Lady In Distress; State's Official Tall Ship Lies Damaged, Idle As Aberdeen Board Faces Financial Storms

ABERDEEN - Lady Washington is becalmed.

After a decade sailing Northwest waters, the state's official tall ship sits idle at the edge of an asphalt sea, its stately mainmast barely visible behind the parked cars that surround the local Wal-Mart.

The high, fancy stern is wrapped in plastic tarps. Aging, patched sails are stowed below, along with the ship's grand ambitions.

The captain, crew and boosters are determined to sail their elegant replica of an 18th-century sailing ship into the 21st century. But the accountants aren't so sure.

The Lady Washington is broke.

"We're running on empty," says Les Bolton, director of the Grays Harbor Historical Seaport, the nonprofit Aberdeen group that operates the ship.

The ship's plight can be blamed, in part, on a desire to keep it close to home. The paradox is this: If Washington is to keep its troubled tall ship, the state may have to let it go - even to foreign places like California, where it can earn its keep.

A decade ago, the Lady Washington was part of a bold recovery plan for this soggy, depressed mill town. The idea was to celebrate the state's 1989 centennial by going back an extra century and building a replica of the original Lady Washington, named after the nation's first-ever first lady and sailed here 200 years ago by Capt. Robert Gray.

Gray was a Boston sea captain who ventured into Northwest waters looking for furs; in the process, he explored and named Grays Harbor and the Columbia River, which later helped make the case that the Northwest should be part of the United States, not Canada.

By tall-ship standards, the original Lady Washington was tiny - 70 feet long, 85 feet high. But it was an overachiever - the first U.S. vessel to sail the Northwest, to visit China, Hawaii and Japan, to circle the globe. Its companion ship, the Columbia Rediviva, lent its name to the great River of the West.

Supporters dreamed the replica would become the centerpiece of a historic seaport, an $8 million tourist attraction that would help offset the grim downturn in the region's timber economy.

Even before the ship was launched, the project weathered financial and political storms. County voters rejected a ballot proposal to finance the project. So the city of Aberdeen established a public nonprofit organization to build and operate the ship, and harvested some city-owned trees to raise the seed money.

The state picked up the balance of the $2 million construction cost, but never came up with the money to develop the seaport.

"Promises were made," said Bolton, "but nothing materialized."

Meanwhile, the site at the mouth of the Chehalis River became a shopping mall, with acres of blacktop surrounding new discount stores.

"The tall-ship attraction ended up sandwiched between the river and the Wal-Mart," Bolton said. "We became orphans."

Too big a project for Aberdeen?

What went wrong? Members of the board met in Aberdeen last week to weigh that question and their options for the future.

The board includes an interesting assortment of Aberdeen citizenry, such as chairman Lonnie Taylor, a maintenance supervisor at the Port of Grays Harbor; schoolteacher Jean Davis; rare-book dealer Carl Weber; and retired physician Chuck Pollock.

They say they've had some bad breaks. In 1991, for example, the ship sailed up the Columbia River to the Tri-Cities, where a railroad bridge was lowered without warning, wrecking the mainmast. Only quick action by the crew saved the ship from sinking - 200 miles inland.

More recently, the Coast Guard discovered extensive rot in the stern caused by faulty construction and ordered the damage repaired before the ship can sail again.

Still, the ship actually made money in the mid-1990s, taking on paying passengers from Alaska to San Diego.

But the idea of sponsoring a tall ship may have been overly ambitious for Aberdeen. Much larger cities, such as Baltimore, have pumped millions of dollars into their tall ships, said Taylor, the chairman. In some cases, the ship's crew are actually city employees.

"Aberdeen has to be the smallest city anywhere that has its own tall ship," he said. "We don't have those kinds of resources."

Statewide, there are thousands of maritime enthusiasts, but their loyalties are divided among vessels such as the steamship Virginia V; the deco-styled ferryboat Kalakala; the schooners Zodiac and Adventuress and Martha; and the other classic ships and boats moored at South Lake Union.

And each of those is, as the saying goes, essentially a hole in the water that drinks up money. Even with Seattle's much-ballyhooed affluence, it seems there is not enough money to support so many historic boats.

The problem of staying at home

Meanwhile, the Lady Washington has suffered from spending too much time at home.

The ship still owes nearly $200,000 on the original loan from the city of Aberdeen, and city officials have insisted the ship spend much of the year in Grays Harbor.

"The city wants the Lady here all summer," said board member Weber, a maritime-history buff. "The problem is, a ship like this can only survive by moving around. After about 10 days, everybody who is interested has gone aboard."

It's simple economics, Weber said. The ship has not become the tourist attraction the city hoped for, and there are not enough paying passengers around Grays Harbor to keep it afloat.

This month, the Lady was set to sail to Southern California, where the crew can find plenty of paying customers. But the repair job and the financial crisis have delayed that trip until February, and now even that is in question: There is no cash to buy fuel and supplies for the journey.

So the Lady Washington crew and board are looking for a new wind to fill their sails.

The ship has become part of the culture of Grays Harbor and of the state, says Bolton, the director. It has visited virtually every port in the region, giving thousands of people a taste of 18th-century maritime lore. The crew has taken on troubled youths and taught them to sail.

But teaching kids to sail does not pay the bills, Bolton said.

"Ideally, we should be under way about 320 days of the year," he said. "We should aggressively work the Hollywood possibilities."

Some years ago, the city served as a prop for a Star Trek movie and made $80,000 in 11 days. But similar opportunities have been passed over because the city insisted on keeping the ship in local waters, he said.

Wish list: Cash, a clear mission

Ultimately, the ship needs a permanent endowment - roughly equal to the value of the vessel, Bolton said. In the short run, however, he would happily settle for $50,000 to pay off the most pressing debts and buy fuel and supplies for the 2000 sailing season.

And one more thing, he says.

"We really need a clear mission," he said. "Are we a charter boat? A museum? An educational platform? Or all of the above?"

Ross Anderson's phone number is 206-464-2061.