For love of a wooden boat: A memoir of obsession and elbow-grease

Last year I got a call from Dick Wagner, local patron saint of old wooden boats, with an offer that could have read, "Free Classic Boat, Moorage Included."

Seattle's Center for Wooden Boats had acquired an old thoroughbred of a sailboat, the legendary sloop "Mistral," and they needed someone to look after it.

These were Dick's actual words:

"She just needs to be sailed."

Perhaps he said something else after this, something about sanding and varnishing and occasional engine trouble, or occasional white-knuckled moments trying to get the bilge pump working while water streamed in from the bow. If he did, I wasn't listening. That would have been the rational thing to do, and taking on the stewardship of a large boat — old, wooden, fast or otherwise — is guided as much by sugar plums dancing in one's head as dull, boring reason.

I took on Mistral for two years, slowly picking up a crew of fellow volunteers. Seventeen months into my commitment, we have spent a couple thousand hours scraping, sanding, varnishing, painting and tinkering. The Experience Mistral Project has grown to include an official logo, a fictional corporate structure complete with a promotions-and-marketing department, iron-on transfers, a "free beer" night and a blog to apprise the world of all the latest Mistral news.

Some of us have even gone sailing. We picked up several coveted duck stickers in the Tuesday night Duck Dodge series on Lake Union. Amazingly, we won an actual cup by besting two of the Northwest's finest wooden racers. We've taken dozens of people out on the Center's free Sunday sails. And earlier this month, we had one of those sterling Northwest weekends that have you waking up on Monday with the feeling that you've just done something unique and spectacular.

"This one day of sailing has made all the work worthwhile," said Erik Nielsen, a former Washington State University dinghy racer and crew member so dedicated he actually calls me "skipper." It was midweekend and we had just finished an absolutely wild ride around Port Townsend Bay. We had yet another great ride to come.

It all began in 1939 ...

A sailboat starts as an idea. If it lives a full life, it becomes a story, a floating, living narrative.

Mistral started as the idea of Ben Seaborn, one of the Northwest's most brilliant boat designers. He is best known for the Thunderbird, the quintessential Northwest sailboat, and a stable of sleek, beautiful boats best known for repeatedly winning the Swiftsure Yacht Race, the Northwest's quintessential sailing competition.

Seaborn's idea for a smallish, 31-foot sloop was born in 1939 as "Romp II" in the Blanchard Boat Co. on Lake Union. Bill Baillargeon, one-time head of the former Seattle Trust Bank, saw it being built as a child and bought it as an adult, renaming it "Mistral." In the 1960s, Mistral became the smallest boat to win Swiftsure, and won twice.

At last, Baillargeon donated the boat to the Center, a museum of Northwest maritime history and small craft where people actually use the exhibits. At the time, I was serving on the Center's board of trustees.

The boat was in great shape.

"It just needs a little sandpaper," said Baillargeon. This was true. But varnish breaks down, paint peels, dust becomes dirt and turns into a bacteria-laced mud that makes a fast snack of wet wood. Without serious maintenance, a showpiece in just a few years is just another project boat on eBay.

I started alone, sanding this, varnishing that. Martin Feldman, a standout among the Center's army of volunteers, sanded and varnished some more. Kemp Jones, a lifelong sailor and Center regular, became my chief adviser and helped get the 40-plus-foot mast pulled for refinishing over the winter. I advertised online for crew and got so many people I had to bump myself up to Mistral project manager.

We ended up scraping and recoating the mast with seven coats of varnish. We painted the deck, twice. We hauled the boat out of the water to fix leaks from the bow and propeller shaft and paint the bottom and hull. We refinished the hatch doors, hand rails and assorted bits of unpainted wood. I hung upside down in the engine compartment, then corralled more talented mechanics into doing the same.

"This is a lot like having another car," said Dave Derse, head of the Mistral Power Plant Division. "Come to think of it, it's a lot like having another house."

Not-so-smooth sailing

Fortunately for Mistral, I recently reevaluated my life and quit a comfortable, well-paying job in exchange for the hundreds of dollars to be made in freelance writing and editing. This freed me up to spend more time this past year on this labor of love and obsession, and much — OK, most — of August preparing Mistral for a showcase weekend Sept. 8-10 at the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival, where the boat would be one of several Center vessels on the docks.

As befits any adventure, the trip to Port Townsend began with engine trouble. Erik Nielsen and I were gunning to make the 6:30 p.m. opening of the Fremont Bridge when the engine started laboring. We had been trying to solve this problem for a month, tweaking the carburetor and timing, and trying new spark plugs. A recent four-hour sea trial on Lake Washington suggested the problem was under control.

But an adage — a wooden boat will take all the perfection you can throw at it — was now wagging its finger. All my work wasn't enough. The engine died for good just outside Shilshole Bay Marina.

As a backup, I'd arranged to go north with Jake Beattie, a Center staffer and skipper of Isswatt, a 1948 tug that once saw service in a Ketchikan, Alaska, log yard. Leaving with the ebb tide on Friday morning, Isswatt towed us to Port Townsend, picking up two other Center boats along the way to create a ragtag regatta.

Our central mission was to defend the Port Townsend Challenge Cup, which was started the year before as a complement to the boat show's schooner race. Mistral won that 2005 race, starting poorly, then watching the pack get hung up in a current while we steered wide. We all limped around the course in the faintest of air, and Mistral hung on to finish ahead of Sparkle, the Port Townsend boat to beat, and the Center's Pirate, a national champion R-boat restored to near perfection over six years.

Pirate bowed out of this year's race, which looked like it was going to have last year's dead air until about 15 minutes before the start. Then someone switched on a big fan. We beat Sparkle to the starting line, then watched its big black waterline cruise by. So much for our cup. As it was, we had our hands full.

Wind and water, hello

A huge gust came from port. I was controlling the mainsail, so it was my job to let the sail out and spill some wind so the boat wouldn't get knocked on its ear. But it's a big boat with a few tons of ballast on the keel. I figured we could just wait the gust out. Water came over the toe rail and onto the deck, then up to the windows of the house. Kemp let me know to ease out the sail with the encouraging, mentorly manner of a skipper under pressure.

He said something like this: "LET OUT THE MAIN!"

I eased out the sail just enough to lift the rail from the water and kept it there as dark gusts tried to bat us about. A thick curl was gushing off the bow like water from a storm-choked culvert. Brooke Marjamaa, executive officer and leader of the foredeck, was getting washed in a Maytag set on "cold." I had to loop the handheld GPS around a vent to keep it from sliding overboard. Its readout was academic; we were flying.

Seaborn had aimed to have this boat and its 5-foot keel part tons of water at a time with minimum fuss. Our dirty, splintered hands had helped that effort along, brushing, sanding, wiping, painting, fairing, smoothing and otherwise caressing every turn and surface. Now it was all coming together. We were a funk band in a deep groove, taut with concentration but aware on a clear, second level that this was one great ride. It would have been frightening if we weren't in the good hands of Kemp and each other and the experienced hull and rigging of Mistral herself.

"We sailed that boat about as hard as it can be sailed," Kemp said later.

The next day we were supposed to join the rest of the boat show and sail along the Port Townsend waterfront, but the wind was up early, the Seattle-bound flood tide was starting and I got antsy to go. At 1:30 p.m. we left the Point Hudson Marina under sail and kept sailing for the next seven hours. We skirted the north end of Marrowstone Island and rocketed past Bush Point with the flood adding nearly 2 knots to our stern. The wind held all the way to the breakwater at Shilshole.

As we dropped the sails in the dark and got a tow line to Brian Bennett, another one of the Center's vast community of volunteers, I noticed we were moving with a certain economy of motion, sometimes without needing to speak.

With wits and wind alone we had covered more than 30 nautical miles and navigated the salty, tide-tossed basin that helps make this a place like few others. We did it in a boat made from trees, crafted by smart people who lived and worked on these shores. We continued a tradition in which the boat had become part of us and we had become part of the boat. It was a good weekend.

Eric Sorensen is the Seattle Times boating columnist. He lives in Kenmore.