|
|
|
Seawitch
by Peter Bohr
A Seawitch Casts Its Spell
Print This Article
|
Email This Article
The boat’s name is Sea Forth, but Destiny might be more fitting. There’s no doubt in my mind that some irresistible power brought Dale and Laura La Voie and their 36 foot Seawitch ketch together.
Dale and I share a weakness for classic boats – the ones with all the old-fashioned stuff nobody in their right mind wants anymore. Bowsprits, dolphin strikers, gaff rigs, teak decks, bronze port lights, wine-glass transoms and the smell of varnish – these are the makings of real yachts.
Famed West Coast naval architect Hugh Angelman favored classic boats too. His designs look not so much like yachts as they do small clipper ships, or even pirate vessels. And so it is with the Seawitch, a broad-beamed, clipper-bowed, go-anywhere, salty ketch that Angelman designed just before World War II.
I vividly recall being allowed aboard a brand-new Seawitch back in 1960, when I was a Sabot-sailing kid in Newport Harbor, California. The boat belonged to a friend of my family.
In wide-eyed wonder, I gazed at the great cabin filled with gleaming teak and bronze. I tried out the huge berth in the forepeak – huge, at least, for a boy of 9. I imagined what it would be like to sit on the thronelike helmsman’s seat with my hands on the spoked teak wheel as I guided the ketch through bluewater swells.
The majestic Seawitch was the ideal subject for a sailboat-loving schoolboy’s dreams, and was a boat I would yearn for, for the rest of my life.
Dale La Voie felt his yearning for a Seawitch much later in life. As a boy, he had sailed on his uncle’s 60 foot schooner out of San Pedro, California, but he had never owned a boat of his own. As he approached that passage in life called 40 years of age, he figured it was about time.
La Voie lived in Dana Point, California, and in the evenings after work he found himself drawn to the marina to look at boats. His future vessel would be a classic and it would be built of wood. Beyond that, he didn’t know exactly what it would be.
He didn’t know, that is, until he saw a television movie called “Overboard,” starring Angie Dickinson, Cliff Robertson and a Seawitch. It was a fairly forgettable film, except for the Seawitch.
Even Dale’s wife, Laura – who, at the time, became seasick every time she went sailing – agreed the boat was exceptionally romantic. “I had visions of Tahiti, blue lagoons and palm trees,” she said. Thus it was decided they should have a Seawitch, and that’s when destiny took over.
Rendezvous with Destiny Number One: For five years, Dale and Laura trekked all up and down the Southern California coast, looking for their boat. “Every Seawitch we found either needed too much work or was priced beyond our reach,” Dale said. They even considered a Sea Spirit or a Kitty Wake, both Angelman designs and both scaled-down versions of the Seawitch. “But we had our hearts set on a Seawitch, like the one in the movie,” Laura said.
Every year, the La Voies managed to see a rerun of “Overboard,” and that would inspire them to keep searching. But after five years, Dale’s patience was flagging.
Then one day, about three years ago, their Seawitch sailed right into their own back yard. Friends in Dana Point Marina called with the news that a Seawitch had tied up at the overnight dock – and it had a “For Sale” sign fastened to the shrouds.
“The moment I saw her, I connected with the boat,” Laura said. And over a meal in a nearby restaurant, the La Voies “connected” with the owners as well. Al and Joan Cox had owned Sea Forth for 14 years. She had taken them around the world, and they weren’t about to sell her to just anybody.
But one thing didn’t connect: the price tag. “We were about $20,000 short,” Dale explained. The Coxes were on their way to Catalina for a week, and the two couples agreed to mull things over and meet again the following weekend.
Rendezvous with Destiny Number Two: As they were all walking out of the restaurant, the Coxes said, “By the way, did we mention our boat was used in a movie called ‘Overboard’?”
Rendezvous with Destiny Number Three: The following weekend, Dale and Laura went to the dock at the appointed hour, although the $20,000 was just as elusive as ever. Still, they hoped something would work out.
But as Sea Forth came into sight, their hears sank; the “For Sale” sign had disappeared from the shrouds. Then they saw why: Sea Forth had been hit amidships. A lengthy portion of the starboard taffrail was gone, and the cabin side was stove in.
Several days later, the Coxes received an insurance settlement – for $20,000. As it happens, Dale’s profession is carpentry. The obvious deal was struck: The La Voies bought Sea Forth “as is,” Dale made the repairs and the La Voies had their Seawitch.
Rendezvous with Destiny Number Four: my own little meeting with fate. As I lazed under Sea Forth’s cockpit awning, listening to Dale and Laura tell the tale of how they came to own Sea Forth, I eventually asked them about the boat’s original owners. “A brass plaque in the saloon states it was built in 1960 for George Donnelly,” Dale said.
George Donnelly was my family’s friend, and Sea Forth was of course the very same Seawitch I had been aboard as a boy 28 years earlier.
Some 30 Seawitches were produced over the years. The first few were built by the Wilmington Boat Works, where Angelman spent so many years. In 1951, one of these Wilbo Seawitches stunned West Coast sailors by winning the Transpac Race on corrected time.
No one could quite fathom how such a portly cruising boat could also be so quick. But with its considerable sail area, a Seawitch will move right along downwind, and the Transpac is, after all, a downwind race. Upwind, however, it’s another matter.
In any case, there followed a flurry of interest in the boat, culminating in two famed Far East boat yards building batches of Seawitches around 1960. Cheoy Lee built half a dozen, while American Marine – just a few years before the launching of the first Grand Banks trawlers – built 11, including the La Voies’ Sea Forth.
Doug Templin, a Seawitch owner from Newort Beach, said others were built in Japan, San Pedro and Costa Rica. Templin’s own boat was built in 1957 in Denmark. Angelman also sold several sets of plans to home builders, but was so disgruntled at the way they turned out he later refused to sell plans to amateurs.
“Nearly every Seawitch is slightly different, depending on who did the lofting and the building,” Templin said. Angelman himself also fiddled with the plans over the years. The earliest Seawitches were reluctant to come about in anything short of Santa Ana wind conditions, so he cut away the bow, reballasted the boat and eliminated that handling problem.
Although the Cheoy Lee Seawitches are renowned for their quality – they were outfitted with custom-forged stainless steel hardware, for example – the American Marine boats are perhaps best known simply because there are more of them.
The company built Seawitches for Newport Harbor Yacht Landing, a brokerage that sold them for $27,500. According to an ad in the November 1960 issue of Sea, that price included diesel power, Airfoam cushions, Dacron sails, an anchor winch, a dinghy and davits; oil and electric running lights, anchors, fire extinguishers, two heads and sleeping accommodations for eight.
As most people have come to expect from Oriental yards, and from American Marine in particular, the boats were built with an almost overwhelming amount of fine teak. The carvel-built hull is planked with 1 3/8 inch teak. The transom is double-planked teak over mahogany plywood. The rudder, pin rails, handrails, rail cap, hatches, skylight, deck house, cockpit planking, cabin sole and table are teak as well.
The deck is 1 3/8 by 1 ¾ inch vertical grain teak, swept with the sheer. The frames are sawn with two flitches of 1 ¾ - inch yacal; the eastern hardwood is also used for the stem, keel, sternpost, horn timber and deadwood. The spars are all hollow spruce, and the rigging is stainless steel. American Marine fastened the boats with silicon-bronze.
Altogether, it’s hard to imagine a more stoutly built boat – a boat capable of cruising the seven seas, as indeed many Seawitches, like Sea Forth, have done. Dale La Voie and Doug Templin both put replacement costs on their boats of $150,000 to $200,000 today if built of such materials.
And what’s it like to maintain all those acres of wood? La Voie and Templin also agree that at current yard prices of $48 an hour, any Seawitch owner had better enjoy laying down coats of varnish.
But with the use of modern marine coatings, keeping a Seawitch in Bristol condition is not the daunting task one might imagine. Both use Sterling products (Templin owns a company that distributes them), including a polyurethane paint for the hull. Templin claims to have painted his boat’s hull only twice in 12 years, and it still looks shiny enough to be mistaken for fiberglass.
The teak brightwork, of course, requires a bit more maintenance. La Voie gives it one thin coat of clear urethane coating every year, and strips it to bare wood every two years. Every so often he bleaches the teak decks then covers them with two coats of Watco teak oil. Despite the boats’ ages, neither Seawitch has ever needed refastening.
During the 1960s and ‘70s, Templin frequently found notes and business cards left on his boat from folks eager to own a Seawitch. But with today’s speed, flash and hose-it-down-and-walk-away mentality, the demand for comfortable old wooden cruising boats has slackened.
Even so, a Seawitch still turns heads in any anchorage, and prices have remained quite stable. While cruise-worn Seawitches have sold for as little as $45,000, a good one will command around $80,000.
Of course, Sea Forth is not for sale. Dale and Laura believe it’s their destiny to sail their Seawitch to those blue lagoons and South Pacific isles.
|
This article first appeared in the February 1989 issue of Sea Magazine. All or parts of the information contained in this article might be outdated. |
|
|
|
|
