In which Sid and Doris go to Mystic Seaport (CT), overdose on varnish and visit a Doris renaissance.
Reunited with Joe and Betka, the fearless foursome set out for Mystic and the WoodenBoat (sic) show. Mystic village has been a centre for boat building since the 1780s. The museum started to conserve wooden boats almost 100 years ago, when wooden boats were still the norm.
In the time available we cannot take in the whole seaport which is a recreation of a whaling and boat building town with old buildings and boats brought in to make the scene. Like going to Beamish (www.beamish.org.uk), but boatish.
Mystic museum seems not to have a place for non-wooden boats though iron, steel, aluminium, fibreglass and carbon fibre have been used to build boats. Maybe we just didn’t see them. Meanwhile, back at the wood….
The WoodenBoat show is a festival of fine nautical joinery and obsessive varnishing. Many of the visitors appear to have come from central casting’s premier list of seaborne eccentrics. Possibly that’s what prolonged exposure to tung oil and solvents does to you.
Our guide is Dave Snediker, a master of boat building and restoration, and not at all mad. Just committed to his craft. (Oh, Sid, really?)
Here Dave explains just how long this restoration is going to take. We will return to this theme.
The show’s talk list stretches from tool sharpening and planking to …. Coastal Dinghy Camping. But first we must walk the pontoons where Joe and Dave lend Sid and Doris their boaty stardom and we are all invited aboard. The big boats, not the dinghies.
We go aboard the 64’ Narwhal, pictured here by Susan Seaman. It is a 1937 design by Herreshoff built in 1999 as a gaff rigged schooner (Sid had to look this up).
It was built with carbon masts and booms, so is what in the car world we would call a RestoMod. In 2022 it was wrecked but at Mystic was looking perfect and very luxurious down below.
We were intrigued to see pineapples placed around and on boats, as seen on the launch Pepper. They are a New England sign of welcome and generosity. That would look right at home at a Henley regatta.
That evening Roberta and Dave invite us to visit the 1904 Mystic and Noank Library where they are trustees. This was the gift of sea captain Elihu Spicer, whose ships ran between New York (NY) and Galveston (TX). Elihu Spicer gave this library to the people. Large was his heart and his soul sincere. Despite assertions of American carnage a lot of sincere philanthropy continues. The library is about 70% privately funded.
The next morning we are Dave Snediker’s yard to see the work on Joe and Betka’s Doris, a 1905 Herreshoff being restored from a wreck found in New London. Sid and Doris last saw Doris in 2021. The restoration is in its tenth year. Doris may possibly be afloat in the summer of 2026 with only the job of putting in the wooden masts, setting up the standing rigging, fixing the wooden booms and applying running rigging and sails. Say it quickly and you could imagine Doris sailing in late summer 2026.
Here is the big picture. We are looking toward the stern from just before the mast, which will slot through the octagonal whole in the foreground. The dark areas are hatches that will have covers over them, some with hinged skylights for the areas below.
Behind the figure is the raised edge of the cockpit from where Doris is steered and commanded. The deck is old teak. There is white oak, cedar, purple heart, iroko, cypress, butternut, bronze castings, silicon bronze strapping, brass …..
The best way to understand Doris is to search on ‘Snediker, Doris, restoration update, spring 2025’ and let Dave talk you through what is being done. If you kneed any of the words explained please write to the very knowledgeable Doris Bonkers.
Here endeth the woody section of the Epic Journey. Next stop, mostly mild steel…