Above: The Merrie Ellen is 113-foot LOA, with a 20-foot beam and 10.5 foot draught, with the distinctive plumb bow and slab sides of a long line fishing schooner. Right: Launched as the tug RFM, ballast was added aft to give her a tug waterline.


working boats, primarily for catching fish, transporting lumber and other commercial uses before being converted into pleasure boats or charter boats. And the lavish restoration of some of these schooners has created interiors nothing short of palatial. Take Captain John Holbert’s charter schooner Merrie Ellen, based


M any schooners started out as


out of Pleasant Harbor, Hood Canal, for example. John Holbert and his wife Jill purchased the schooner Merrie Ellen four years ago and spent about $850,000 on a major overhaul of the hull, interior, and systems—not to mention 10,000 man hours squeezed into 6 months of hard labor, before her sea trials. Although Merrie Ellen’s exterior (113-foot LOA, 20 foot beam, 10.5 foot


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48° NORTH, JUNE 2011 PAGE 49


draught) does not have the pretty, graceful lines of many other old schooners—she has the distinctive, functional looking plumb bow and slab sides of a long line fishing schooner— her interior is breathtaking. Starting in December 2007, Merrie


Ellen (named after John’s mother) was meticulously outfitted to carry three couples in private queen bed staterooms


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