Tag Archives: Classic Boats

“Rumpy” – Saving a Piece of Art

Rumpy in the glory years when these two artists owned her.

Art comes in all shapes and sizes, and over the years I’ve been involved in the making of a whole bunch of it. This week, I got to save a piece of art both Nancy and I once joyfully owned – so we’re passing the story along to all of you.

On Halloween of 1994, Nanc and I bought this boat, an iconic 1941 45-foot wooden tri-cabin power boat in Seattle and brought it over to the Olympic Peninsula. At 76,000lbs, it was a handfull! We wanted to get into Port Townsend, but the marina was full so we settled for a more remote yet very scenic small bay and community of Port Ludlow. Many of you remember those years when a marina slip number as our mailing address. As the years went by, we rebuilt and restored Rumpuckorori (or Rumpy as we called her) to a very beautiful craft – really, a functional piece of art. For us, it was home. We weathered storms at the dock when we thought the marina was going to break up, we cruised up the Inside Passage into British Columbia, and even lived in the boatyard when bottom work needed to be done. In effect, we created a liveable piece of wooden art!

When we bought the “Lodge” in Port Townsend in 2000, we couldn’t also own this huge boat, so we sold her to a retired guy who promised to keep her going. Well, we’re sorry to say he didn’t! After a few years of simply hiring out all the work, he gave up and the boat hasn’t moved in years. Paint began to peel, rot came a’creeping, fresh water got in the bilge and all manner of bad things began to happen. Old wooden boats need paint and varnish or they die pretty quickly. Friends told us to not go and look, but we did anyway and occasional visits left us shaking our heads in sorrow. I predicted that if nothing was done, Rumpy would die by 2010 or so.

Then, two months ago I received a call from the owner pleading for help. A month ago I met two very nice Canadians with some energy and skills looking for just this kind of boat. Last Sunday morning in fog and drizzle, I helped move Rumpy to dry storage in Port Townsend to begin reconstruction – and a new life.

I think there’s a longer story here. By doing this I feel like we helped continue all the energy and money, frustrations and good times of a great many people, from the past builders and former owners, to countless shipwrights that have ever worked on her during her 68 years – to us! It’s a connection I’m not willing to just let slide out of my life for good, and in a few years, I’ll let you all know how it all worked out with Rumpy’s next chapter. Shipwrights (who are true artists of wood and metal) have already come forward with offers to help.

It doesn’t seem to matter to me that I won’t own her and won’t get to motor out to a little cove for the evening, but it does matter that I know the boat is still alive, still a piece of functional art and still making someone happy. Life doesn’t get any better, does it?

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry
Last Sunday morning: Rumpy on the way to a new life. Thanks, Joe, who followed the boat in case it sank enroute.

If you’d like to see some of the paintings or Giclee prints of Sea Witch, our current boat we’re restored,click here.

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Kingfishers

This story is in 48-North this month, the best sailing magazine in the Northwest. I thought everyone might enjoy it. I tend to write and illustrate short stories much like my mom did – must be some genetic-thing repeating itself after 50 years. Once you’ve read the story, click the link below to find out a bit more about this interesting woman. (We’re still working on the content,) Virginia’s site.

An Ancient and Respected Art
Story and illustrations by Larry Eifert

Varnish Day! Sounds like something important, like Election Day, but that’s just the day I’d picked for an afternoon bout of keepin’ the ol’ boat goin’. Old wooden boats are not unlike a good partner in life; they need attention occasionally. I kept a careful log last year and it worked out that the dreaded m-word (maintenance) was in play about 12% of the total time I spent aboard Sea Witch. Not that I mind it in the least, because it’s always a pure joy to make something of quality shiny again.

So, there I was. The block sander had made its rounds; the vacuum had cleaned up the mess, followed by the tack rag. I was ready to uncork the can of varnish that, since the Bush Years, had become a little tin of liquid gold when overhead I heard that unmistakable chattering sound. “Yack, yack, yack, yack” – my lady-friend the slate-blue kingfisher. This noisy little bird had spent the winter here in the marina, dodging rigging during her flights up and down the fairways, fishing along with those flashy hooded mergansers that also spent time here fishing. I’d grown accustomed to her, a little flash of gray, white and chestnut that often landed on the upper spreaders of Sea Witch to eat her fishy meal. Yah, there was occasionally a bit of a mess on the desk, but to me this bird represented ‘the quality of life” and fish parts were a small penalty. The varnishing could wait a few minutes. Watching a kingfisher at close range was better.

I sat back and studied her. I knew this one was a female. In most bird species, the male is the most colorful – fitting clothes for the obviously less intelligent of the genders, but kingfishers are reversed. Both have complex grayish-blue and white patterns, but the female has a reddish-chestnut band across the stomach.

Belted Kingfishers are around the waters of western Washington and coastal B.C. year-round. During breeding season in spring they can get very vocal and spend their time defending local fishing territories against others of their kind. About a foot long, they have evolved a very specialized set of tools suited for their lifestyle. Their method of making a living is simple. They sit on a perch overhanging water, like a tree branch, piling or boat rigging, and when their fantastic eyesight spots a tiny three-inch fish below the water’s surface – they go for it like a rocket. A terrific plunge at lightning speed either spears the quarry or the bird manages to grab the fish in its bill. Another variation is to stop in passing flight, hover for a moment and then take the high dive. Once the fish is captured, the fisher-king finds a perch where it beats the heck out of the fish until it’s subdued, followed by rearranging it so it can be swallowed whole – gills, scales and fins pointing aft. When fish aren’t available, frogs and aquatic insects are second choice on the menu, but it’s the fish that give this skillful bird its name (afterall, they’re not the frogfisher or insectfisher).

In the 1936 book, Birds of America, George Gladden wrote: “This is one of the pronounced and picturesque personalities of the feathered world – a handsome, sturdy and self-reliant bird who makes his living by the persistent, skillful and largely harmless practice of an ancient and respected art. [Fishing!] What wonderful eyesight he must have. From a fluttering halt in his flight ten or fifteen feet above the surface of the water he makes his plunge, like a blue meteor, or not infrequently from a perch fifty feet or more from the water, striking it with an impact that, one would think, would completely knock the wind out of him. It is as graceful and daring a ‘high dive’ as is to be seen anywhere”.

The bill: an amazingly long and oversized appendage with a slight crook in the upper mandible, evolved so added pressure can be applied like a meat sheers or pliers. The overly-large head (like a doll) fits the bill but seemingly not the rest of the body. Feet: so small they look ludicrous. Evidently kingfishers can barely walk – but then they don’t really need to. Perching is what they’re all about, so they only need feet to grab the branch. After fifty years of watching kingfishers, I don’t ever remember seeing one walk, but they do walk. Kingfishers nest in holes in waterside banks, like so many eroded shoreline cliffs we have around the Northwest. They dig an upwards sloping tunnel sometimes eight feet deep into these sandy banks and then widen the far end for the nesting chamber. You can tell kingfisher nest holes by the “W” shaped entry. As they land, both feet scrape a slight trench on the bottom of the landing strip, and then they walk up the tunnel in total darkness to the nest. Inside, five to seven nestlings wait expectantly for their parent’s return – and a regurgitated meal. After three weeks, the fledglings work their way to the tunnel entrance and their first flight – sometimes from a hole 30 feet up on a cliff. Remember, in the confining tunnel there’s no fluttering around learning to fly for a kingfisher, and also remember, they’ve been in that black hole for weeks and not watching their parents avian skills. They simply jump and hopefully ancient instincts help them get it right during the first second.

How beloved are these birds? Well, Canada has paper money with former Prime Ministers, the Queen, and – a five dollar bill with a kingfisher. It’s even kingfisher-blue. And the varnishing? It appeared the day was over!

You can go to our index page of more published stories.

Link here to the same story on our website, larryeifert.com.

If you’d like to see why I write about our ol’ boat, here’s more about Sea Witch.

Or, send us an email to opt in or out of our email family – or just ‘talk’ with us.
Thanks for reading. Our mailing list is increasing, so if you know of anyone else who might like this, send us their address.
Larry

The Yellow Rowboat

The Yellow Rowboat
This boat, tied at the dock at the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle’s Lake Union, is one of my favorites. What’s not to like. It’s all varnished, top to bottom, skeg to oars. The only paint is on the tips of the two oars that have been painted blue just where they’d touch water on each stroke. Very classy!

We have eight-color Giclee prints either unframed or framed, between $39.95 and $239.95 available of this painting and the original painting is available for $700 unframed. Email us.

Link here to the Yellow Rowboat print on our website

Or, you can go to our Giclee Print Index here

Or, send us an email to opt in or out of our email family – or just ‘talk’ with us.

Able

A good friend owns this fine wooden boat. Built in Port Townsend, it has been a fixture here in town for many years. I’ve always admired all the seemingly tangled mass of bowsprit weaving – something that our boat, Sea Witch, has none of. The hooded mergansers come into the marina in winter, fishing at the stormwater outfalls for small fish attracted there by nutrients.

This is an acrylic on paper, and prints are now available.

Christie – the Mystery Boat

I worked up this Whitehall skiff from materials I had from the September 2000 Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend. Why I haven’t painted it before is a mystery, because she’s quite a boat. These are the old docks in Port Townsend’s Point Hudson marina, now trashed and gone thanks to a Port Commission that had little sense of history and the beauty of ‘old’.

I have no idea who owns this boat, or even if she’s still floating. If anyone knows about her, please let me know.

Acrylic on board. 14″ x 20″, framed to 25″ x 31″ under glass. Prints are now available of this image at Christie’s prints. The original painting is also currently available. If you’re interested in it, drop us an email with “Christie” in the subject line.

Junaluska

“Junaluska” – launch and shoreboat for the 1929 fan-tailed classic “Olympus.” When launched, Olympus was originally named Junaluska. This boat now charters out of Seattle for trips in Puget Sounds and places north.

Notice the varnish reflection on the combing and below it on the deck. I love these double reflections, and I think the painting was created solely because of this area.

Prints of the painting are now available. Email us for more information.

Red Rowboats

Port Townsend is full of these types of small wooden boats – probably more so than any West Coast town I know of. I especially liked the wine-glass stern of this one, so I painted it twice – in the same painting. It was tied on a concrete dock, but I turned it into a classic old wooden dock to match the classic old boat. Acrylic on paper.
We now have giclee prints of this painting. Check them out here.
As of May, 2008, this painting is still available. Email us if you’d like more information.

Sea Witch Sailing on Tyler Street

That’s right.
If Tyler Street continued downhill into the water, that is.
That’s our own Sea Witch, the 1939 Monk-designed sloop you see so much of in many of my paintings.

Oh, and the best coffee in town is just a block up from the beach here, at, of course, Tyler Street Coffee.
Prints are available of this painting. As of May 2008, this painting is still available for purchase. Email us if you’d like more information. (sorry, it’s sold)