Noember 2017 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 5. M/V HURRICANE: R S I
PORTSMOUTH, NH – There is nothing like an old wooden boat to make a number of us turn our heads and at times turn around and fi nd out more about her. Back in July, I was making a run through Eliot and came across M/V HURRICANE sitting in the parking lot of the Great Cove Boat Club. She was up having work done on her bottom. It was not long before I met up with her owner Jack Farrell, who uses her to run out to Star Island from Portsmouth, part of the Isle of Shoals. HURRICANE was built at the Sou’west
Boat Corp., in Southwest Harbor in 1967 for Hurricane Island Outward Bound School. She worked off Hurricane Island and the Rockland area for a number of years until they moved Clark’s Island where they are to- day. At that point she went down to Thomp- son Island, the Boston Outward Bound program. She worked there for a while and also did some time with the University of Massachusetts doing research around Bos- ton. Around 11 years ago she ended up back in Maine, but her new owner was not really able to fi gure out what to do with her. He kept the Coast Guard licenses up and did a little bit of charter work.
Jack added, “I have been at Star Island
for about nine years now. I have got an old Ted Hood wooden sailboat and I started doing charter trips around the island. It wasn’t long after that that they said that we have got a supply boat and we need a relief captain. I did that and a year later the facil- ity’s director got fi red so they hired me for that. So I have been driving the boats back and forth, for a long time. There is a regular series of trips starting in March where we
take the initial open up workers out there plus building materials and supplies and all of the equipment. We do about 250 trips a year, freight trips, freight and personnel to Star. When I fi rst got here, P. J. THAYER, which was a 38 foot Novi boat, but not set up for passengers. Then they got a 48 foot Duff y, PERSEVERANCE, out of Rockland, a really nice boat, but again it wasn’t built as a passenger boat. We had the same problem and it was very inconvenient so I decided that it would be great to have a boat that could do both so I was looking on Craigslist last year and I saw the HURRICANE. I went down to take a look, but we couldn’t run it. I went home and I told my wife asking her to come up to Mount Desert hoping she would talk me out of it. We got up there and I said, ‘talk me out of it’. She said, ‘No, I think it’s all right, go for it. So I bought it in March and I have been trying to keep it afl oat and running ever since.” “We had a real interesting situation
when we picked it up in Southwest,” added Jack. “We came down as far as Rockland, nice and easy, and things are going great. When we got into Journey’s End we shut her down and looked below and the stuffi ng box hanger bolts were busted right off and water was just pouring in. The pumps were keeping up and I got up in the morning go to Journey’s End and said ‘I need a miracle here.’ They said ‘I hate to tell you, but we don’t have wooden boat expertise here any- more and I need that slip by 7:30. But I am going to call over to Rockport Marine and I bet they can take care of you.’ Within 45 minutes we were on our way over there and
Six River Marine - KATIE MACK Continued from Page 1.
down I did all of the plumbing, designing and installation. I even put in some shelving and the storage.”
Pam added, “I liked doing the varnish-
ing, painting and all of that. So we did inte- rior fi nish work, but I have no fi ngerprints anymore.” Hugh spent hours and hours on eBay
looking for parts and pieces that would, but it had to be from the era. There is a nav-light that is a night light under a companionway; a facet handle from the 1930s, and a helm seat from an AEGIS training facility. Pam said, “These guys have just been a blast to work with. You hear stories of some
nightmares and this has just been a terrifi c experience here. Next KATIE MACK will undergo sea
trials before heading to Martha’s Vineyard for the winter. She will get hauled out there for the winter and back in the water early spring and head to Mystic Seaport in Mystic, CT for the WoodenBoat Show the end of June. Then they will head back to the coast of Maine where they will cruise all summer. Pam said, “We have lived in Maine since 1984 and other than the Southwest Harbor area we have seen virtually nothing of the coast. We have lived here long enough it is time to see it. Once we have done that, we want to do the Maritimes, the Hudson, up the locks to Lake Champlain.”
M/V HURRICANE tied to her dock at Portsmouth, NH.
Taylor Allen meets me at the dock and says we are going to take care of everything. They hauled her right out and fi xed the problem. Jack was hoping to make it through the
summer before he started doing any major work, but that did not happen. He said, “I knew it needed a lot of stuff but I didn’t re- alize how fast it needed it. The Coast Guard was a little concerned about the weeping that we had. We did two stints over at Pepperell Cove wharf and did some caulking, but it wasn’t making it. Finally one day in late July we decided let’s get it out of here and it took about two weeks to refasten the whole bottom. 3000 some screws.” Jack has been thinking about doing a
non-profi t, not just for the boat, but for the activities. He would like to be able to off er cruises to those who cannot aff ord one, like school children. He added, “If I could do 20 or 30 of those a season and get funding for
that it would go a long way to keeping the boat up.”
Presently he is planning what upgrades
he would like to do this winter. He looked at the Sampson post and said that needs to be redone, as do the rails, which are chewed up from years of use. This is not the only boat Jack runs for
the Star Island Corp., he also has UTOPIA, a Bruno 42. She was built to carry passengers, but he did change her house and now she looks like new. “My work at Star Island is pretty cool,”
said Jack. “We want to turn that island into a sustainable example. We went solar, and went from 20,000 gallons of diesel for power to using about 4,300 gallons. We are also converting to a passive waste water treat- ment system. So it is an interesting education between the systems out there, the history, and the natural sciences.
Bring your boat to New England’s most capable yacht yard for the care she deserves. Repairs, refi ts, storage and dockage available for vessels up to 200 feet and 480 tons.
Belfast,Maine 207-930-3740
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