Dream weaver

Motorsailer Gerda Emilie, the stuff dreams are made of. Photo by Bob Muggleston

Fall 2023

By Bob Muggleston

One of the two other jobs I have besides editing this magazine is working for a marine canvas company. Short of pounding cotton into the seams of a wooden ship, or re-building that ship like they do at the nearby Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard, at the Mystic Seaport Museum, in Mystic, Conn., this job feels like it puts me as near to the maritime traditions of the past as is possible in the year 2023. Right now I’m reading “Two Years Before the Mast,” by Richard Henry Dana, and it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine myself being invited aboard the Alert and within 48 hours being able to assist the ship’s sailmaker, whose principle medium was canvas. I say this knowing full well that, despite a lifetime of sailing, I’d be called a “soger” – someone who’s more useless than the livestock aboard a sailing ship – if invited aboard that same vessel as an “able” seaman. Working with canvas is an incredibly unique skill set. Furling a main-topgallant-sail on a Cape Horn rounding aboard a brig with no gloves? That’s where I tap out. Those guys were, as the old saw goes, “men of steel.” Plus, it would take me at least a year just to memorize a ship’s sail plan.

But beyond the connection the job encourages me to feel with old-time mariners, I love the fact that to do it I have to walk the docks of various marinas every day. It’s a dream, really. Marinas haven’t changed a lot over the years. And why should they? There’s magic when you park a boat – any type of boat – within a dock system next to other boats. Power or sail, it doesn’t matter. Yes, the amenities you can expect at a slip have changed over the years, and so have the materials your boat was built from, but the experience of boat ownership hasn’t changed much. I bet the dockside complaints of the 1930s would sound awfully familiar today.

Marinas and yacht clubs are places that activate in us, regardless of our age, the part that likes to dream. And the same row of slips, if it’s in a big enough place, can contain any number of dreams: That boat is my daysailer, that’s the motor sailer I’d live aboard, that’s the fast passage-maker for my circumnavigation, and that’s the party platform I’d anchor off Fort Adams State Park for the Newport Folk Fest. I’ve noticed that it’s not enough for me to have one unrealistic sailboat fantasy. I have to have entire categories of them. Sometimes I wonder if it’s more fun than ownership itself.

What am I sailing now, you might ask? A 17-footer.

I’ve seen all kinds of crazy boats at marinas over the last 18 months, including a perfect replica of a tugboat that was 10 feet long. And I’ve been aboard some amazing ones, too; like the two superyachts we make stuff for. But the one that has had me dumbstruck since I first saw and worked aboard her, about a year ago, is the 43-foot Gerda Emilie, a motorsailer built in 1953 that’s in a large marina near our shop.

The boat . . . well, it’s dreamy. I never considered myself a fan of motorsailers, but this one is gorgeous from every angle, and something about her evokes the Gulf Stream, and rum-running, and gentlemen in bowties and blue suits sipping G & Ts with elegant ladies beneath – you guessed it – a canvas sunshade. If the rumors are true, the boat’s owner had the yard flip the 18-ton wooden vessel like you might a Blue Jay, and the hull fiberglassed. The hull is now as smooth as a baby’s bottom and looks like it’s been Awlgripped. That, combined with the acres of gleaming brightwork on Gerda Emilie’s topsides, must have cost the owner a small fortune.

The boat has been on jackstands for nearly a year now. I happen to know that it’s just one of several large boats belonging to the owner, who is an extremely busy man. It doesn’t seem like he’ll be using it anytime soon. He should probably think about just giving me the boat . . . if I’m being honest.

What would I do with such a vessel?

Beyond just staring at her, I don’t know, exactly.

But it sure is fun to think about.