Skipjack Wilma Lee For Sale
The cost of keeping the old, wooden skipjack going has been challenging. The rewards (other than financial) have been great. The excitement and generosity of the many volunteers and employees who have worked with us over the years as well as the enthusiasm of passengers and donors have been deeply gratifying.
It will be best to pass on the Wilma Lee while she’s at the top of her game. The costs and labor of keeping her shipshape are only going to increase as she gets older and the Coast Guard gets stricter about regulating wooden boats. If Ocracoke Alive sells her now, they can recoup their expenses on her maintenance and use the gains for other community programming.
To that end, I suggested to the Ocracoke Alive board that they consider selling her rather than trying to find a captain to replace me when I eventually retire. I agreed to skipper the Wilma Lee through the 2018 tourist season if a buyer can’t be found before then.
I’m happy to say that Ocracoke Alive has had several inquiries about the skipjack, and it looks likely that she’ll be sold.
I feel strongly that this proud old vessel was never really ours anyway. Like an historic building, she belongs to everyone and we were only temporary stewards. The Wilma Lee deserves to be maintained and sailed. I would like to see her go back to the Chesapeake where she was designed and constructed, and where skipjacks are understood and revered.
Here’s the long and short of how this old skipjack came to Silver Lake Harbor:
After arriving in Ocracoke in 1993 with my 57’ 30 –passenger schooner Windfall, I offered sunset cruises and private charters here in the summers and in Everglades National Park in the winters until 2005 when Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma pulled a one-two punch that destroyed the resort in Flamingo that I’d sailed from since 1982. That put an end to my winter operation in Florida.
By 2010 the old Windfall was ready for retirement so I replaced her with the 32’ schooner Windfall II. While I was perfectly satisfied with the smaller boat, she could only accommodate six passengers, which greatly disappointed many of my loyal regular customers who had a long-standing tradition of bringing their extended families out for an annual sail. I also heard from a myriad of painters and photographers who mourned the loss of the large, classic vessel to serve as a subject for their artistic expressions.
Somewhat lacking in youth and wealth, I was sympathetic to their complaints but didn’t feel that I was in a position to start over with the kind of vessel they desired. It occurred to me that if so many people wanted a big schooner here, we could organize a non-profit to build and operate it. Although most of the enthusiasm for this idea came from island visitors, I did manage to assemble a dedicated group of local residents and we began work on a plan to replicate a famous 19th Century Ocracoke schooner, the Paragon.
My research on the concept of organizing a volunteer boat-building effort drew my attention to the skipjack Nathan of Dorchester built in Cambridge, MD in the 1990s and operated there by a non-profit group. I drove up to Cambridge on a cold winter day and met with the movers and shakers of that project.
The Nathan is a perfect replica of the late 19th C. clipper-bowed oyster-dredging sloops known as “skipjacks” for reasons that are still disputed. They were specifically designed on the Bay to be built cheaply by relatively unskilled house carpenters from available materials. In all, around two thousand were built starting in the late 1880s, and they’ve dredged oysters every winter since then with about a half dozen still at it. Since 1989 they’ve been the official State Boat of Maryland and they’re now the last working sailing vessels in North America.
Interesting indeed, but I was a schooner guy.
Returning to Ocracoke, I soon ran up against a series of obstacles too numerous to mention.
As I was beginning to feel that the Paragon wasn’t likely to come to be, I got a phone call one evening from a gentleman in Virginia named Herb Carden.
“The Nathan of Dorchester folks in Cambridge told me you are looking for a skipjack,” he said, “and I’ve got a great one!”
I tried to explain that I was trying to build a coastal schooner and not a skipjack and that I’d only been to Cambridge to discuss the organizational aspects of the project. But Herb was the kind of businessman who prefers to do the talking and expects others to do the listening. I didn’t want to appear rude.
Reader’s Digest version: he ended up giving Ocracoke Alive the immaculately-reconstructed Wilma Lee. Built in Wingate, MD by the famous shipwright Bronza Parks in 1940, the boat is listed in the National Register of Historic places. She dredged oysters on the Bay every winter from 1940 through 1996. These vessels have always been intended to be “rode hard and put away wet.” Whenever one succumbed to shipworms or dry rot it would be run up into the marsh, stripped, abandoned and replaced with a new one. Virtually every back creek on the Chesapeake contains the decaying bones of at least one of these old gals.
Herb had purchased the boat from Captain Robbie Wilson, the last waterman to use her for dredging. Fortunately Herb had, in addition to a fanatical love of traditional Chesapeake Bay workboats, a huge lumber business called Potomac Supply. He also had an incredibly talented employee named John Morgenthaler who was willing and able to tear the old vessel down to her keel and stem and totally rebuild her.
When the restoration was begun in 1996 (and continued until relaunching in 2002) the U.S. Coast Guard was brought in to start the process of certification for carrying passengers. After we (Ocracoke Alive as owner and I as captain) took possession of her in 2012, we discovered that the Coast Guard inspection process had been discontinued for so long that it was necessary to start over again from scratch. It took us two years of jumping through bureaucratic hoops and spending wads of cash to acquire the Certificate of Inspection enabling us to carry 44 passengers.
Although I lived on the Eastern Shore and sailed the Chesapeake for several years in the 1970s, my experience with skipjacks was limited and I’d never been aboard a working “drudge-boat.” I contacted Captain Ed Farley of the skipjack H.M. Krentz and was able to scrounge an invitation to accompany him on a day of dredging in March of 2013. I’ve never seen seven men work so hard from before sunrise until well after sunset. Our day’s harvest was less than stellar but the entire crew was on a “runner’s high.” It was backbreaking teamwork on a cold, miserable day. It’s not about the money. You have to see it to understand it and even then you probably don’t really “get” it unless yours is one of the backs breaking.
I’ve remained in close contact with Capt. Ed for the remainder of the time we’ve had the Wilma Lee and he’s been a very generous mentor. The men like him who still make this their living have an almost evangelical drive to keep their proud tradition alive.
An old sailing buddy and I were musing years ago about what we’d do if we suddenly stumbled on a winning lottery ticket. Without hesitation he said, “I’d go back to shrimp trawling. Couldn’t really make a decent living at it, but it’s the most satisfying work I’ve ever done.”
We were finally beginning to carry passengers as well as to offer educational programs for school children when Hurricane Arthur struck on July 3, 2014. A mooring line parted and significant damage occurred to the sails, boom, rails and stem. The vessel was hauled out for repairs for the remainder of that season.
In the spring of 2015 we resumed operations with various public school educational cruises, dockside talks, sunset cruises, and private charters. OA has also hosted a number of special fundraising cruises (including a special solar eclipse cruise this year).
To all of you who have lent us a hand, crewed on the boat, or donated money over the years, I’m deeply grateful. Working with enthusiastic volunteers and crew has been the best part of the Wilma Lee experience for me, and I will miss that esprit de corps. But the sale of the Wilma Lee will give terrific support to the many other fine endeavors of the Ocracoke Alive organization, and we’ll know our dedication to the skipjack was time and money well spent.
As a diehard schooner guy, I’ll keep sailing the Windfall II with six passengers at a time. The truth is, as beautiful and traditional as skipjacks are, they’re workboats – and the sailing comes second to the dredging. Schooners will always be my first love for the sheer joy of “schooning” across the water powered only by canvas. After a long career of sailing big groups of people, I’ve come to enjoy getting to know my passengers as we share the somewhat intimate cockpit of the schooner. I can let people take the helm of the Windfall II and learn about sailing firsthand. This little schooner has provided me with some of the best sailing of my life and I’m happy to continue to share that experience.
