The Original Dream Boat -- a "Sea Witch"
"PRIDGER'S ARK"
BUILDING THE DREAM BOAT PAGE
Pipe Dream, or Reality?
by William R. Carr
The Original Dream Boat -- a "Sea Witch"
Ah! To build an Ark! The elevation of Possum Ridge is approximately 550 feet above sea level, some 200 feet above the Ohio river (about 12 miles distant as the crow flies), and about 50 feet above the nearest creek-bed. It seems an unlikely place to build an Ark. It is unlikely that even forty days and forty nights of rain would seriously threaten the crest of the ridge with flooding. But some people tend to be just a little impractical.
It has always been one of my dreams to build a boat. Not just any boat, but a very a special boat... Pictured above is the Huge Angleman and Charles Davis' "Sea Witch." That's always been my ideal in small cruising boats. It is a 35 foot ketch with more than a 13 foot beam. Big enough to live aboard and cruise the world in relative comfort, yet small enough for one man to handle and maintain. Since I'm pretty much of a do-it-myselfer, and since I'm short of money and long on dreams, I'm really starting this project from scratch. Will I really build this boat? Now that I've become a senior citizen, and it's almost time to "swallow the anchor" (retire from the sea [in the professional sense, since, in spite of my inland home, I am still a merchant mariner]) I've finally at least taken the first belated step (February 2000) to building the boat of my dreams. That first step? Felling three select White Oak trees.
How did I come by this dream? I guess you might say I inherited it from my Old Pappy. It seems incredibly ancient history now, but once he dreamed of building a boat and sailing off to the South Seas. He spotted the Sea Witch in the Rudder Treasury way back about 1953, and fell in love with its "shippy" appearance. This fired up the imagination of a eleven year-old, and when my dad gave up the dream, I inherited it.
Seamen, seeking to experience the best of all worlds, seem to have an affinity for retiring to an isolated country estate. I'm not the first seaman to return to the farm. The privacy and serenity afforded by one's own piece of ground deep in the country, and the nearness to nature to be found in the fields and woods, is to experience a nearness to heaven. I suppose that's why it is a natural goal for many an old seaman to retire to the country.
The privacy and sense of nature to be found on the farm, and the sense of a nearness to God, can only otherwise be approximated by life on a small boat at sea. Being at sea on a small boat is to experience an unlikely combination of humble pie in the cradle of the awesome scale and power of unbridled natural forces, mixed with an equally awesome sense of unbound freedom. The sailor on a small vessel at sea is at once magnificently insignificant and vulnerable and magnificently free. Only a few have had the privilege to experience the feeling. Once experienced, it is difficult to get it out of the blood. (See my former "yacht" home — Semangat). Thus it is that I yearn to fulfill a long-held dream during the autumn of my life, even after I have known the serenity of the country, and been happy with it, for many years. It is a goal without imperatives. If I am not able to sail the boat to the South Seas, or even get it to the river, to have built it shall be a great reward in and of itself — a fulfillment of the dream. And, if I don't get the project accomplished, at least it will have been a pleasant dream.
If I do ever get my boat finished, it will be difficult to leave this farm for an extended period. I don't plan to sell out to provide for a cruising life as others have done. No, the farm and a land-based "home" is far too important for that — at least in my book. I would not trade the farm for a boat unless the creeks were to rise fifty feet higher than they have since shortly after the last Ice Age. While boat and farm constitute mutually exclusive "ways of life," unless one perishes at sea, he must always eventually return to the land. The "Ridge" will continue to be my home base, even if I finish the boat and sail to the South Seas.
I hope that the farm will provide a lasting home and home-base for my children and grandchildren after I am gone. To sell the farm, in my view, would be to sell them short, and I plan to avoid it if at all possible. And if the dream boat founders at sea or upon some rocky shore somewhere (and I survive), the farm is a place — a real home — to come back to. As my old Pappy has always said, "It's nice to have a place to set your stuff down, without paying someone else for the privilege."
The First Step
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This is a pretty modest beginning. These White Oaks look to me like they could be turned into keel, deadwood, horn, and such other timbers that make up the backbone of a 35 foot ketch. The floors, frames (both steam bent and sawn), will be made from these trees also if my plans come to fruition. It's a tall order, but the project has begun. It will be a slow pro- cess, since logs of this size will take some time to cure out. Many timbers will be sawn green and allowed to cure as the construction progresses. |
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CONSERVATION Yes, I harvest the timber -- but only in small amounts -- very
selectively. The goal is that the woods, while providing |
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This is the butt of a 80 year old tree. It always breaks my heart just a little bit to cut such beautiful forest giants. But if I can produce something of equal beauty the carnage will perhaps be justified. |
The boat I propose to build will not be an exact Sea Witch replica. Since the plans are not available for sale, I'm designing my boat based on photos and small-scale published line drawings of the Sea Witch, and (having once owned and lived aboard a 35 foot ketch, Semangat) will make a few changes to suit my personal tastes. Besides getting the wood from the forest, the plans have to be drawn from scratch, so this is really an "almost" from scratch project.
After felling the first tree, I figured it was time to begins some serious plans drawings. Years ago I had spent considerable time designing my dream boat, but I decided to start from scratch on a new set of plans based on photos and study drawings of the Sea Witch. I've almost determined to name the prospective boat "Pridger's Ark" in honor of my web-page persona. That may or may not be the final name. For a view of the plans, as thus far completed, click here (Ark Plans).
This may look like going about things the hard way. But sometimes when money is in short supply, the hard way is the only way. For example, I needed a building to serve as a garage, barn, boat shop, sail loft, and lofting floor. I could have financed such a building for about $10,000.00. But it would have been just another warehouse-like metal building, and would have been out of character on Possum Ridge. Not only that, while perhaps a good investment, it would be $10,000.00 spent with nothing but a building to show for it. So I financed a WoodMizer sawmill instead, and got the building for nothing but my labor and the cost of nails and roofing. I got the building, and still have the sawmill. It's next big job is to provide lumber for the boat (and a dozen or so other projects in the offing which constantly threaten my boat building plans).
Unfortunately, the boat I intend to build may require an additional boat shed. This building doesn't have enough headroom. When I designed the building, my boat-building dream was on the back-burner, and in any case I thought my boat building would consist of something considerably short of my ultimate dream boat. Of course, the plans have not been finalized, and the boat I build may yet fit into the barn above.
A boat isn't substantially finished until she is launched. It isn't substantially begun until the keel is laid and the backbone is erected. Only when that is done can I assure myself that the boat is indeed under construction. Will this dream progress to reality? That remains to be seen. It has been but a dream for fifty years. Though I realized my dream in a limited way back in 1974-1977 when I owned the ketch "Semangat," the real dream is yet to be fulfilled. So far, all I've done is to cut a couple white oaks that I hope will become part of my dream boat.
My purpose, being perennially short of cash and long on woods, is to use local wood throughout the construction of the hull. White Oak will be used for backbone, ribs, and even planking and deck. Yellow poplar may be used for masts and spars (though I have never found an example or endorsement of this, though it has been used in large ship masts). The interior joinery will be of white and/or red oak and walnut. Fastenings, of course, will have to be purchased (unless I go another step back into boat building tradition and use trunnels or "treenail" fastenings). Most of the hardware will be fabricated of stainless steel in the farm welding and blacksmith shop. Whether I'll try my hand at casting bronze fittings remains to be seen. The outside ballast keel will be composed of about 5,300 pounds of lead which I plan to cast myself into one huge chunk.
Check this page periodically to see if I've made any progress, but don't expect to see much happen over-night. This is a long-term project, and I still have a lot of other irons in the fire -- most of them cold most of the time.
June 2006 update: Very little progress on the boat, though my store of lumber is increasing and curing. But I've launched a Sea Witch web site in hopes of locating some authentic plans for the Sea Witch.
(http://www.heritech.com/seawitch)
This page begun on 20 February, 2000. Last updated 24 June, 2006.
