It can’t be easy to relocate at nearly 60 years of age, but Miss Maisey seems to be adjusting fine to her new life on Lake Superior after a lifetime on the eastern coast.
Miss Maisey, by the way, is a Maine-built, wooden
lobster boat, originally launched in 1949 on salt water and relaunched
on July 20, 2004, to a new fresh-water home.
She is also the latest nautical remodeling project of Paul
von Goertz of Knife River, Minnesota. Longtime readers may remember our
story (June/July 2000) about Paul’s fascination with rebuilding a
wooden 1947 Chris Craft Express Cruiser.
It seems that the Chris was just a fling (a spendy fling at about $10,000 in materials and repairs); Paul sold it. Miss Maisey, which stems from Paul’s nickname for his wife, may be a more lasting commitment. Miss Maisey is more practical and useful, he admits.
“It’s kind of like meeting a woman,” he says of those two
wooden boats. “The Chris has great eye appeal, but really didn’t serve
my needs.… I wanted to get a boat that would be good for Lake Superior
and that I could troll from.”
Maine lobster boat, Miss Maisey, takes nicely (and eagerly) to its new fresh-water home. PHOTOS COURTESY PAUL VON GOERTZ
At 27.5 feet, Miss Maisey isn’t quite as large as the
1,000-foot ore carriers sprinkling our lake system, but she seems right
at home. The lobster boat is built of long-leaf yellow pine, which does
not suffer from the rot so commonly associated with wooden vessels. Her
clean and jaunty lines reflect a love of water and boating and of human
devotion when you realize she grew from a pile of wooden boards and
some glass.
 Paul’s devotion was to finding and then rebuilding a lobster boat
for Lake Superior after he had visited the Canadian Maritime Provinces.
He simply fell in love with the simple and logical style of lobster
fishing boats. And unlike the traditional fishing boats developed for
the Great Lakes, like the open “gas boats” of Minnesota’s north shore,
these lobster boats featured a place to get out of the rain.
Paul made some contacts in Maine and offered a $250 finder’s fee for anyone who could connect him to the right boat.
What he didn’t know, and what a knowledgeable friend gently explained, is that lobster boats rarely become pleasure boats.
“I didn’t realize that a lobster boat is like a farmer’s pickup truck,” Paul says.
“They are used, abused and dumped, usually burned, plus they smell awful from the bait.”
 Things didn’t look good for Paul’s passion until a call finally came from a man who knew about a boat.
Sea Lark, built in 1949 by Hodgdon boat builders in East Boothbay,
Maine, was still in reasonable shape and had never been lobster fished.
“That’s like finding a farmer’s pickup truck from ’49 that never carried a bale of hay.”
Hodgdon fashioned 20 of these vessels from 1946-53 as pleasure
craft. The long-leaf yellow pine described above was typical of the
material used in building U.S. Navy minesweepers which, for obvious
reasons, were made of wood. Hodgdon had built several minesweepers and
must have had some of the very special long-leaf yellow pine, simply
the finest boat- building wood material.
After some over-the-phone negotiations, Paul bought the boat sight
unseen! He later identified some 16 cracked frames but realized this
was his boat despite the work that would be required.
“Within three weeks, I had the boat. The man who steered me to it refused the finder’s fee.”
That generosity would be the norm for the folks from Maine with
whom Paul had contact. He contracted, on word only, to have the boat
moved a couple of times. He also found Hodgdon Yachts helpful with his
remodeling.
 “Everything needed to be addressed. I took the engine and cockpit
out and threw them away. I kept the hull and the cabin and about half
of the deck.”
A tidy interior fits Miss Maisey’s trim style.
Paul began his restoration back in 2002. Last summer, my lovely wife, Jan, and I were privileged to watch Miss Maisey’s relaunching at the Knife River Marina.
The assembled crowd was mostly silent and thoughtful getting her
moved along. Paul’s wife, Mary, sprayed her with champagne - Paul
wouldn’t allow the bottle to be cracked against the bow, though Mary
might have liked to punish the boat a little for how much of Paul’s
time she consumes.
Paul did quite a job of bringing Miss Maisey back to nearly new, and he is the beneficiary of this new found youth.
Paul’s work is going to be recognized in Miss Maisey’s home state. Each year, Maine Boats & Harbors magazine picks boats to honor and Miss Maisey has been honored as 1 of 12 powerboats of the year for 2005.
Now that the work on Miss Maisey has been done - though the
tinkering never ends - Paul has turned his attention to finding out
about the other 19 lobster boats built for pleasure use by Hodgdon.
He’s put out the word to see if other owners will contact him.
Meanwhile, Paul and Miss Maisey have already gone fishing together and he’s strong on his new commitment.
“I challenge anyone to find something that is more appropriate for trolling Lake Superior.”
I’m sure that they’ll have the best of luck fishing … though I
doubt, even with this able fishing partner, that Paul will find any
Lake Superior lobsters.
A selection of Jim Marshall’s columns of lake lore and his inland sea voyages
has been published as Lake Superior Journal: Views from the Bridge
by Lake Superior Port Cities Inc. Follow this link
for more information. |
