Issue 6 : May/Jun 1999
Even though he expresses it differently, John Hegberg shares the passion that drives Greg Jones and his charter/restoration business, Classic Yachts of Door County. John has set out to own, restore, and share a couple of historical treasures with charterers who are looking for a captained cruise on Lake Superior. He calls his business Wood, Wind & Water, with a focus, according to his brochure, on “traditional sailing adventures.”
John’s charterers get much more than a captained charter. Just as Greg has adopted Wisconsin’s Door County and become fanatical about its quality as a sailing locale, so has John determined that Lake Superior is a priceless gem to be sailed, understood, and protected. To that end, John’s charterers are rewarded with a bit of history and lore as well as doses of biology, ecology, geology, and natural history while on cruises with him. If they want full-fledged tours with interpretive naturalists, he will provide a naturalist. If not, he will fill their heads more subtly with “learning moments” as these occasions present themselves.
People come back year after year for these experiences. “We have a remarkable return business,” John says. Their experiences may include on-water classrooms and workshops, teambuilding events for corporate groups, special camps for youth and church groups, and family events such as reunions and weddings. These sometimes call for the use of more than one boat, naturally, but the primary boat for these charters is the John Alden-designed, Roger Morse-built 45-foot ketch, Madeleine Brady. This wooden vessel was built in 1960 although her design dates to the turn of the century. She’s a traditional hull design, a marconi-rigged ketch with mahogany planks on oak frames.
John’s love affair with this boat and others like her was founded, to large extent, by a friend and mentor, Geoff Pope, who had a traditional ketch built in Nova Scotia. The 50-foot Sheila Yates was launched in 1975. A replica boat, she was a square-rigged tops’l ketch. Geoff and others sailed the Sheila Yates above the Arctic Circle on two voyages. She was present for the tall ship event in New York Harbor in 1976; another tall ship rendezvous from Bermuda to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1984; and the Statue of Liberty event in 1986.
John got involved in 1978 and had various roles including mate, skipper, and ship’s carpenter. He was also a partner in the company. Most years, he says, the Sheila Yates “paid for herself — we never made money, but we always had ambitions of making money.” But the Sheila Yates was caught in an ice pack off the top of Greenland in 1989 and sank between Greenland and Iceland.
His fond memories of her led to the purchase of the Madeleine Brady in 1992. Now John lovingly polishes the Madeleine Brady’s bronze winches and maintains the wood when not serving as captain for groups of up to six individuals: sometimes experienced sailors and sometimes wide-eyed enthusiasts new to sailing.
Along the way John has fallen in love with and restored or maintained a few other traditional vessels. The 1933 44-foot stails’l schooner Addy Riggs is shared with partner Todd Kessler, although she suffered extensive damage a few years ago and has not been fully repaired. Competing for John’s time is Lazy Susan’s Bed & Brunch operation, which John and Susan Grams built and manage in Cornucopia, Wis., overlooking Lake Superior.
More recently another project has devoured his time. This one is a bigger, taller ship which will add beauty to the Duluth, Minn., harbor and offer opportunities to visitors as an educational ship sometime within the next year. A Portuguese brigantine which he discovered in Tortola, British Virgin Islands, Galaxy is a beauty, John says, and well worth the hoops he’s having to jump through to make this latest dream a reality. A wooden boat, she flies three jibs, four squares on the foremast, a staysail in between and a gaff-rigged sail on the main mast. A boat like that looks good in any port, and John’s goal is to bring her to one of his favorites on Lake Superior.
All this will keep him busy, of course, but his classic charter business will continue to introduce people to sailing and Lake Superior in a more personal way.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
