How Six People Got Their Starts in Boats
I first sailed as a baby with my grand parents, hanging from the overhead in a bouncy chair in the saloon of their John Alden–designed Coastwise cruiser. When I was a toddler, my grandfather made me a boat-shaped block of wood out of 2×4 stock that I would drag from a long piece of string behind the boat while we sailed on Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay. I don’t know if it was the piece of wood dancing merrily in the waves, or my early days in BIG CHUM with my family, but neural pathways fired, joy seized my three-year old heart, and I was hooked. Later in life my grandfather would claim that I got my interest in wooden boats from him.
On the following pages are the stories of how a diverse group of six people got their starts in boats. One of them, Kaj Huld, cut his teeth as an offshore sailor on a six-year trip to the Caribbean; he said you don’t necessarily have to have a lot of money, “but you need to be really into it.” Seven-year-old Henry LePage cheerfully recounts his first adventure in boatbuilding and its trials and successes. Veteran cruiser Doug Serrill discusses how taking care of his own boat helps relieve the pressure of his everyday life.
Seven-year old Henry LePage got the boatbuilding bug from his grandfather, who helped him build this 11′ 6″ skiff from scratch.
All of these people seem to be forward thinkers. They were excited not just to tell me about what they had done, but also what they were going to do next. Henry is already planning his next woodworking project, Kaj dreams of sailing north, and Doug is looking for a bigger boat to take to Alaska. They all keep raising the bar higher for themselves.
The final thing these people have in common is that they each have had strong mentors. Jamie Enos talks about coming into her own as a now-27-year-old yacht captain and racer; in her journey she took great risks, but also had great mentors to help her along the way. Mahogany runabout a cionado Mark Mason describes how the legendary designer Olin Stephens helped him at a critical time in his life. If there is a lesson from these stories, this may be it: Loving wooden boats is most pleasurable when we share it with others.
Maria Simpson is a freelance writer and marketing consultant who lives and sails in midcoast Maine
Mark Mason has made a career of building and restoring vintage speedboats. He got his start after a serendipitous encounter with a mahogany speedboat at age 15. Above—Mason contracted Brooklin Boat Yard to build the hull of SCOTTY TOO, and his Laconia, New Hampshire, shop did the engine and mechanical installation.
Mark Mason: The Speedster
As a teen in 1963, Mark Mason first laid his eyes on SEA DUCER, a 16′ 1940s-vintage mahogany Chris-Craft racer. That encounter changed the course of his life.
Mason is owner of New England Boat & Motor Co., a business that restores and builds classic wooden runabouts; Mason’s role is to connect people to projects, and to make sure every detail is exactly right. He attended boarding school in Northern Michigan where he ran track, and one day while practice-running around a local lake he stopped at a marina for a quick rest. Poking around the sheds, he spied SEA DUCER, a 16′ barrelback runabout. As her name might suggest, he found the boat intoxicating. “She was a seductive boat for a 15-year-old boy whose body was pumping with hormones.”
As a young person, Mark had always been enamored of classic automobiles, the hobby of some close friends of the family. “When I saw SEA DUCER, something clicked in my brain,” he said. “I realized that an antique boat was nothing but an antique car, floating on the water, with all the same great engines, leather upholstery, and beautiful instruments that I loved about old autos.”
Mason could also see the promise of fun times on the lake boating and water skiing. To his surprise, SEA DUCER was for sale, for $600. He sold his Indian Head penny collection, pooled his money with his brother, Tom, and bought the boat. Undaunted by care and maintenance needed for such a craft, the brothers “went straight to the library and checked out Your Boat: Its Selection and Care, by Howard Barnes, and got to work.”
The Mason brothers spent many hours restoring the boat, and used it on the lake until their early 20s. Mark became a tournament water-skier, and SEA DUCER could pull a skier at 34 mph. On several occasions, she pulled six skiers in a pyramid formation.
While at university, Mark continued to follow his obsession with classic runabouts, particularly the gentlemans’ racers designed for the famous Gold Cup races that captured the imaginations (and pocketbooks) of men of means in the Roaring Twenties. He began seeking out these classic designs for restoration, interrupted only by a stint with the U.S. Army in Korea. He ferreted out some important racers, including the iconic BABY BOOTLEGGER (see WoodenBoat Nos. 60 and 150), still a personal favorite of Mark’s.
He also became fascinated with the designs of George Crouch, the house naval architect at Henry B. Nevins, Inc., in City Island, New York. In an effort to track down Crouch’s original plans, Mason called the Sparkman & Stephens design office, and got to talk with the legendary designer Olin Stephens himself, who helped him locate the plans. Mason still marvels at this simple act of kindness. Many years later, when Mason heard a rumor that Stephens wished to visit him at Lake Winnipesaukee, Mason was incredulous. He thought, “Yeah, right. Doesn’t God have more important things to do than to visit me?”
In his retirement, Stephens visited Mason several times and they went boating in several vintage mahogany speedboats. When Mason talks about his days with Stephens, he describes them as if he can’t believe they happened. Stephens’s generosity had helped Mason find the George Crouch plans and thus launched his career.
After college, Kaj Huld lived aboard a Cape Dory 25. Dreams of a bigger boat and wider ranging adventures brought him to APSARA, a 31′ Geiger ketch in which he spent six years voyaging.
Kaj Huld: The Adventurer
“I had no intention of going on a big trip when I bought APSARA,” said Kaj Huld of his 31′ Frederick Geiger–designed ketch. Huld, 44, was working in Boston as a mechanical engineer before setting off for six years of sailing in the Caribbean aboard his boat—a decision that transformed him from weekend warrior to full-time adventurer.
Huld has owned boats since he was a kid. His first boat was “a jalopy of a thing,” a dinghy that weighed close to 200 lbs that he bought with his paper-route money, that was unfortunately too heavy to heave onto a car roof. He sold it at a profit and bought another boat, and soon traded that boat for a bigger one, starting a pattern that has lasted until now. After college, Huld lived aboard a Cape Dory 25 in Rochester, New York. “I was always dreaming about bigger boats, and bigger waters,” he said.
While looking at larger and more comfortable sailboats, he saw APSARA at a nearby yard. The boat required cosmetic upgrading, but was in good structural condition and stoutly built for offshore sailing. He fell for her, spent a year saving money, and bought her.
After a time, Huld began to think about longer trips than the coastal cruising he did on his vacations. He and his partner often talked about quitting their jobs and taking off for the Caribbean, and finally they decided to take the leap. They saved their money, and took off for a yearlong trip to the Caribbean. After nine months, they were in the Dominican Republic and decided they weren’t going back home. The cruise became a six-year journey that took them to 17 countries, as far south as Venezuela.
When he reflected on his experiences in the Caribbean, Huld admitted that at the beginning he had no idea what he was doing. “I was completely green,” he said. He’d sailed across the Gulf of Maine a number of times, but recalls that he “had no idea what I was getting into.”
Huld quickly learned the ropes of the boat and sailing in the Caribbean, but there were other challenges to face. At the Antigua Classics Regatta, a 50′ schooner misjudged APSARA’s position at a rounding and plowed into her, destroying the mainmast, mizzenmast, bowsprit, and caprail. Luckily, no one was hurt in the accident, and APSARA sustained no hull damage. However, a protest hearing and legal action were needed in order to receive compensation for the damages.
After the accident, Huld worked with Woodstock Boatbuilders to build new spars for the boat. It took a full year to get APSARA ready to sail again, with Huld logging 840 hours of his own time on the project.
After six years of sailing, Huld decided to return to the United States. He moved to Portland, Maine, and set up business as an energy engineer, helping clients reduce their energy use and utilities cost. APSARA has been out of the water for the past four years, and Huld has been spending his spare time refurbishing her—including some planking work, interior upgrades, and a new, teak-veneer deck.
Huld looks back at his time in the Caribbean as a huge learning experience. “I thought my life as a career person in Boston was stressful, but making safety decisions aboard APSARA was even more stressful. Dodging weather, anchoring in dicey areas, and the piracy of South America, these were bigger challenges than I had ever faced before.”
Jamie Enos received her captain’s license during her final year of college, and soon after graduating became the captain of the 51′ Aage Nielsen-designed ketch SAPHAEDRA. Strong mentors and a determined attitude helped her grow into the job.
Jamie Enos: The Captain
In the 2012 Antigua Classics Regatta, many racers took note of SAPHAEDRA, a 51′ Aage Nielsen ketch. Not only did she perform well on the race course, but her young, diverse crew was obviously having a blast. They also noticed 27-year-old Capt. Jamie Enos at the helm, a refreshing sight in a sport that is largely dominated by men.
Enos has never been content to rest on her laurels, and is always seeking out new challenges. She started sailing dinghies as a kid, and instructed youth sailing starting when she was 12 years old at a local sailing club in Kennebunkport, Maine. She learned to race Optimist dinghies, Lasers, and 420s, and occasionally got to sail on other people’s larger boats. When she graduated from Colby College as a math and biology major, she wasn’t quite sure what to do for work, but wasn’t interested in the kinds of jobs her peers were looking for.
One of her bosses at the sailing program, Eric Unterborn, suggested she might want to look into working on boats. Jamie had never really thought about sailing as a career, nor known anyone else who had followed that path, but upon reflection she said, “It ended up being some pretty great advice.” She got a captain’s license in her final year of college.
Jamie landed the job on SAPHAEDRA just a month after she graduated. She’d had never run a boat of that size and said, “When I first started… I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.” Through trial and error, strong mentors, and pure pluck, she quickly got the hang of handling and maintaining the boat, and tending the day-to-day schedule of boat operations. Soon she was looking for new challenges, and by her second season with SAPHAEDRA, she suggested a winter season in the Caribbean to SAPHAEDRA’s owner.
The owner thought that was a fine idea.
Again, Enos relied on friends and mentors to give her guidance on how to prepare. “I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into,” she said. In particular, a fellow captain named Robert Zelinski from Northeast Harbor, Maine, gave her advice on how to prepare the boat and her crew.
After a few months in the Caribbean, Enos decided to check another item off her bucket list and entered the boat in the Antigua Classics Regatta for the first time in 2010. Being her first time at the event, she didn’t have an established racing crew, so she picked people up along the way. “We ended up with a really great group,” she said. “A lot of them are still great friends today. Everyone on the docks is like, what are those kids doing, they are having so much fun!”
Enos loves to race SAPHAEDRA, which is, in some ways, a totally different skill set from coastal cruising. And luckily, she has a boss who supports her desire to learn more about classic boat racing by taking SAPHAEDRA out on the course. “When I first started doing it I tried to be as unaggressive as possible and stay out of everybody’s way and just stay safe,” she said. Jamie also thinks that racing makes a better sailor. “I think that you learn more about the boat in one weeklong regatta than a whole year sailing the boat,” she said.
Jamie sees sailing as a career for the foreseeable future, although maybe not forever. For now, she loves the traveling, and getting paid to do it, and of course, the sailing. She said, “I filled up my passport this year, something I never thought I would do. I’ve gotten to go to some amazing places and met some amazing people.”
Doug and Debbie Serrill have cruised TOMARA, a 36′ Ed Monk-designed bridge-deck cruiser, in the Pacific Northwest for the past 11 years. Today, they aspire to a larger boat and a trip to Alaska.
Doug Serrill: The Cruiser
A few people make boats their vocation. Many more turn to boats as an escape from their vocation, and not in the way watching bad television or a trip to a resort might be an escape. Instead, taking care of a boat can be an all-involving hobby that relaxes the body by intensely focusing the mind.
Doug Serrill is such a person. He has owned boats most of his adult life, and finds the maintenance a soothing antidote to life’s many stresses. An engineer and project manager for Boeing, now retired, Doug finds that doing the many types of work necessary to keep his boat, TOMARA, a 36′ Ed Monk–designed bridge deck cruiser, in top shape is almost as enjoyable as the cruises he and wife, Debbie, take every summer.
“My way of relaxing is to work on something like a boat. It demands a lot of skills, such as finishing, plumbing, hydraulics, to name a few,” he said. “As you use the boat, you discover refinements that are needed.” Since the boat has been in Serrill’s care she has gotten new wiring, electronics, and frame repairs, and had some electrolysis damage repaired. Serrill also installed a new autopilot, and integrated it with his chartplotter. Debbie is instrumental in many of the interior upgrades, as well as generating ideas.
Serrill keeps the boat in excellent shape, repairing and upgrading as needed, because he feels it is his responsibility to steward the boat’s great heritage. TOMARA has spent her entire life in theNorthwest, and has had only six owners since built in 1941. Monk, known for his designs of power and sailboats conceived specifically for the tumultuous waters between Washington and Alaska, designed this boat to be built by students at the Edison School of Wooden Boat Building in Seattle.
Monk designed many different types of boats between the 1920s and 1960s, but he is known mostly for his classic cruising powerboats. For many years he worked out of his own powerboat, NAN, which gave him a special understanding of what liveaboards and cruisers would want. As a result, TOMARA is a comfortable cruiser, capable of long treks in rough waters, despite her relatively small size.
The Serrills have owned the boat for 11 years. Before they found TOMARA, they were regulars on the boat show circuit, examining available boats. “We saw TOMARA, but at the time we didn’t feel that we could afford her,” said Serrill. “Later, when we had raised the funds to purchase her, we found that not only was the boat still on the market, but the previous owners had taken her off the market and saved her for us.”
The Serrills have gotten as far north as the Broughton Archipelago, a group of rugged islands off of the northeast tip of Vancouver Island. British Columbia has made the area a provincial park, and it is remote, undeveloped, and unspoiled. “It was exciting to go that far north with only ourselves and our toolbox to rely on,” said Doug.
Doug and Debbie have dreams of making even longer trips, as far north as Alaska, in a larger boat.
While seven-year-old Henry LePage’s father and grandfather have helped to guide the boy’s early education in boats and boatbuilding, Henry brings much self-motivation and passion to his pursuit.
Henry LePage: The Early Bloomer
All Henry LePage wanted for his seventh birthday was a boat. He’d gotten the bug from his grandfather Pata, who, as Henry said, “loves everything fast.” Together they would tear up and down the St. Lawrence River in a 30′ powerboat near Pata’s summer home. It was fun, but Henry had begun to yearn for his own boat, one he could handle himself without grownups or siblings.
On his birthday, Henry’s mom and dad presented him with a small box. Suspicious, Henry unwrapped his present and found a copy of Gavin Atkins’s howto- build guide called Ultra Simple Boatbuilding. At first he was disappointed, but then he realized the opportunity the book presented. “I thought, ‘Yay! I get to build a boat!’” Henry said.
After mulling over various plans in the book, Henry selected the 11′ 6″ Poor Boy Skiff, a boat he could row and operate himself. The boat was not the simplest plan in the book, but his father, Mark, was committed to helping Henry build the boat he wanted. And so, a week before their annual vacation at Grandfather Pata’s house, Henry and his dad got started.
Henry was no stranger to tools and building things when he began this project. He has been collecting tools practically since birth—two toolboxes full—and has his own workbench set up in the family’s garage. He already knew his way around many hand tools, and Mark saw his role as keeping Henry safe with the power tools, helping him lift heavy things, and providing guidance along the way. After a week, the two of them had finished the hull, even after discovering that they were reading two different sets of plans for the same boat, with different dimensions.
After that week, the family put the unfinished boat on top of the car and headed for their annual vacation at Henry’s grandparents’ house in the Thousand Islands section of the St. Lawrence River. On arrival, Pata helped Henry finish his boat. Henry obviously admires Pata, a retired auto mechanic, who also loves fixing things and doing DIY projects. Pata helped Henry install hardware, fiberglass the bottom, and paint the boat.
When asked what he learned from the project, Henry said, “I learned that there are lots of hard parts and lots of easy parts, and lots of fun parts and lots of boring parts.” But he said that the best part of the process was launch day. Henry christened his boat with river water, and launched it to the cheers, horns, and whistles of the neighborhood in Fishers Landing, New York. He christened her MISS ARCADIA II, a nod to MISS CANADA, his favorite Gold Cup racer—and to Arcadia Park, where his grandparents live. She is the second boat so-named, because Henry already has an inflatable raft called MISS ARCADIA I.
Henry, who dreams of being in the Coast Guard one day “so he can be on the water all the time,” is already working on his next project: restoring an antique outboard engine given to him by Pata. When asked what he likes to do besides woodworking, Henry answered, “go boating.”
Jane Ahlfeld was a 31-year-old elementary school teacher when she learned to sail. She’s been a sailing instructor now for over two decades, teaching both adults and children the elements of seamanship.
Jane Ahlfeld: The Teacher
Jane Ahlfeld was a 31-year-old elementary school teacher when she first she took a windjamming vacation aboard the schooner J & E RIGGIN out of Rockland, Maine. At that point in her life, she had very little experience with boats but she felt enlivened by sailing and being on the water. She decided to take a leave of absence from her job and try something new. She said, “My goal was to learn to sail and spend a winter crewing on a boat in the Caribbean.”
The following summer, Jane arrived at WoodenBoat School and remembers, “I thought I had found nirvana.” She had a job in the kitchen cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the students who came to take weeklong classes throughout the summer. In the afternoons, she and a fellow chef would head down to the waterfront and mess around in the Nutshell prams and other boats the school uses to teach sailing and seamanship. Neither of them really knew what they were doing, but various people took them out and showed them how to sail.
At the school, Jane met the captain of the schooner MARY HARRIGAN, who took her on as a mate and teaching assistant to go to the Caribbean for the winter to help teach Cruising Boat Seamanship. Teaching students that winter was also a crash course in sailing for Jane. She remembers that the first night they anchored, the captain told her, back in the cockpit, “Okay, so this is how we anchor,” and explained the process to her. Then she went up on the foredeck and said to the students, “Okay, so this is how we anchor.” Jane laughed, “That’s teaching, right? Always just two steps ahead.”
She remembers a moment on night watch when it all clicked into place: “I was thinking about the wind and the set of the sail, and I said, ‘I think I’ve got it.’” She had also always loved maps, and so navigation and reading charts was a natural draw for her. She returned from the Caribbean still unclear as to whether she would return to her classroom job, but it slowly became apparent that her life had taken a new path.
Jane has taught Elements of Seamanship at WoodenBoat School since 1990, over the years becoming the primary instructor. Jane said, “At heart I am a teacher, and want to share what I enjoy.” In the winters she has her own business as a computer consultant. In 2004, she started teaching seamanship aboard the schooner MARY DAY for a few weeklong trips through WoodenBoat School, as well as several school trips. In 1993 and 1994 she arranged an Elements of Seamanship class through WoodenBoat in Bequia, sailing with local people on local boats.
Jane loves what she does, because she loves teaching people how to handle their situations better. Her courses help people gain confidence on the water, learning to navigate, steer, trim sail, anchor, and come in to the dock. But beyond the hard skills of sailing, there are many other lessons to learn, such as respect for the weather, your fellow crew members, and your equipment. Jane summed up, “Sailing is full of little life lessons.”