Issue 29 : Mar/Apr 2003
It was not all America’s Cup and 5.5-Meter yachts in my years at Luders, as the yard still had its regular work maintaining and repairing clients’ boats, and I was kept busy in 1963 designing a new yard workboat, a beefy 42-foot all-teak yacht built in Hong Kong. I have a photo above my desk showing her in New York Harbor in 1964, taken when Bob Wallstrom had run the old 1926 work-boat, You’ll Do, down to pick up her replacement and tow it back to Stamford. He took the photo of the two boats side by side with his dad, my dad, and John, the yard machinist, standing on deck; a rough-looking crew indeed!
There were many other things going on in the yard, even during the 12-Meter series. During the summer of 1964, while the new workboat was having her machinery installed, I was working on the design of the Luders 33, as well as slight modifications to the Eagle and making the occasional trip up to the Allied plant in Catskill, New York, to go over the 33’s design and construction. Lew Banks and Bob Wallstrom lofted the 33 that fall, and the first boats came out in the spring of 1965. Bill’s talent had produced another winner. That was doubly proved when he took first overall in the Block Island Week aboard the Luders 33 Pinkletink quite a few years later.
One summer day I came close to destroying a 5.5-Meter and seriously injuring myself as well. There was a cantankerous dock crane at the corner of the office that we used to lift the smaller boats in and out for bottom cleaning and minor work. I never really mastered that old rig and was quite in awe of it as, if you didn’t have the gears just right, it could run away on you with disastrous results. Usually I stayed well clear of it but one day a 5.5 on the dock had to be launched right away. Shorty, the haulout crew boss, and Bob were both away for some reason, so I was pressed into service.
Bill’s son, Jack, held the docklines as I engaged the gears, pressed the motor button, and lifted her up high enough to clear the edge of the dock. Then Jack swung her out so she was over the water, and I shifted gears to lower her down. Unfortunately, I did something wrong and, ho boy, did she go down! The winch went into free wheeling, the winch handle spun and knocked me off the platform almost breaking my arm, and the crane boom fell like a stone with the boat on the end of it.
My luck held though. The tide was out. The boat hit the water like a two-ton rock, sank well down with momentum, and then bounced up about 2 feet where, according to Jack, she just missed by inches ramming her deck into the crane boom which was lying flat across the dock. Once I recovered and was able to inspect the situation, while nursing my arm, I found to my immense relief that there was no damage to the boat or the crane . . . just to my pride. On the other hand, I never again was asked to run that miserable piece of treacherous machinery, so every cloud does have a silver lining!
Another time we were asked to repair a badly damaged 42-foot Chris-Craft. Apparently the accident involved a crew of liquored up Coast Guard (reservists, I believe) who T-boned the yacht with their USCG motor whaleboat one dark night while she was sitting at her mooring. The Chris was towed to the yard. It’s a wonder she hadn’t sunk, as the port side was smashed in from the sheer to about a foot above the waterline with all the galley furniture pushed 2 feet in toward the centerline; a real mess!
Harry Klipp, the boatbuilder foreman, and I had to work up a repair cost for the insurance company. We went over the material cost very carefully together and had Lew Banks and Ted Malde, both top-notch woodworkers and boatbuilders, give us their estimate of the hours involved. Tony, the paint gang foreman, also had to provide us with the time and material for his crew’s work. Then Harry and I sharpened our pencils, put our heads together, added it all up, added a couple of hundred just in case, and came up with a figure of $4,700 to rebuild her as before, with every broken plank replaced with one of the original length.
The insurance surveyor visited the yard a few days later, looked over the sad wreck, read our estimate with obvious surprise and said, “No way, fellows. You can’t possibly do a good job for that; it’s not nearly enough money.” He told us the boat was insured for $10,000 and he didn’t want to total it, so he’d allow $8,400 for the job. Well, Harry and I were understandably happy with that, and we were careful to get it in writing.
Work commenced and in a few weeks the Chris looked every bit as good as she had before the accident, probably better, as her whole port side was repainted and the galley was all new. When I totaled the actual materials and hours, the entire job could have been billed for $4,500 at our normal rates, but I sent in a bill to the insurance company for the $8,400 their surveyor had allowed, and they paid it without a kick. Bill was tickled pink, as you can imagine!
Of course, wages were just a bit lower in those days than they are now, so labor costs were reasonable. The average boatbuilder would make $120 to $130 for a 40-hour week, a foreman earned $140 or so, and the yard charged the labor out at about $8 to $9 per hour. Materials were slightly less too; I can recall prime mahogany going for well under $300 a thousand board feet and teak for $400. They truly were “the good old days” in some respects!
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