Skookum Maru

[cstevens]

Skookum Maru is a name that combines the Chinook word “skookum” meaning strong or brave, with the Japanese word “maru”, which means circle, but which is also traditionally used to mean boat or ship in boat names. Strong boat. A good name for a vessel that will take you away from the safety of land and onto the uncertain and shifting sea, where the hope of safe return relies entirely on the stoutness of her timbers, the steady beat of her engine, and her ability to keep the water out. And Skookum Maru is well named. Her varnish is applied sparingly. She has no polished brass. She has none of the glamour of a classic yacht. But she is every bit a proper little ship - a boat to trust when the wind is blowing a full gale and the green water is flying over the bow.



But on a sunny Friday in August of 2018, as we crossed from Blaine Harbor to President Channel on our first family cruise aboard, no one was thinking about the wilder nature of the sea. The wind was light, the water flat calm, the sky was clear and the Strait of Georgia stretched out north behind Vancouver Island - a smooth highway all the way to Desolation Sound if we only had time to take it. But not that day. We were on a deadline to make it to Seattle in time for a haulout on Monday, and our course lay south for Friday Harbor.



Our journey with Skookum Maru had started almost a year before that August day, during a far less comfortable voyage aboard Petrel, our converted gillnetter, in the fall of 2017. But Skookum Maru’s own journey started much earlier than that, and very much farther away.

(contd.)

[cstevens]

Re: Skookum Maru

The original log book for Skookum Maru, which we have in our possession through a series of improbably serendipitous events, includes this first entry:



"July 10, 1955. Contract signed for construction by G. Kugge Boat Works - Kobe - Japan"

That line records the moment when Skookum Maru began her existence as a thing of wood and metal. But the real beginning must have happened some time before then, in the first meeting between Ed Monk Sr. and his clients Gordon and Blanche Rogers to commission a design for a new boat that they would have built for them in Japan.

Sadly all correspondence from that process was lost in a long ago house fire. It would have made fascinating reading. But we do have her original plans and construction drawings, which show a handsome and well-appointed cruiser in the style of a Pacific Northwest workboat.



All the workboat elements are there - a deep, beamy, full displacement hull, a high, well-flared bow, a traditional curved pilothouse with good visibility all around, generous working area on deck, a dry stack exhaust for the diesel engine. But she is no workboat. In every detail Ed Monk designed her for extended cruising. She has a large galley situated in the salon, where the cook can enjoy the view while underway, a comfortable dining area, spacious berths, and various other amenities, all rendered with Ed Monk’s particular eye for line and proportion.

From her design one can learn much about her first owners. They were experienced cruisers with very specific requirements. They wanted to go to the remote places of the Salish region and beyond, not sit at the dock or cruise gently around on sheltered water. Her engine, a three-cylinder Detroit 3-71, is far smaller than one would expect for a boat of this displacement. She may give up a few fractions of a knot in top speed but she makes that up in efficiency, ease of maintenance and other virtues more important for a long-distance passagemaker. She is not large, at just under 40’ LOA, but her living spaces are generously proportioned and comfortable, with no attempt to shoehorn in a washer and dryer, an icemaker, a television, or any of the other “necessities” of a modern boat her size. Other boats since have taken these ideas and expanded on them, for better or worse, but Skookum Maru was one of the first trawler yachts, or heavy cruisers as Ed Monk called them.

Back in Japan the yard made fast work, and less than eight months later, in May of 1956, she was launched and then put on the freighter S.S. Japan Bear for shipment to the U.S. There the log continues, recording her arrival in San Francisco, commissioning and trial cruises by the Rogers’ and various friends, and then the first cruise up the West Coast to Victoria B.C., and ultimately to Seattle which would be her home port for most of the next fifty years, interspersed with regular cruises as far south as Cabo, Mexico and north to Alaska - a journey that she was to make many times over the following decades.

The Rogers logged many thousands of miles aboard Skookum Maru, owning her until Gordon passed away in the late nineteen eighties. Over the next twenty years she continued cruising the northwest with a series of owners who kept her very much as Gordon and Blanche had intended. There were minor changes - a propane range replaced the original diesel stove in the galley, the generator was removed, a new heating system was added - but her character remained intact.

(contd.)

[cstevens]

Re: Skookum Maru

While Skookum Maru was logging miles up and down the West Coast between 1956 and 2017, our boat Petrel was having a very different life. Built in 1954 in New Westminster, B.C. as a gillnetter or a combination gillnetter and troller, Petrel provided a livelihood for her owners until the 1980s, when she was retired from the B.C. fishery in a buy-back program and converted for pleasure use. Photos of her during that period show her as well-kept, in a happy yellow and white.



But time was not kind to her, and by 2014 she was sitting abandoned in South Seattle, waiting for the chainsaw and a last trip to the landfill.



Her rescue and the subsequent project to restore her are documented extensively on the Restoration of the BC Salmon Troller "Petrel" thread here on the forum. It was a slow process and much interrupted by the more pressing requirements of life but by the fall of 2017 we thought that she was far enough along for us to take her for a short cruise, just from Seattle to Gig Harbor for Labor Day weekend.

It did not go well.

We set out in company with Snoose, another converted troller, on a brilliant summer day with flat water on the Sound and the mountains rising into a clear blue sky to the east and west.





But the trip down to Gig Harbor did not in any way resemble a relaxing day on the water. With no accommodations below and just a working deck with no barrier between our active, four-year-old son and the water, Petrel quickly proved to be a poor choice as a family cruiser. And worse, although Petrel had shown no problems on several shorter day cruises, the longer journey caused the garboard seams to open up and begin leaking. Soon the pumps were cycling nearly full time to keep up.

We made it to the dock in Gig Harbor thinking we would regroup, have dinner and work on making the rest of the trip more enjoyable. It was just then that we found that the engine had been dumping oil into the bilge, via the simple observation that the pump outlet was suddenly pouring a thick, black fluid onto the dock and into the water.

Faced with water coming in through the open seams and a bilge full of oil that could not be pumped overboard, we gave in. My wife and son took the ferry home while I spent the next two days cleaning up the mess, fixing the oil leak and taking Petrel back to Seattle for a haul out, recaulking and other work that eventually included several sister frames and two new planks.



Back in the water a few weeks later it was time to determine what to do next. We had fixed the garboard seams and the engine oil leak but those repairs did nothing to make Petrel into a boat we could cruise aboard in comfort and safety. We loved Petrel but there was no way that we could use her as she was. So I spent the next several weeks working through cabin and accommodation ideas, culminating in this design for converting Petrel into a small family cruiser.



We all liked this idea of Petrel as a “mail boat” conversion, but the amount of work that would be needed to build out the new cabin was a reality check. Realistically it would take years or thousands of dollars to complete the project. So we were no closer to having a boat that we could use now.

(contd.)

[cstevens]

Re: Skookum Maru

At this point a deus ex machina entered stage center. Or more prosaically, through the Wooden Boat Forum private message system. Paul Kube, the owner of Skookum Maru, reached out to ask whether we would be interested in buying her. As an enthusiast of Ed Monk’s designs I was somewhat familiar with her already so my first reaction was “wow” and then “there is no chance that we could afford her.” But Paul said we should go see her and then talk about it.

So on a gray December day toward the end of 2017 we drove up to Blaine and spent a few hours aboard. And fell completely in love. She was everything that Petrel was not. Comfortable, spacious, and in bristol condition. A real cruising boat, but still with the workboat aesthetic that we liked in Petrel. We didn’t know how we would afford to buy her, but we would find a way. And so we did.

Paul and his wife wanted to continue cruising Skookum Maru through the following summer before transferring ownership so we agreed to complete the sale in August of 2018, in time for us to take her on our annual wedding anniversary trip to the San Juan Islands. But before we could buy Skookum Maru we had to have her surveyed. So at the end of July Paul and I ferried her down to Bellingham for the haulout and survey.





The survey showed that she was generally in great shape. A few spots in the house and deck to address in time, but nothing urgent. Until the surveyor got to the fastener inspection that is. At which point we found that there was little holding the planks to the frames but promises.





Refastening was needed ASAP. Not a small project, but by this time we were fully committed with Skookum Maru and walking away from her was not an option. So after some discussion we decided to move ahead and tackle the refastening work.

But first we had to get her from Blaine, where she is moored, to Seattle, where we wanted to do the work. And through a combination of luck and negotiation we were able to find a shipwright that we trusted to do the work on short notice, schedule the haulout, and make all of the necessary arrangements so that we could take our wedding anniversary cruise at the same time.

(contd.)

[cstevens]

Re: Skookum Maru

So a couple of weeks after the survey we set out across the Strait of Georgia for a three-day cruise through the San Juan Islands, with nights in Friday Harbor and Port Townsend.













(contd.)

[cstevens]

Re: Skookum Maru

The next morning we hauled out to refasten with some 1600 screws and 100 or so bolts, plus a few sister frames. Mark Lerdahl, who worked on Petrel last year, did all of the skilled work while I scraped paint, hammered on things when needed and learned as much as I could from him.













(contd.)

[cstevens]

Re: Skookum Maru

With that work done she received a fresh coat of bottom paint and a new bootstripe...



...and then she was relaunched, ready for another sixty years.







(contd.)

[cstevens]

Re: Skookum Maru

A few days later I brought Skookum Maru back to her slip in Blaine, WA, from Shilshole Marina...



...up Puget Sound and Saratoga Passage...



...then up through the Swinomish Channel, past La Conner...



… and out through Padilla Bay (very shallow - know your marks!)

At that point my plan was to stop in Bellingham for the night but it was such a nice day that I just kept going, past Vendovi and Lummi islands...





...and into the Strait of Georgia heading for Birch Point and Blaine.



I arrived in Blaine around 2030. It was quite dark by then but by this time I knew the channel well enough. The trickiest part was avoiding crab trap buoys on the way in. The trip took about 13 hours straight through. A long day on the water but Skookum Maru made it easy.

(contd.)

[cstevens]

Re: Skookum Maru

Skookum Maru is a great boat and has been well cared-for, but as with any boat there is always something that needs doing. Soon after we completed the refastening the Espar diesel hydronic heater stopped working - just as the weather started to turn cool. The Espar is a complicated little beast, with pumps and wires fans and relays and printed circuit boards. Very different from the simple diesel pot burner stove with which Skookum Maru was originally equipped.

Repeated attempts to resurrect the Espar failed and the local service tech eventually diagnosed a dead ECU. With a replacement unit costing in the thousands we looked at various alternatives and eventually settled on converting the galley range back to a diesel stove.



The first step in that project was to yank out the old Force 10 propane stove in preparation for installation of a new Dickinson Adriatic. That project went easily enough once I navigated past a bunch of stripped out square drive screws securing the cleats that were holding the stove in place.



I was hoping to keep the original copper heat barrier but with the stove out I could see that it was missing one panel and the rest was too chewed up to use. So I removed what was left of it...



...leaving a clear space for installation of the new stove.

(contd.)

[cstevens]

Re: Skookum Maru

Then over several subsequent trips to Blaine I tackled fabrication of the heat shield. After much waffling and debate I settled on a combination of ceramic fiber insulation and sheet copper for the shield:











(contd.)

[cstevens]

Re: Skookum Maru

Following completion of the heat shield I cut and fit new copper pipes to connect the heating coil in the stove to the hydronic system that heats the rest of the boat...





...and then measured everything about twenty times before cutting the holes in the box for the hydronic lines and the fuel feed:



And then finally we were able to set the stove in place:



(contd.)

[cstevens]

Re: Skookum Maru

The next job was to open up the hole in the cabin top for the chimney. The original stove must have had a 4" stove pipe while the new Dickinson required a 5" pipe. But a few minutes with a drill and jigsaw took care of that easily enough:



Then I made a copper liner for the overhead:



And finally installed the stove pipe...





... and the cap.



(contd.)

[cstevens]

Re: Skookum Maru

The final task was to wire up the draft fan and install the fuel lines, starting with the stove end of things. Copper tubing running from the fuel meter on the stove down to a shutoff valve mounted in the cabinet underneath the stove, and then to a fuel filter, and then to fuel hose up to the day tank:



With that done I plumbed the day tank and mounted it in the deck box that used to hold the propane tank:



The wires are for a fuel level sender. I'm planning to install a fuel gauge by the stove next to a switch for the transfer pump but that's a task for the future.

With the fuel lines done it was time to fire it up. I haven't hooked up the transfer pump yet so the I filled the tank with a couple of gallons of diesel that I brought up for the purpose, opened the shutoff valves (one at the tank and one at the stove), checked all of the connections for leaks (all good) and then went through the starting ritual that I recalled from my years of living with a similar stove aboard my old boat, Savona:

1. Open the metering valve to let in enough diesel to cover the bottom of the pot and then shut it off again.

2. Turn on the draft fan about half-speed.

3. Twist and light a small piece of paper, and drop it in the pool of diesel.

4. Wait for the fuel to light and warm the burner up enough to sustain a clean burn.

5. ....

Well, step 5 is to open up the fuel meter again once the flame is burning cleanly. But I didn't get to step 5 because as soon as the fuel in the burner started burning the cabin was immediately filled with great clouds of black smoke. Not good! I quickly shut everything off and opened up all the doors and windows to air out the boat. While I was waiting for the smoke to clear I decided to check my memory against the instructions from Dickinson. Had I made some mistake? But no - their instructions were pretty much what I had been doing for years. Hm. Ok, maybe I had just flooded the burner or something. Let's see if a second attempt is better.

Open the valve, turn on the fan, light the pool.... Black smoke everywhere again. Bleah. Maybe I didn't have the fan on high enough? But no, turning the fan up just made the smoke worse. Wait... what? Turning the fan up makes the smoke worse... Turning the fan UP makes the smoke WORSE. Ah ha! I quickly swapped the leads on the fan and immediately the smoke started heading up the chimney where it belonged, the air in the cabin cleared, and the stove started burning with the bright clean flame I remembered.



Ahhhh. Happiness. It was only later that I recalled Paul telling me that some former owner had reversed the color coding on many of the DC wires. The one I used (which was labeled "galley blower" appropriately enough) must have been one of those. I'm now trying to resist the urge to find every one of those wires and fix them.

At any rate, the stove is in and working now. I still have some minor tasks still to complete like installing the fuel gauge and plumbing the transfer pump but we have heat again. Just in time for the warm weather but at least it will be ready for Fall. And for cool nights and mornings which we can get any time of the year around here.

[Phil Y]

You write well. Nice for Skookum to have her own thread. Although maintaining 2 boats and 2 epic threads will be quite a thing

Sent from my CPH1851 using Tapatalk

[Garret]

Re: Skookum Maru

Great boat Chris & thanks for creating a thread for her. I'd want to fix the backwards wires sooner rather than later though. Maybe set a schedule to do one wire run every week or some such? Meanwhile, keep your voltmeter handy!