Nolwandle

In the end, for several reasons, I reluctantly passed this up. Ulti-
mately, I chose a Cascade 42 sloop, designed by Robert A. Smith and
built within thirty miles of my home. This was also one of the first
possibilities I had looked into, so now I had come a full circle, arriv-
ing back home.
About 250 Cascades, in the 29-foot, 36-foot, and 42-foot lengths,
had been molded and sold by this time. They were well-built, by
hand, of stout construction that used no mat in the lay-up. They were
sailing in all parts of the world. Jerry Cartwright had sailed a 29-
footer in the Singlehanded Trans-Pacific Race sponsored by the
Slocum Society; a number of them had been entered in the Victoria-
Maui and the Los Angeles-Honolulu races with fair showings. Still
others had been proved on long ocean voyages, including several that
had sailed around the world.
The Cascades were the second generation of yacht designs pro-
duced by a partnership of three local yachtsmen. Back in the 1950s,
five yacht club members had pooled their resources and commissioned
Robert A. Smith to design for them a 34-foot fiberglass auxiliary.
They then incorporated, built a temporary shop and a mold, and
pitched in to turn out five hulls. After all five hulls were completed,
they drew lots to see who got which ones. It was a successful venture,
and all five Chinooks are still sailing.
After the project was completed, it seemed a shame to dispose of
the facilities, so three of the five went together and formed a com-
pany to produce more hulls for sale. Several hundred Chinooks were
sold before the design was replaced by the more modern Cascade
line. Of the three original incorporators, one of them worked full-
time and ran the shop. The other two kept their regular jobs and

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worked part-time. I will call them Tom, Dick, and Harry. Tom ran
the shop, Dick taught at a nearby university, and Harry was an execu-
tive in a manufacturing plant building heavy equipment. All of them
were easy-going, cooperative, and took a personal interest in their
customers. But of the three, Harry was hands down the workhorse,
and over the years, since their shares depended upon how much they
put into the firm individually, Harry wound up with a controlling
interest and became president.
After the customary deliberation, consultation, and cross-examina-
tion of the partners on commitments and prices, I put down an
initial $100 for a set of plans for the 42-foot model. At that time I
was still undecided between the 42 and the 36, a more popular selling
model. I was scheduled to take a long trip to Alaska, the Aleutians
and Bering Sea, and down to the Hawaiian Islands, so I took the
plans along with the idea of reviewing the whole thing en route and
making a decision when I returned.
The decision was that the 42 was the minimum size I could get by
with, and so I made a $500 deposit and got on the list for the first
available hull, which I anticipated would be ready sometime in
January the coming year. The full price for the hull alone, with chain
plates molded in, shaft log and deck stringers, was $4,950. For a
nominal amount I could also order the floors, keelson, main bulk-
heads, deck beams, molded freshwater tank, and molded shower and
toilet room installed. Altogether, I estimated very carefully, the hull
could be completed ready for engine and equipment, for about
$12,000, a figure which I could easily afford.
It was at that point, after I was committed too far to back out, that
the trap was sprung a story as old as unrequited love itself.
Not even such experienced and level-headed voyagers as Eric
Hiscock and Miles Smeeton have escaped the ecstasy, frustration,
depression, elation, disillusionment, and financial difficulties involved
in acquiring the ultimate retirement boat. In Miles and Beryl Smee-
ton’s case, it was a matter of a robust adventurous couple, retired
from the wars on a stump farm in Canada with all their money tied
up in England during the sterling freeze. They had previously owned
a small outboard boat in which they commuted from Salt Spring
Island to the mainland, and had gotten to know some of the yachties
in the area. Thus they conceived the plan of going to England, using
their impounded funds for buying a yacht, sailing it back to British
Columbia and selling it for a profit. How they did this, and their
subsequent acquisition of Tzu Hang and their misadventures learning

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to sail her, were finally related in Smeeton’s last book, The Sea Was
Our Village, a tale that will startle Smeeton fans who perhaps had
the impression that this famous couple had been born to the breezes
like Slocum. The Smeetons, incidentally, were the prototypes of
Nevil Shute’s couple in Trustee From the Tool Room, who tried to
smuggle their savings out in the form of diamonds imbedded in the
cement ballast.
In the case of the Hiscocks, perhaps history’s most famous voyag-
ing couple, who had behind them decades of experience in world
cruising and had written several books that became standard texts, it
would seem that when they ordered built Wanderer IV, their retire-
ment boat, everything would progress smoothly. Not so. The aches
and pains, disappointments, builder deceits and poor workmanship,
misfit equipment, cruddy accessories, overcharges and broken prom-
ises so paralleled my own experiences, that comparing notes later I
could shake my head ruefully and laugh with tears streaming down
my cheeks. And it really ain’t that funny.
Readers who like to suffer vicariously can follow the Hiscocks’
thorny wake to Holland during the building of Wanderer IV, from
there to England for refitting, and then on to America and New
Zealand, in their last and one of their most charming books, Sou’-
West in Wanderer IV.
Their experiences, and mine, proved to me once more that the
only way to beat the system is to be your own builder, or to do it at
the taxpayers’ expense, or to write it off as a business venture.
Looking back over years of research, I find very few besides Slocum,
Pidgeon, Trobridge, and Colvin who have done it. One of the few
also would be William A. Robinson, who owned a shipyard when
World War II broke out. With the help of the legendary Starling
Burgess and L. Francis Herreshoff, he worked out the design of
Varua, possibly the most beautiful and efficient yacht ever built, and
put it together in a back corner of his yard with professional artisans
as expansion began for defense work, presumably charging it off to
research and engineering. When the war ended, he was ready to drop
the tools, close the yard, and retire to Tahiti with his well-earned
millions.
It has been only recently that I have reread Jack London’s Cruise
of the Snark, and his experiences with boatbuilding sharpies. I had
forgotten how similar our lives were, although we lived in different
periods. London earned his living, after a harsh boyhood struggle, by
writing; so did I. He had done much of his early sailing in Alaskan

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and Bering Sea waters; so had I. Our marital histories were similar, as
were our basic personalities. In later years he made the decision to
build his dream ship, before it was too late; so did I. This method of
financing it, like mine, was by spending most of the time one would
normally devote to home-building, in writing to raise extra money to
pay professionals to do the hard part. Like London, I also worked on
the boat doing less exacting jobs in my “spare” time, and undertook
to do all the finishing myself.
London had estimated his probable cost at $7,000 in 1906; the
Snark cost more than $30,000 and was uncompleted inside when they
departed San Francisco for the South Pacific. I had estimated $12,000
in 1972; the project ultimately came closer to $50,000 with still plenty
of work to do inside. Of the difference, I would estimate that $10,000
was labor padding and inflated charges on equipment. The rest was
the result of my own inexperience, misjudgment, and inability to
estimate costs realistically. Afterwards, I knew that it would have
been cheaper to have purchased a stock boat from a production
builder. Or I could have saved half the cost by shopping carefully for
a used vessel at one of the many yachting centers in Florida, Cali-
fornia, the Eastern Seaboard, Panama, or Hawaii.
But I didn’t.
Walter Magnes Teller, Slocum’s principal biographer, claimed
London built Snark at a cost of $30,000 by “cheating contractors,” a
statement which does Teller no credit. There is not the slightest
evidence that London cheated his builders. Indeed, he himself was
the victim of perfidious contractors and associates. London later
explained the excessive costs. He had contracted to write 30,000
words about the proposed voyage for a magazine at the going rate. As
soon as the contract was signed, the magazine began promoting the
forthcoming series widely. The publicity created the public impres-
sion that the magazine was underwriting the venture, prompting all
his contractors and suppliers to inflate their charges as much as 300
percent. Actually, London himself financed the project out of his
writings, a commitment that forced him to turn out a thousand
words a day, every day before, during, and after the voyage, even at
sea during gales and emergency situations and when decked with
blackwater fever in New Guinea.
London laid the keel for Snark on the morning of the San Fran-
cisco Earthquake. The genesis of Wild Rose was not quite so earth-
shaking. As I learned later, another customer had backed out of his
deal for a Cascade 42, sloop, leaving the firm with the hull still in the

~ 425 ~

mold. I had originally wanted a ketch, but was talked out of it in
favor of a sloop. The reason was obvious later. The chain plates have
to be molded into the hull, and differ between the ketch and sloop
configuration. This was the first in a number of subsequent “com-
promises” that came about primarily for the convenience of the
builders, rather than through the judgment of the owner. Thus, I was
informed to my surprise in October, that “my” hull was already out of
the mold and on the floor, three months ahead of schedule. This
moved up my financial plans to my inconvenience.
But a payment of $3,500 around Christmas brought me up to date
with progress on the hull. I was in good shape and determined to
keep it that way. It was a pleasure doing business with the firm. The
partners and crew were easy to get along with, personally interested
in my boat. My funds had nearly run out, so I asked for a monthly
accounting as long as the boat was in the shop, and ordered no work
done unless I specifically ordered it. It was not, however, until the
following March that I received the next statement, a “partial” one
for $12,000. This was when the bubble burst with a sickening splat-
ter. The established catalog prices for standard parts and equipment
installed had given way to custom labor charges which impressed me
as being miscalculated or padded. For example, there was one labor
charge of $5,000 to which I could relate only the construction of two
bunks in the main cabin.
I thought of all the things I could buy with five grand, besides two
wooden slat bunks with less than $25 worth of materials, which I
could have built myself in less than a week’s time.
From then on, I followed the example of another customer, who
refused to pay for any work done when he was not there personally to
supervise it. He camped on the job, sleeping in his trailer, while
working on the boat himself. I decided to do the same thing, but was
told the crew objected to owners working on their boats. I questioned
the crew individually and they denied it. I then threatened to remove
the boat from the shop, and suddenly the objection was removed. It
was the slack period, and mine was the only hull on the floor.
More personal supervision revealed an old and established tradition
in custom shops where craftsmen are paid by the hour, with the
customer charged double the worker’s rate to take care of the
overhead and profit. Workers kept record of their time in a ruled
notebook in the shop. Checking entries against my own daily journal,
I found that everyone apparently put down from 30 to 50 percent

~ 426 ~

more time than actually worked against my hull. This accounted for
the high labor costs.
Obviously, the sooner I got my boat out of the shop, the more I
would save. I tried to hurry things along, but the work went agoniz-
ingly slow, interrupted by other jobs that came in, and delayed by
growing material and parts shortages. Instead of a March launching,
it now began to look like late May.
Meanwhile, I felt that one reason for the delay was that my hull
was being used as a floor demonstrator to sell other prospects. For
weeks my boat was subjected to a daily procession of dreamers,
curiosity-seekers, cigar-chomping executives, dentists and doctors,
bearded hippies, and erstwhile yachties, crawling over, under, and
into every compartment, getting in the way, impeding the work of
the crew, distracting me with silly or personal questions and insipid
remarks. Even more frustrating was the knowledge that the expense
of all this was subsidized by me. I felt like a drowning man, gasping
his last and reaching out for rescue, which could come only when I
finally got the boat out of the shop and away from the vultures.
There were some advantages to the arrangement: The shop had a
ready stock of screws, bolts, small parts, and tools, only a few steps
away. Moreover, the management and crew were unfailingly ready to
show me an easier way of doing a job, based on long experience. I was
not charged shop rent, and the plant was open nights and weekends.
Not the least advantage was the availability of equipment and gear at
reduced prices, sometimes even at wholesale prices, and of quality
British equipment imported in large quantities at competitive prices.
At other times, I had to battle for my own choice in the matter
of some items of equipment that I felt were better suited to my
needs. Sometimes the shop went ahead and installed things their
way, presenting me with a fait accompli, which I would have to tear
out at my own expense. I have some definite and unswerving opin-
ions on many things, and among these is that I will not permit
copper tubing for propane and engine fuel systems on any ship of
mine. These were installed over my protestations, and I promptly
ripped them out and reinstalled flexible high pressure hoses at extra
expense.
Their idea of a 12-volt electrical system was truly pre-World War I.
I redesigned and installed all the wiring myself. No provision was
made for removing the engine shaft in case of a break. I had a battle
over this one, and there was another flap over my insistence on

~ 427 ~

installation of a flexible shaft coupling. I had requested a three-
bladed prop to use the first year, when I would be motoring until the
mast and sails were installed. Instead they installed a two-bladed one
they had in stock. Later I went to the expense of buying the proper
propeller and hiring a diver to change the blades. Another contro-
versy arose over my insistence on an automatic bilge pump before
launching. I was told I only needed a vacuum cleaner for the bilges.
Although I ordered bronze through-hull seacocks on all hull penetra-
tions, brass gate valves were installed in about half of them.
And so it went, week after week, month after month.
Much of the frustration was due to the current shortages, high
cost, and poor quality of much marine equipment and parts. Often I
would wait weeks for delivery of an order, only to find some of the
vital parts missing, requiring more delays and correspondence. Pride
and dependability seem to have been two qualities abandoned by
manufacturers these days. Much marine equipment is of poor design,
even worse quality, and incredibly over-priced. For example, a $600
marine head arrived without a single piece of instruction for install-
ing its complex mechanism, and without a necessary high-amp sole-
noid switch. The navigation sidelights, designed for recessing into the
side of the trunk cabin, did not have enough overlapping lip to cover
the hole necessary for recessing them. The horn turned out to be
made of pot metal, which fell apart during the installation. The
plexiglass windows were covered with a protective paper with a glue
so tenacious that the paper could not be removed without scratching
the plexiglass. I tried every solvent known to science without success.
The glue remains on the windows to this day.
The fuel and water pumps, without exception, burned out im-
pellers during initial tests. I paid $80 for a stainless steel sink that I
later saw advertised for $30 in a Montgomery Ward catalogue. Many
of the standard items of rigging called for had been discontinued by
original manufacturers, and substitutes could not be found. Other
standard parts, such as bronze turnbuckles, were inflated beyond
reason. The ten required turnbuckles for the standing rigging were
priced at $40 apiece, plus the toggles at $12 each. Quite a markup for
an item that costs no more than $2 to manufacture. It was impossible
to find the proper size sheaves for the running gear. Not manufac-
tured any longer. The expensive gimballed propane stove was engi-
neered with the hose attachment at the rear, which is impossible to
inspect for gas leaks once installed. Marine type cabin light fixtures
were costly beyond belief, but I solved this by shopping in trailer

~ 428 ~

parts stores where similar fixtures can be obtained for a fraction of
the marine prices. The expensive marine diesel engine came without
the proper filter and hoses, and with a parts and operating manual
I’m sure was put together by a not too bright grade school pupil, with
most of the instructions applicable only to other models, not the one
I bought.
Like Hiscock, I found that nothing ever fit the first time, nothing
ever worked the first time, and nothing ordered ever arrived complete
or on time.
On launching day, I again checked to see if the bilge pump was
working, and also rigged up an anchor and line in case of engine
failure, much to the amusement of the management and crew. The
crane lowered Wild Rose gently to the water. As the rain poured
down in a late spring deluge, I toasted the occasion with a few friends
and a couple of bottles of champagne. Then, light-headed and gay, I
started the engine and maneuvered out into the channel. The engine
quit cold. Air in the fuel lines. We tied up again and bled the lines.
The second departure got us a little farther into the channel. The
engine quit again. Air in the lines. Fortunately, I had the anchor
ready, which saved us from drifting aground. We bled the lines once
more, started up, and headed out again. After a few preliminary
maneuvers to check the steering, I put into the dock to let off some
guests. At the dock the shaft pulled out of the engine coupling.
Someone had forgotten the set screws and safety wiring. The shaft
slipped back until the prop rested against the skeg. Water gushed
into the engine compartment.
That’s when my foresight in demanding an automatic bilge pump
saved us from sinking.
Getting a tow back to the crane, we hauled Wild Rose out and
reinstalled the shaft. Then we had a second launching, this time
without champagne.
A half hour later, we ran aground on a mud bank on the way to
the marina. I was able to back off. At the marina, we no sooner
docked than the engine quit again. Air in the fuel lines.
For the next three months, I fought that “Red Devil” in the
engine room, bleeding lines repeatedly and reinstalling fuel filters,
lines, and fittings. Nothing worked. The engine would run for about
an hour, then quit. I changed filters. This did not help. I appealed to
the factory and received an asinine form letter that was of no help
whatever. Obviously, I was going to have to fight for my warranty
rights.

~ 429 ~

At last, after a frustrating summer during which an my spare time
was spent trying to get the engine and fuel system working, I acci-
dentally discovered the source of the problem: The machine screws
holding down the top of the fuel pump had never been tightened at
the factory. The engine had gone through final assembly and testing
this way, with a heavy coat of paint hiding the defect.
Lost were three months of my time, a couple of hundred dollars in
spare parts and hired help, and all the good weather for the year.
Meanwhile, dozens of other defects showed up: The pressure
water pump was defective and had to be replaced; the main line came
off the combination hot water heater and engine cooling system and
flooded the engine room; the rudder tube leaked and filled the rear
cabin bilge; the hinges came off the six hatch covers; the propane
storage proved inadequate and inaccessible and I had to redesign and
reinstall new tanks on deck; the main engine shaft developed a
warble at certain speeds; the bow pulpit, which was to have been
installed at the shop, wasn’t, and it didn’t fit; the custom-made
drawers did not fit if closed, they could not be opened, and if opened
could not be closed; my five thousand dollar bunks proved not very
practical; the fiberglass water tank had not been steamed and I was
stuck with a resin-tasting water supply; the engine instruments
worked only sporadically; the genoa track kit was minus some parts
which could not be replaced….
One of the few bright spots in this endless tale of frustration was
the discovery of the mobile home and trailer parts industry. Unlike
marine suppliers, this industry is a healthy one, which carries a wide
variety of parts and equipment that can be substituted easily for
standard marine items, at a fraction of the cost. I made a few for-
tuitous purchases. I found an anchor capstan in a war surplus catalogue
for $190 that works just as well as a $900 marine model of the same
capacity.
The last blow was yet to fall, however. When the final bill arrived,
it came to more than $21,000 in addition to the $18,000 I had already
paid, plus another $4,000 I had spent outside the shop in parts and
equipment. Because the builders were essentially honest people and
reasonable of heart, and because I was able to find a number of errors
in their chaotic bookkeeping system, we eventually negotiated a
settlement acceptable to both sides.
But the experience was a traumatic one, with little comfort in the
knowledge that it happens to most dream ship addicts sooner or later,

~ 430 ~

and that not even such cautious and experienced hands as Eric Hiscock
have been able to avoid it.
Once your decision is made and you are hooked, and it’s too late to
turn back, you have no choice but to sail on and make the best of the
bad weather. Sooner or later, you learn to be philosophical about the
whole thing, and even to take fierce pride in the result, as did
Slocum, Pidgeon, O’Brien, and even Gerbault, none of whom could
boast of having a finer vessel than Wild Rose.
We have come to know that she is a basically good ship, and her
performance has been all we had expected. Out of all the misery has
come a more intimate knowledge of her advantages and disadvan-
tages, which is indispensable in any ocean-going yacht.
As with any expensive mistress, you either have to live with her or
kick her out. We plan to live with her for some time to come.

~ 431 ~

- end - The Anatomy of a Dream Boat (chapter 43)