They came in swarms from builders in the United States and Asia in the early s-the fiberglass boats called trawlers by builders and brokers who wanted to project an image of seaworthiness and strength. The truth is, most of them resembled trawlers only superficially. But boaters loved them then and still do today.
For many, they are the perfect boat. About the same time, however, a builder far from California, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore created a truly perfect trawler yacht, one that unquestionably sets standards for seaworthiness and strength. In a shipyard in Malahide, Ireland, a small seaport community that is a suburb of Dublin, a company called Southern Marine sent to sea a small fleet of trawler yachts called Malahides.
Ranging in size from 52 feet to 68 feet, they are strong, massive yet graceful, enduring, go-anywhere boats. Heavily built, with thick planking of Norwegian fir, teak, oak or iroko and laminated framing the size of bridge timbers, they have raised pilothouses, round bottoms and canoe sterns.
Their classic hulls are the same as fishermen use year-round in the North Sea and in the coastal waters of Scotland and Ireland. While American and Asian builders launched light, hard-chined, semi-displacement boats for inland and coastal cruising, Southern Marine produced trawlers fit for every ocean.
Southern Marine did not screw builders' plates into pilothouse bulkheads and did not number hulls before they splashed into the sea for delivery on their own bottoms to buyers in the United States and Europe.
Unfortunately for the world's ocean cruisers and the growing community of powerboat passagemakers, economic conditions that would doom Southern Marine and the Malahide line were gaining momentum even as the yard began work on the first of its trawlers.
Fuel prices were multiplying throughout the world, the result of politically contrived shortages in petroleum products; inflation was galloping through the United States and Europe; and fiberglass trawler-type yachts were becoming increasingly popular because they were cheap and sometimes cheaply built. They were inexpensive to operate, and buyers succumbed to the sales pitch that glass was easier to care for than wood.
The first Malahide was launched in , the last about Approximately 30 were built and, so far as anyone knows, all are still afloat in the world's prime boating waters. Some are battered and worn, while others are in good original condition.
At least one has been given a costly refurbishing. Despite the promise indicated by marketing at boat shows in the United States and Europe, the end came quickly. Ask Myles Stapleton, the naval architect who designed all the Malahides and who today builds homes in the Dublin area. We stopped building yachts and went exclusively to commercial work," he recalled in a telephone interview. The Alaskans were light and had a hard chine and that's okay, because that is what was wanted.
For Southern Marine, it was almost like Camelot-one brief, shining moment of challenge, excitement, accomplishment and pride. One of Ireland's oldest communities, Malahide always had boat builders at work on its shore. One was Southern Marine, which operated a general boatyard in Malahide, doing mostly repair.
Sometime in the s, two retired British businessmen who needed something to do began buying surplus Admiralty boats and converting them to recreational use. Southern Marine did the work.
It wasn't too long before the businessmen, Jack Fielding and Alfred Tyaransen, bought the yard. The supply of retired Admiralty boats began to dry up, Stapleton recalls. Those available were in poor condition, and it soon became apparent it would be cheaper to build new hulls. At a time when an economically unified Europe was only a dream, the Malahides represented perhaps the last and best work of leading wood boat builders in several nations. Because Southern Marine initially did not have the capacity or experience to build from scratch, it turned to other builders.
Six hulls were ordered from a fishboat builder in the small seaport town of Hemnesberget, Norway, which lies above the Arctic Circle. The finished hulls were towed to Malahide for installation of engines Gardner, Kelvin or Rolls Royce for European customers and usually Caterpillar for U.
Nearly all had single engines; a few had twins, and a couple had two engines on one shaft. Getting to Ireland must have been challenging. From Portugal, the route is north in the Atlantic Ocean and across the Bay of Biscay, a notoriously difficult place for ships.
The Norwegian-built hulls were 60 and 65 feet long. They were given a distinctive North Sea styling, with a towering pilothouse and reverseraked windscreen.
There is a mast and boom in the well deck and another aft. Design details varied slightly from boat to boat, according to buyers' whims, Stapleton said. Some had Portuguese bridges, while others did not. Some had wing decks outside the pilothouse doors, others did not. At least one had an aft pilothouse, with a lengthy trunk cabin forward.
That aluminum house is a real plus today, 30 years after launching. The flow of rain that rots boats usually comes in around windows, doors and deck fixtures and, unchecked, percolates down into beams and framing. That's less apt to happen with an aluminum house, so those North Sea-style Malahides probably represent the best bet on the market for those tempted to shop for an old Irish yacht.
As for size: The 65 named Ursa Major draws 9 feet, has a beam of almost 20 feet. Her garboard strakes are 2. Above the waterline her planks are 2. Frames are 6 by 6 inches; her beams and stringers are laminated 6 by 7 inches. On Ursa Major , the planks are of Norwegian fir, which is a type of pine. It is so dense and heavy that when she was hauled a few years ago for repair of damage from bumping a rock the shipyard crew needed a mechanical hoist to pick up one plank.
Those North Sea-style boats look a lot like the Romsdahl yachts built in the s. The big Krogen and Nordhavn yachts sold today share similar lines. Bill Garden, the famed Seattle- Victoria, B. When a yacht cruises the world's oceans, there are good reasons to have a pilothouse high above the deck and set well back from the bow.
Good design bows to function and doesn't fade away. The boats built in Portugal were something else. Their hulls look much like those built in Norway, with a big bow and a canoe stern, but the lines come from fishing boats used in the coastal waters of Ireland and Scotland.
The Portuguese boats are lighter, have a more traditional deckhouse design, are built entirely of wood and range from 60 to 66 feet.
The pilothouse is reached via a few steps, not the ladder used on the North Sea-style trawlers. They often are said to have a Mediterranean styling above the shear. Stapleton's design for the Portuguese-built Malahides, which were called Penguins, remains so fresh that the year-old boats look almost new today.
One of them is moored in Anacortes, Washington, following a two-year refitting, and marina visitors generally think it is a new boat.
Southern Marine eventually built all-wood Malahides from scratch in its own yard and in other Irish yards, but it had to import shipwrights from Portugal, Stapleton says. They followed the Mediterranean styling; the smallest was 52 feet, the largest was 68 feet. An owner in the Mediterranean has advertised a foot Malahide, but that must be a 68 with a dive or boarding platform added to the transom. Navalia, the Portuguese yard, built several boats from the Malahide plans and sold them with a Navalia builder's plate in the pilothouse.
After finding a footer at a marina in Bellingham, Washington, I concluded that they look much like the real thing but vary significantly in detail and may not be as well built. They are Malahide look-alikes, but they are not Malahides. Joyce Gauthier, a Seattle physician who had done some sailing on small boats, in bought a foot slip in a condominium marina on the city's Lake Union.
Someday, she dreamed, she would own a boat that would fit the space. Her tenant was the owner of Ursa Major , the foot Malahide that was the first boat delivered by Southern Marine when it was launched in She probably has the most interesting history of any Malahide.
Researching her past, Gauthier quickly learned a major player in Mafia drug running once had owned Ursa Major. Scores of bales of marijuana and other drugs would be lowered through hatches cut into the foredeck, and later, far out at sea, the narcotics would be loaded aboard fast motorboats for delivery along the East Coast.
The Malahide, looking like a placid mother duck in a pond, attracted little attention from law-enforcement officers initially. Ultimately, she was seized in the Bahamas but was returned to her gangster owners. It may seem incongruous, but the Mafia took good care of her. She was grounded once and burned out an engine. The dope runners had her repaired and repowered. Ursa is in good condition today because of that care, plus the TLC of subsequent legitimate owners and the added benefit of having an aluminum deckhouse.
It would be months before the yacht reached Gauthier's marina because of the owner's physical, financial and legal problems. After it was in the moorage, the same problems would make him an absentee owner.
The owner's absence and neglect distressed Gauthier and her sister, Cami Cass, and they began taking care of Ursa. After a while, Cass moved aboard to give the yacht the close and personal attention it needed. Finally, U. It was hauled away and chained to another dock. The two women had to fight for permission for Cass to go aboard for her personal things. They could have let it go. But they had come to love the old Irish boat. The only way to save Ursa Major and the indignity of a marshal's sale would be to buy her.
Gauthier approached a leading national bank in Seattle, looking for a loan that would rescue Ursa. The Wooden Trawler Yacht Jacket bank's reaction: A woman wants to borrow money for an old, ton wooden boat?
Don't be silly. Finally, she found some understanding women loan officers at Key Bank in Seattle. She got the money and brought Ursa home in the summer of Finding insurance was equally difficult.
I've seen them with gasoline powered outboards. Once your youngsters have this stable space wooden trawler yacht analysis fool around in we will additionally have the mark to send them if both we as well as your partner need to concentration your care upon crusing. SCOW Arthropod - A scow Arthropod was A Arthropod of Australia as well as Latest Zealand compartment a slim waterline swift Moths valid earlier inside of a wooden trawler yacht analysis 1980's.
Place is necessary .
|
Ncert 10th Class Maths Book In English Academy Boats And Streams Problems Ibps Guide Of |
