Today we saw a large steel-hull square rigger lifted out of the water.
While photographing her I asked a man putting on boots if he knew much about the boat. He said that he was the Second Mate. The boat was built to do cargo and passenger work among the Hawaiian Islands. I replied that it was a pretty exotic ship for cargo work. He responded with a comment about a flawed business model.
The hull is interesting. She was built to be able to settle on the ground in shallow areas. Note the bilge keels with the propellers at the ends.
1 comment:
Aloha, Robert.
Bit of a late response here, but at the moment I'm sitting about 300 yards from where the Hawaiian Chieftain was built and launched, April 12 1988, at the mouth of Kahoma Stream in Lahaina on the island of Maui. Masterfully built by Drake Thomas of Lahaina Welding at the behest of one Laurence 'Baron' Dorcy, a trust fund millionaire with more dollars than (business) sense. Dorcy had a dream of sailing cargo through the South Seas, so he had the 'Chieftain' built and sailed her Tahiti to realize those ambitions. As the second mate stated, this plan had some flaws. So the Baron sailed her back from Tahiti to Sausalito, California, where she was bought around 1990 by Don McIntyre and his son Ian. Ian had been one of the Chieftain's original riggers in Honolulu, so he knew the boat and had experience sailing in Santa Cruz and Maui. They sailed the boat out of Sausalito for a few years as kind of a 'pirate' business, doing sunset sails and the like,then took her down to Long Beach in early 1993, in hopes of being part of a 'major motion picture' which, disappointingly, never materialized. I joined her there for 3 months, came back to Maui, and they took the boat back up to Sausaliton where they became 'legit', taking school kids out on educational sails during they day and doing sunset sails in the evenings. Later on, they would sail in tandem with the 'Lady Washington' down and up the coast of California, doing ed sails & sunsetters together, with the added thrill of cannon battles between the two ships (I was gunner on at least one of those tours: big fun!). Later on (after Lady Washington's role in 'Pirates of the Caribbean:The Curse of the Black Pearl'; I was aboard her for that...), the Lady's parent company bought the Chieftain, and the 2 boats became members of the same family. Unfortunately, the Chieftain's maintenance needs were beyond the financial capabilities of the new owner, and she was sold to a couple in Washington with little experience and big plans. I'm hoping they will miraculously secure the needed funding to fix her up and bring her home to Maui. I have some ideas about that, but so far, they haven’t responded to my queries. Congrats on your circumnavigation--it's a dream of mine! Drop me an email if you want to swap sailing stories .
Daniel
hisailor@yahoo.com
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