Diane were smitten with the boat, and made an offer subject to sea
trial.

"Our first experience in the boat was certainly memorable," said Steve. "The
battery was so dead, we had to get a jump start from the Travel-Lift when we
launched. I was down in the engine room removing the jumper cables from the
batteries. All of a sudden, I realized that we were in gear and underway. We
weren't far from the slings when I noticed what seemed to be an alarming amount
of water flooding the bilge. I went up to the helm and told the previous owner
that he might want to check on the amount of water we were making, it seemed
like it might be abnormal. The previous owner said he'd take a look, and he
gave me the wheel and said, 'Here, you steer."

"After the previous owner went into the engine room," said Diane, "Steve looked
over at me as he was steering the boat and said, 'You know, this is the boat
for us!' Just then, the owner came scrambling back from the engine room and
said we had to get back to the dock right away, as it looked like we really
were about to sink!"

The extended period spent on the hard had dried out the hull. After soaking for
a few days the planks swelled up and became seaworthy once again. Hemry and
Anderson enjoyed a less dramatic sea trial, and negotiated a final price. "Once
he was sure we wanted to buy her, the previous owner became a little bit hard
to deal with. We wound up paying his repair bill, for instance, as well as some
other unexpected items."

Even when the deal was closed, Hemry and Anderson couldn't be sure exactly what
they had purchased. "We took so much junk off this boat that the water line
rose about six inches as we unloaded it. The previous owners just walked away
and left almost everything aboard. The deeper we would dig through drawers and
lockers as we cleaned things out, the further we would discover we were going
back in time."

Steve and Diane knew that they were the fourth owners of the boat. The carnival
operators had purchased the boat from a family living on Hunt's Point. "The
second owner of the boat, who lived on Hunt's Point, was an executive with a
first aid and pharmaceutical company," said Steve. "I think it was pretty much
just a party boat during that era, with a lot of card playing, cigar smoking,
and rowdy partying at the dock. The third owners never did much to clean her up
after they got her, and you could still write your name in the cigar smoke on
the walls. When we dug deep enough back in the drawers, we found old Band-Aids
and other items that the second owner had left aboard."

Hemry and Anderson explored their new boat like a pair of archeologists, amazed
and surprised at the trash and treasures they uncovered as they cleared
truckloads of accumulated gear. As they reached the bottom layers, they began
encountering evidence of "Nan's" first owner. "We found the original Seattle
Yacht Club burgee used by her first owner and builder, Ed Monk. It's now in a
frame in the aft companionway" said Steve.

Ed Monk, one of the most highly renowned naval architects of the 20th Century,
built "Nan" as a cruising vessel as well as a home for his family. She was
almost absurdly beamy in an era of "skinny" boats, with a 14'6" beam and a
50-foot LOA. When she was launched in 1934, the Monk family moved aboard. "We
had heard of Ed Monk when we bought this boat," said Steve, "but we weren't
prepared to appreciate his genius until we had owned it a while."

Steve pointed to a small, flat table area in the aft port quarter of the salon.
"Ed Monk actually started his career drawing boats at that exact spot. The Monk
family had been shipwrights almost forever, and Ed had been running a boatyard
in California.
He decided to relocate to the Pacific Northwest, and to make a career change
from shipwright to boat designer. Ed and his brother built this boat. The Monk
family lived aboard at the Seattle Yacht Club. The number on his business card
was the payphone at the end of the dock, and when a client would call whoever
answered the phone would run down the dock to let Ed know he had a phone call.
This office area is fairly open today, but when the boat was first built there
was a partition that created some privacy here."

"We've had the privilege of having Isabel Monk aboard," said Steve. "She's the
last surviving daughter of Ed Monk's first marriage. Isabel told us how she and
her sister used to sit here and watch their father design his boats."

"The Monks lived aboard for about seven years, if I recall correctly," said
Steve.
"Eventually Ed's first wife, Blossom, passed away. Maybe because of all the
memories associated with the boat, Ed finally sold it to the second owner- also
a member of the Seattle Yacht Club."

"So the boat went from the Monks, to the family from Hunt's Point, to the
carnival people, and finally to us," said Steve. "And thank goodness she was
left pretty much untouched. When we went out for our second sea trial with the
previous owner he invited me to climb up to the cabin top, where he pointed out
what a great location that would be for a flying bridge! The boat is just so
graceful, it would have been a shame if anybody had done major modifications to
her lines."

"In the years since we first became caretakers of this boat," said Steve,
"Diane has made her look really nice and I've made her work well. I think that
if we knew what we were actually getting into when we bought the boat, we
wouldn't have, but we enjoy sharing her with people. She's such a good looking
boat, we often notice that we can be moored next to a million-dollar yacht and
all the people passing by are ignoring that boat and looking at 'Nan.'"

Chuck,
Well written, goes to show that there's always something to be said
about a LADY.
Paul

"Gould 0738" <gould0738.DeleteThis@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20041118005836.06040.00000422@mb-m19.aol.com...

snipped

 > She's such a good looking
 > boat, we often notice that we can be moored next to a million-dollar yacht
 > and
 > all the people passing by are ignoring that boat and looking at 'Nan.'"
 >
 ><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->