Seminole has sailed over 2,000 miles since her launching in May 2005. She has sailed from St. John to Florida and will make the jump to the Abacos in February 2006. Keep watching this page for travel entries from Elizabeth & Michael.

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The following article was written by Elizabeth E. Meyer appeared in Boat International USA in May 2008.

Seminole

Once the idea sprang into my mind, I couldn't resist it. "Button her up boys, we're going under that waterfall!" After a stunned silence followed by muttering, the boys dutifully put away everything that could be water-blasted off the deck, donned their foulies and closed up the boat. As we approached the cascade, I admit I had a few qualms. What if there was current pushing water towards the cliff? I imagined being jammed against the rock, unable to escape. What if the falls had formed a rock pile? The fathometer showed 500 feet, but against the sheer rock wall, that could be a false assurance. Still, I couldn't resist.

As we closed with the fall, we were amazed at the force of the howling wind that whipped spray into our faces. In a moment, we were under the waterfall and the world was obliterated by tons of roaring, thundering, pounding, ice cold, glacier water. It was difficult to remain standing under the crushing force of the falls. We were blinded and deafened. We could not breathe or think. Then, suddenly, we were in the sun again, with water pouring out the scuppers. We gasped, shook our heads and screamed. "Let's do it again." And so we did, many times. We couldn't get enough of it. At last, we realized we had to find a place to anchor before dark and that's not an easy task in the fjords of British Columbia.

After inspecting and rejecting a number of anchorages, we at last made our way to the head of the inlet to anchor in twenty feet of water on an alluvial mudbank. As we sat in the cockpit sipping vodka, we decided we'd struck on a sure-bet business: Northwest Boatwash. We'd patent the concept and set up shop. To attract customers, we'd offer a 100% rebate for the first ten boats. It must be admitted: the business plan was a bit shaky. Waterfalls kick up a lot of salt spray. In fact, we'd ended our fun by having to do a full washdown and chamois.

It was July 6, 2007. We were in Toba Inlet, five days and a leisurely 190 miles north of Victoria, Vancouver Island. My three sailing companions were a salty lot:- William Collier and Antony Harrison of GL Watson and Co.; and Yves Tuset, avocat, of Paris, an avid sailor of the Classic Aile class and of Tornados in the wild Brittany Gulf of Morbihan. It was Yves who pointed out that, if we were to be believed, we must document our Nothwest Boatwash adventure. So the next morning we spent an hour or so, motoring through two more waterfalls, this time with Yves and William in the dinghy taking photos. Yves captured the shot that opens this article. [if you choose to use the photo.]

Seminole is a 1916, gaff yawl. Her lines were drawn by Walter McInnes and she was built by George Lawley and Sons in Neponset Massachusetts. She is 47 feet long on deck and 63 feet long from the end of the boomkin to the tip of the bowsprit. She is 13 feet wide and draws four feet ten inches with the center board up. She looks even more old- fashioned than her 90 years of age because McInnes drew her as a retro design in the first place. With her round-fronted, high-cambered cabin, white deck seams and painted and paneled house sides, she looks like the New England cruising cats and yawls of the 1880's and 90's.

Seminole came into my life because Jay and Anne Greer sent me photos of the boat and told me she needed to be rescued. I admit to receiving a fair number of this sort of letter and to ignoring almost all of them. But this time, I hesitated before throwing away their package. There was something arresting about Seminole. Instead of flying 3,000 miles to see her myself, I asked the great yacht designer, Doug Peterson, if he would drive up to Oceanside, California and look at her for me. His words: "She is incredibly original and cool."

And so I bought Seminole in 1996, sight unseen, for one dollar. I didn't see her in person until the spring of '97 when she arrived on a boat trailer in Newport, Rhode Island. As she rolled into the yard, I walked around her, staring. I was amazed by her wide beam, shallow draft and the extremely hard turn of her bilge. She looked like a skimming dish, and she had immense character! For a 47 foot boat, her cockpit was huge, but then so was her interior and she had more than six feet of head room in her cabin. Her transom was startling - seven feet wide and only 15 inches high. Perhaps most amazing, Seminole was all original and almost none of it had gone missing. Her hull, rudder, rig, deck fittings, interior joinery and hardware were complete. And she was absolutely beautiful! In short, the first time I laid eyes on her, I fell in love.

But I didn't have time for her in 1997. I was buried in running IYRS, Endeavour and Shamrock V. So Seminole had to sit until 2003, when I shipped her to Brooklin Boatyard in Maine and the restoration began.

Seminole has an unfailing supply of extraordinary luck. This applied when I started to hunt for her original drawings. Although the Hart Nautical Museum at M.I.T. has few plans by Lawley, director Kurt Hasselbalch found the original specification and plans for Seminole five minutes after I asked him if he had them. The only missing drawing was her lines plan, and, since we had the boat herself, this did not present a problem.

Her early ownership history was equally easy to research. Lloyd's Register of American Yachts showed that she was owned from 1916 - 20 by Julian H. Harris of Detroit, Michigan; from 1921 - 27 by Elisha H. Cooper of Essex and Lyme Connecticut; from 1928 - 34 by T. Dwight Partridge of Los Angeles, California; and from 1935 - 55 by Arthur Westmark also of Los Angeles. After that she disappears from Lloyd's and, so far, my enquiries and advertisements have not provided more information. Her most recent owners when I bought her, were a couple who lived aboard her in the city marina in Oceanside, California. They didn't keep up their slip rental payments and so she was seized and auctioned by the Park Police.

Seminole was built of Oregon pine over oak frames with an oak keel. Regrettably, she had iron fastenings, floor bolts, keel bolts and drifts. This meant she was "iron sick" throughout - that is, the rusting iron had started rot in every piece of timber in the boat. She needed a 100% restoration.

From my experience with wrecked classic yachts at IYRS, I knew what we had to do for Seminole. If you are restoring a boat, even if she is a wreck, you can't just take her lines off her, cut her up, throw her away and build a new boat. If you want your boat to be a restoration and not a replica, you must keep her whole throughout the process. That's the only way she'll remember who she is.

The process went like this: document and remove her joinery; document and remove her house and deck; loosen up her fastenings until she's flexible; push and pull her back into her original shape and sheer; secure her shape with outside molds; replace her frames inside the old planking using temporary fastenings; remove and set aside her lead; replace the stem, keel and horn timber; replace the planking with permanent fastenings; and reinstall the lead. At this point you have a restored hull and can go on with decking, deck structures, interior, systems and rig.

I admit to using some unoriginal materials in restoring Seminole. Her fastenings and centerboard are bronze instead of iron. Her planking is cedar and Douglas fir instead of Oregon pine. Her massive keel/floor frames/centerboard trunk (yes, it's all incorporated into one piece of timber) is angelique instead of oak.

I also admit to drawing a new interior layout. I hope the yachting world will forgive me for this when I explain that her original layout included a galley under the foredeck with less than four feet of headroom and settees/bunks that were 5'5" long. Her new interior has the same style paneling and moldings including the original hardware and detailing, but she now has a useable galley and navigation area, three double beds and a bathtub. The modern conveniences include 40 gallons of hot water, 160 gallons of cold water, a diesel-fired cabin heater, a water maker and a 75 horsepower engine. Her rig is exactly as original, a gaff yawl with wooden spars and no topmasts, her cabin sides are paneled and paintedand her deck still has white caulking seams.

Seminole was relaunched in May of 2005.The first day I sailed her, I felt relieved and then amazed at her performance. I had been afraid she would sail like a haystack. Instead, I found she sailed like a witch. She has 1,800 square feet of sail, low wetted surface and a huge amount of hull-form stability. The result is that she sails beautifully in light air, even in less than five knots of true wind. But she isn't a delicate sailor, either. She can carry full sail in 25 knots of apparent wind while her hull form keeps her amazingly upright. After crossing to the Bahamas with Mike and I, Steve White of Brooklin Boatyard exclaimed: "She just goes and goes and goes!" And she goes surprisingly fast. In 25 knots of true wind, she reaches along at ten knots! Yes, she's a gaff yawl and she doesn't go to windward like Endeavour (but then, nothing does). She can tack through a respectable 110 degrees and she can motor at 7 ½ knots if need be. Best of all, it only takes two to sail her anywhere you'd like to go.

Since August of 2005, my husband, Michael McCaffrey, and I have sailed Seminole more than 10,500 miles. Our journey has been: north from Maine to the Bay of Fundy in Canada; south to the Bahamas; north again to Maine; south again to the West Coast of Florida and the Everglades; to Fort Lauderdale; from Lauderdale to La Paz in Baja, Mexico (on Dockwise); up and down the Sea of Cortez; from La Paz, Mexico to Victoria, B.C., Canada (also on Dockwise); Victoria to Sitka, Alaska and back to Victoria; and from Victoria to Ensenada (on Yachtpath).

This winter we plan to sail down the Pacific Coast of Baja, into the Sea of Cortez and, in the spring, to Manzanillo, where we'll load her on Yachtpath for a return to the East Coast of the US.

So far, we've had an absolutely wonderful time with our 90-year-old gaff yawl. It seems likely that we'll keep adventuring on Seminole for many years to come. I will attest to this: They really knew what they were doing back in 1916. Seminole is, quite honestly, the most enjoyable boat I've ever owned.