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October 28, 2002Recreating a U.S. Coast Guard surfboatTwo men spend a year and a half, use original materials to construct replicaBy TOM CARRRecord-Eagle staff writer SUTTONS BAY - David Dean and Bruce Lehmann have recreated a durable, 25½-foot surfboat that saved lives all over the country in the early- to mid-20th Century. Dean, of Suttons Bay, and Lehmann, of Cedar, built the replica of a 1900 U.S. Coast Guard surfboat for the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point in the Upper Peninsula. The boats were designed to be nearly indestructible and self-bailing. Long before helicopters and fiberglass rescue boats, they were sturdy enough to be rowed by a nine-man crew straight into treacherous waves, often to help people drowning because they were in boats that had capsized in the deadly conditions. The replica took a year and a half to build and the men used the same woods and metals that the Coast Guard called for 102 years ago. The boat is like many that were stationed at lighthouses and Coast Guard stations throughout the Great Lakes, the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and Alaska for much of the 20th Century. "They used these boats clear up into the '50s and '60s," said Lehmann, who manned boats just like it during his nine years in the Coast Guard in the 1960s. The project got started when Dean, a boat restorer and builder who hosts "The Boat Shop" for public television, received a call from Tom Farnquist, director of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, which wanted someone to build a replica for display. Farnquist had heard about Dean after contacting other museums and. He thought Dean would be a natural for the job because Dean had already restored several vintage boats and owns a Coast Guard rescue boat that he had bought from Lehmann's father, Bernard "Bones" Lehmann. Dean's boat is a somewhat later motorized version of the surfboat. It was put together by combining parts of surfboats that had been stationed in Charlevoix and Northport. Dean spent the first six months working on the museum's boat by himself. He researched the design and materials and began the process of building it. He spent up to three months trying to find extensive plans for the craft, even searching the National Archives. But in the end, all he could find was a one-page schematic. Still, he was able to get from that the details for the hull with its watertight bottom, the slits in the deck that let water run out when waves wash in, the ballast tank and other features. "It looks simple, but it's a very complex boat," Dean said. It was also tricky finding some of the wood and Dean wanted to build it entirely to specifications. The plans call for Atlantic juniper, white oak and long-leaf yellow pine. He searched for the juniper, and eventually contacted a lumber dealer in North Carolina, who directed him to a plantation in Cairo, Ga. The plantation had virgin junipers circling it and was going to be cutting many of them down to make way for a golf course on the grounds. So Dean bought 5,000 board feet of the wood, much of it in boards as wide as 24 inches. As Dean began getting further into the project, he realized he was going to need some help. So he contacted Lehmann, who has been a friend of his for a long time and who also had experience building and refurbishing boats. "I needed someone who could do stuff without being told what to do," Dean said. Lehmann gladly came on board and the two worked together to painstakingly shape the curved timbers and piece them to the frame. They also found several other local people to help make bronze castings, machine the bronze and make other pieces of hardware that are no longer available. "We're lucky there's a lot of local talent around here," Lehmann said. They followed the 102-year-old specs right down to the copper nails. All the while they worked on it, they filmed their progress and Dean hopes to turn it into the next several installments of "The Boat Shop." "When we get enough sponsorship to put together 13 more episodes, we'll undoubtedly show this," he said. Now, after more than 2,000 hours of work, they will see the boat loaded onto a flatbed truck this week and delivered to the museum. Dean and Lehmann will continue to work through the winter to make the eight 12-foot oars and 16-foot steering oar, as well as the rig, mast and sprits, and will deliver them next year to help dedicate the boat as a museum piece. Will the surfboat ever be put in the water? "I sure hope so," Dean said. "I hope they do that at the dedication." |
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