The WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport is happening this weekend, June 27-29. We had hoped to be there with Irene Agnes, but, sadly, a couple unexpected snags with both the boat and myself this spring have conspired to keep us from launching this summer.
Work on Aggie’s deadwood was delayed by an issue with the white oak timber we’d hoped to use, sending Dave and Keith back to the yards to source another piece. That alone might not have been a dealbreaker for launching this year, but I also learned that I have to have some surgery that’s going lay me up for the rest of the summer to recover. I definitely won’t be sailing for a few months, so there was no point in rushing the timber work.
The Right Deadwood
Replacing the deadwood had not originally been on the worklist, but we knew we needed to replace the rudder. After Dave lofted a new one, we discovered that Aggie’s draft was five inches shorter than the plans call for. This was something I’d long suspected, but have never actually measured.
The removed old deadwood, reassembled on the shop floor. [Photo by Padanaram Boat Works]
Restoring the draft would mean new deadwood, as the existing was in poor shape, and the iron ballast block was not only rusting badly but connected with steel keel bolts that were corroding away. We decided to pull the whole thing, put in new, properly sized deadwood and replace the old iron block with a lead cast ballast that will also match the plans.
A cross section of the deadwood where the iron ballast block was removed highlighted the problems. [Photo by Padanaram Boat Works]
Dave and Keith found a gorgeous slab of white oak for the project, but when they started working it, it warped badly out of shape. The built-up tension in the wood deflected it 3 inches out of straight over its 16-foot length. One full-length piece cut from it was usable, and they’ve found another timber for the second. Smaller pieces needed to fill in bow and stern should be usable from one of the two slabs.
Measuring the warp on the 16-foot deadwood timber. [Photo by Padanaram Boat Works]
A Sea Bird Model
Although we can’t look forward to getting Irene Agnes in the water this summer, I’m turning my anticipation toward building a somewhat smaller Sea Bird this coming fall and winter. A while back on ebay, I acquired a 1/24 scale model kit for a Sea Bird Yawl.
These were made by the Freedom Song Boatworks in Maine but have been out of production for many years. Look for future posts on this side project later this summer and fall. I’ll definitely be calling on the experts I know at the USS Constitution Model Shipwright Guild for guidance on this next winter!
A New Bird in the Fleet
Lastly, I was excited to hear about the launch of a newly built Sea Bird yawl in Australia. Greg Wall’s Sea Bird, Trim, was included in the “Launchings” section of the latest issue of WoodenBoat (July/August 2025, #305). A full-keel, gaff-rigged version, Trim will be cruising around Victoria, Australia. I hope to reach out to Greg to learn more about his new Sea Bird for a future post.
As previously noted, the Sea Bird yawl was never meant for racing, but that hasn’t stopped Sea Birds from joining races over the design’s long history. In 2010, we decided Irene Agnes should join that illustrious company.
So, we registered for the Herreshoff Classic Yacht Regatta, held out of the Herreshoff Museum in Briston, RI. Not surprisingly, in retrospect, it turned out to be a quite less than illustrious showing.
If you can’t win, at least stay close to the photo boat! [Onne van der Wal photo]
I vividly remember the bemused look of someone I was chatting with at the party the night before the race as I described our boat. “What are you doing here?!” he exclaimed, unable to suppress his laugh.
It was a fair question. We were laughably out of our league, and I had no illusions of being particularly competitive. Mostly I saw it as an opportunity to have some fun with other boats and show off ours. Laurie was working the day of the race, so I enlisted the help of my friend Matt for the race. Laurie would join me for the sail back up the bay the next day.
DNF
The wind was light at the start, and I did miserably. Aggie was not going to point as high as a Herreshoff S-boat, particularly in the light breeze, but that didn’t stop me from grossly overestimating laylines and pinching desperately for the start. We were the last over by a long stretch. I could hear Tom Day berating me from beyond the grave for my hubris.
We made the first mark easily, but then the wind completely died. We could see the other boats similarly stranded across the bay. After drifting around for quite a while, we called it quits. It was clear we weren’t ever going to make the second mark, much less the finish line.
Contemplating the next mark as we started to drift. [George Bekris photo]
I cranked up the outboard and we motored back toward Bristol. Entering the harbor, the outboard died, and we got a tow back to the dock from another boat. There we rafted up for the night alongside a schooner yacht being captained by a friend.
A Long Trip Home
They had to leave before dawn the next morning to make a transit back to a homeport in New York. With still no wind in sight, and our outboard still not working, they offered to tow us at least out of the harbor. From there, we were on our own to our dock in Mount Hope Bay as they parted ways to head south.
We drifted nearly the entire day, catching the occasional zephyr when it would pass by. Eventually we broke out the paddle we had picked up as an emergency back up and did some paddling, which worked surprisingly well. In the late afternoon, we accepted a tow from a friend heading back to the same marina.
Defiantly becalmed!
That was the only race we ever entered with Irene Agnes, and probably the only one she ever participated in in her long life. That summer turned out to be one of Aggie’s last seasons underway before turning into a yardbird on the hard, so she never got a rematch. Although she’s finally getting underway again soon, I doubt we’ll enter her in any races again – unless we manage to get a solely Sea Bird regatta going!
Our experience at the Herreshoff regatta and the long trip home did also underscore a couple other aspects of the boat’s operation, mostly related to the outboard, sweeps and other auxiliary power choices. Now that she’s getting back underway, we’re ditching the outboard. More on that in another post.
After planks were sprung at either end of Irene Agnes’ chine logs during our current restoration by Padanaram Boatworks, we began to grapple with the condition of the stem and transom. Both showed signs of still having original material, but also had been repaired with shortcuts using epoxy resin and 5200. This probably seemed like it paid off at the time, but it spites us now.
Stem
Parts of Aggie’s stem were likely original to the boat’s 1930s construction, but it was obvious repairs had occurred. At some point, a new section of the stem around the bobstay bolt had been scarfed into place. It was unclear whether this was the result of some damage, such as a collision, or to repair rot around a rusting bolt.
We had installed another new bobstay bolt in 2004, but the wood around it looked good, and the repaired section had held fine during our early sailing years. However, over the course of the boat’s time laid up, the scarfed piece was showing signs of movement relative to the surrounding stem. . Dave and Keith were still hopeful that the piece could be repaired, but once more planks were pulled, optimism dimmed.
Dave describes the situation here:
The forefoot looked original and was showing signs of decay. There wasn’t much to put planks back into. The stem knee was newer and in good shape, but it was no longer flush to the upper and lower stem sections – a potentially correctable problem except that epoxy filler had been used around the scarfed repair, and resin had gotten in between the stem sections and the knee. Planks had been fastened directly into the resin fill the upper stem. The whole thing would have to be cut apart to repair any one section, and it was unclear whether any piece would be able be saved. In the end, the time to take it apart in hopes of salvaging a part of it was likely to match building a new stem, and would still leave a possibly compromised part that could still leak or not take the plank ends.
So the whole stem came out. The original was used to loft a new stem.
Stern
The situation at the transom had similar issues. The station framing and the transom itself was weirdly out of alignment and the clamp and chine actually ended short of the transom. At some point, everything seemed to have been just gooped together with 5200, making the whole thing a bear to remove. But it had to come off to level out the transom to take the new planks and chine logs properly, which meant building a new transom.
Dave describes the transom situation here:
Both of these issues were significant setbacks and additions to the worklist, but we’re glad to have identified and resolved them properly at last.
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Replacing the chine logs was at the top of the list going into Irene Agnes’ restoration. The planks at the chine were soft, and the rust from the old steel fasteners was visible on the frames from the inside.
Removing the old chine showed just how bad it was. This wood and hardware may have been original to the boat’s framing in the early 1930s, and it had decayed badly. Some of the steel fasteners barely still existed.
Original gusset with corroded chine fastener. [Padanaram Boatworks photo]
Gussets vs Knees
For the most part, the chine was fastened to the gussets that bolted to the sides of the frames at the chine, rather than the chine fastening directly into the frames themselves. This was great, as replacing the iron-sick gussets was relatively easy, compared to replacing frames — only a couple of which needed replacement. However, these gussets do not show up on the redrawn plans currently being sold by WoodenBoat, which raised a bit of a mystery: Where did the gussets come from? Was this just an alteration by the boat’s original builder?
Internal knees (#14) as shown on WoodenBoat’s redrawn plans (1981). Gussets shown in the revised 1934 edition of How to Build a Cruising Yawl.
It turns out the original Sea Bird design did not use gussets, but rather incorporated internal knees made fast to the frames, similar to the current plans. However, in 1934, The Rudder revised the construction plans and their accompanying book How to Build a Cruising Yawl. Their new edition replaced the internal knees with gussets bolted to the frames. When WoodenBoat had the old plans redrawn for publication in 1981 by Dave Dillion, they went with the original arrangement. The month after the new plans were released, a Sea Bird fan and builder, Ted Lamary, criticized the publisher for the decision in a letter to the editor.
“The ‘old’ construction method will most certainly build a strong craft, but the method is bothersome and perhaps clumsy, at least to a lazy man like me,” Lamary wrote.
WoodenBoat responded, confirming that they had made a conscious decision to go with the older knee arrangement for mostly aesthetic reasons. “Our objections, admittedly subjective, were to the ‘busy’ appearance of gussets where show up inside the finished hull, and the fact that such gussets are dirt catchers. Somehow Larry Huntington’s way of building the original SEA BIRD, with grown knees reinforcing the chine and all, held more charm for us.”
The internal knee structure can be seen on Ida Rose, a centerboard Sea Bird built by professional builder Alex Hadden in Maine in 1987. Hadden did some extensive work on Irene Agnes a couple years later, but Aggie’s chines were not replaced or altered at that time. Still owned and sailed by Hadden, Ida Rose was featured in a 2012 issue of Small Boats Monthly, a magazine published by WoodenBoat.
The internal knees on Ida Rose, built in 1987 by Alex Hadden. [Small Boats Monthly photo, 2012]
While the gussets are easier and certainly simplified the replacement of the chine, I can appreciate the strength and elegance of the internal knees. Dave Strecker at Padanaram Boatworks, which is doing the work on Aggie’s current restoration, says he would go with the knees building one from scratch today, and I’m inclined to agree.
However, knowing that Aggie has gussets suggests when the boat was originally framed. The Rudder‘s plans and booklet, How to Build a Cruising Yawl, were revised in 1934 to show gussets and a change to the clamp. Presumably, Aggie’s builder had access to the revised edition, which would put the date of framing after that release. Unless, the gussets are not, in fact, original but were part of a later reframing. Extensive work was done on the boat in 1940.
Bevels and Bends
One of the original goals of the Sea Bird design was to minimize the number of bevels on the boat, making as much as possible able to be replaced with square stock. The chine is definitely the exception to this.
Following the plans for the chine as well as mapping off the old one, Dave and Keith Brown found a big shift in the bevel along the entire run of the hull. They’ve done an awesome job shaping the new chines to meet the bevel. The chine also takes quite a twist and lift as it approaches both the stem and stern. The new chine was steamed into place at the ends to meet this.
Steaming the aft end of the chine log. [Padanaram Boatworks photo]
This is one area of building a new Sea Bird that’s worth noting, but doing it right – particularly at the bow – is central to the boat’s seakeeping performance. At the stem, the chine does not meet flat, but rises up to create the appearance of a curved bow. As a result the boat sheds waves excellently, staying very dry on deck while neither bouncing badly over them nor burying deeply into them.
The new chine log showing bend and bevel. [Padanaram Boatworks photo]
Each of the gussets also is shaped individually to take the angle of the frames at each station. As they pulled the old gussets, Dave and Keith kept them numbered and cut new ones off the old. Replacing all the gussets was a huge part of ridding Aggie of the last of the galvanized steel fasterners. Most of the plank fastenings had been replaced in bronze in earlier restorations and work, and the remaining ones were replaced along with punky planks in this work.
New gussets specific to each station. [Padanaram Boatworks photo]
Unfortunately, pulling planks to access the chines and gussets, and springing their ends at the bow and stern, uncovered other issues, particularly with the stem and transom. But that’s another story.
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One response to “Mysteries of the Chine”
Michael
I built a seabird in austin Texas and sailed her in harwich since 1985. Happy to take anyone sailing 2816364146. Tall rug with cv. Big sunfish. Egypthershey@ yahoo.com
Thomas Fleming Day founded and organized numerous yacht races, including some of the most famous offshore races, but he was quite clear about the limitations of the Sea Bird design: It was not going to win races.
“Now if you build her thinking you are going to get a boat that can sail match races with other boats of her length you are laying up disappointment,” he wrote. “She is not a fast boat, and no boat of her build and shape ever has been or ever can be.”
Unfortunately, Day did not live long enough to see a Sea Bird win its class in just the kind of offshore race that he had popularized – the St. Pete-Habana Yacht Race.
No, it was not our Irene Agnes, but one of the many other notable Sea Birds of the design’s history: Maralen II. And while not a match race, it was the just the kind of race to showcase the Sea Bird’s ability in a variety of offshore conditions.
Running down to Cuba
In 1930, just three years after Day died, the St. Petersburg Yacht Club on the Gulf Coast of Florida joined with the Habana Yacht Club in Cuba to start a race from St. Pete to Havana, a track of about 300nm. The race was the brainchild of George “Gidge” Gandy Jr., a Tampa developer whose father had built the first bridge across the bay to St. Petersburg. He saw the race as a promotion for the Tampa Bay region, still struggling through the Great Depression.
Havana had long been a popular destination for American yachts and sportfishermen, made more enticing by Prohibition. For yachtsmen managing to avoid the worst of the Depression, here was a warm-weather diversion that ended in a place where you could still get good rum.
St. Petersburg, FL to Havana, Cuba. [Google Earth]
The course itself also posed interesting racing challenges. After making their way out of Tampa Bay, the yachts sailed south toward the Florida Keys where decisions had to be made about where and how to pass among the islands and reefs. Once through or around the Keys, the race crossed the often-turbulent Gulf Steam to Cuba forcing the boats’ navigators to compensate for the current in order to arrive at Havana.
St. Pete’s Sea Bird
In March 1930, a group of 11 boats set off on the inaugural race. Among them was Maralen II, a Sea Bird yawl owned by Lew McMasters, then the Commodore of the St. Pete Yacht Club. According to stories passed down by the McMasters family, Maralen II placed third that year. She raced again for several years each year after.
Maralen II sailing out of the St. Pete yacht basin.
McMasters sold the boat prior to the ’32 race, but the new owner, Kent Curtis of Captiva, entered again in 1932 and ’33. In the 1932 race, after a passage dominated by light, shifting breezes, Maralen II beat out race organizer Gidge Gandy’s 36-foot yawl Cynosure by less than an hour on corrected time to win first place in Class B.
Curtis had opted to go west around the outside of the Dry Tortugas, cutting back close along the reef line before turning south to cross the Gulf Stream. Several other yachts in the race had opted to cut east of the Tortugas, hoping for a straighter line to Havana, but when the wind died halfway across, a couple of them were swept further east and had to beat their way back along the Cuban coast to get to the finish line. Curtis rode the Stream right back to Havana, making his Sea Bird the third of the nine boats to cross the line.
Tracks of the yachts in the 1932 St. Pete-Habana Race. Maralen II is in red. [Yachting magazine, June, 1932]
After a break during World War II, the St. Pete-Habana Yacht Race continued until the Cuban revolution in 1959 prevented further visits to the island. In 2017, the race was resurrected following the normalizing of relations with Cuba by the Obama administration, but it was short-lived. The Trump administration’s reversal of Cuban policy and the pandemic ended the annual race after 2019. The McMasters family remained active in the yacht club and the race throughout its history.
Racing Maralen II was just one of Kent Curtis’ adventures. He had been a WWI fighter pilot who was shot down and became a German prisoner until the end of the war. Wintering in Captiva, Florida, in the 1920s, he wrote a series of highly successful children’s adventure stories set in the Florida islands. A consummate outdoorsman, he spent his summers managing a summer camp that he owned in Minnesota, Camp Mishawaka, which still operates today. He died in Fort Myers, Florida in 1957.
Mysteries of Maralen II
Details of Maralen II’s history are unclear beyond her association with the race. She shows up in accounts and photos from the race in The Rudder, and in the history of the St. Pete Yacht Club. The McMasters family and their involvement in the race was the focus of a lot of press attention when the race was resurrected in 2017, but beyond mentions of Maralen II sailing in the race, the boat’s origin and fate do not appear. I have not tracked down when or to whom Curtis may have sold Maralen II.
Maralen II in 1932.
Photos of the boat appear to show a Sea Bird built pretty well to design, at least as can be seen from the waterline up. Maralen II’s rig featured particularly deep-cut sails. Like a lot of Sea Birds, it appears she had a wider and taller housetop, providing additional room below and higher coamings around the cockpit. A toerail of several inches surrounds the deck with scupper holes at intervals.
Maralen II was definitely a notable Sea Bird, and I would love to learn more about the rest of the boat’s history, including who built her, where and when. I’m hoping to continue doing more research on her in the coming year and will update this post with any discoveries.
In the meantime, reviewing imagery from the St. Pete Yacht Club and the race in the 1930s has shown that there was a second Sea Bird at the club at the time. A Sea Bird with a lower housetop and a marconi mizzen appears dressed in flags in front of the club, and was present at the start of the 1932 race, but did not participate.
A second mystery Sea Bird adorns the St. Pete Yacht Club in the early 1930s.
If you have answers to any of these questions, please reach out. We’re eager to learn more about these Birds.
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Note: This is the second post in a new blog about the restoration of our Sea Bird yawl Irene Agnes, and other stories of the Sea Bird design. You can find an intro post here.
When we decided last year to get Irene Agnes back underway, we already knew there were some substantial projects that would need to be completed. But as happens with wooden boats, as soon as you start taking it apart, you discover all sorts of other things that need to be repaired or replaced.
The worklist of repairs to Aggie’s hull has ballooned as a result. We had no choice but to pursue some of the fixes if we wanted a watertight boat. Others we debated over but chose to pursue to ensure that all the new work didn’t end up compromised by some weakness at the heart that we’d neglected. In some cases, it was simply cheaper to replace old parts than to work around them.
It’s all taking a lot longer to do and costing a lot more overall, but the net result is that Aggie is ending up in better shape than ever and ready to go sailing for the foreseeable future. Along the way, the process has also uncovered numerous mysteries about her history and original construction.
Finding Help
As a caveat to any would-be boatbuilders reading this, let me make clear that this is not a project we have done on our own. Laurie and I were keenly aware that we lacked the time, skills, and space to do this ourselves. Our goal was to get the boat back in the water, not spend the rest of our lives making a pastime of trying to restore it ourselves.
We needed professional help. Dave Strecker and Keith Brown, of Padanaram Boatworks in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, came recommended to us by Dave Peterson at Wooden Tangent in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts. When we had first bought the boat in 2004, Dave Peterson and Ben Carlson had replaced the horn timber, recanvased the housetop, and helped us with a number of smaller projects. Dave was closing his shop after retiring last year, but both Strecker and Brown had worked for him before starting their own shop. They had both also worked for Concordia in Padanaram, Massachusetts.
Irene Agnes after arriving at Padanaram Boatworks in Portsmouth, RI.
Keith and Dave have been awesome. Diving into all the frustrating idiosyncrasies of what was originally an amateur-built boat, they’ve still managed to develop a passion for the Sea Bird design. They’re making Irene Agnes as strong as possible, while remaining very cost-conscious at every step along the way.
We’ll have more detailed blog posts on specific projects, but for now, here’s an overview of the major work being done.
The Rudder
At the top of the list when we first contemplated relaunching Aggie was replacing the rudder. This was a project we had considered taking on in 2004 when we first acquired the boat but decided to put off at the time. It was no longer optional.
The old rudder.
Aggie’s rudder was a simple slab of sheet metal cut to shape and welded to a shaft, but it and the heel shoe holding it to the keel had completely rusted out. Ironically, considering it was the first thing we knew we had to address, it has become just about the last thing to get done, as other work has occurred around it. The new rudder will have a bronze pintle and gudgeon with a shaft passing through a stuffing box in the bottom of the hull.
The Chine
We knew the chine logs would eventually need to be refastened and possibly replaced. Pulling the planks uncovered the extent of the decay. The chine was one of the primary places with original steel fasteners, many of which were nearly gone. The chine itself and the gussets holding it to the frames were a mess. Both chines are being replaced with all new gussets as well as the planking over it.
After removing the old chine log.
Stem and Stern
As planks were sprung at either end to access the chine log, issues became apparent with the stem and the transom where the planks were fastened. Numerous refastenings over 90 years had left too many holes to count, and rusting steel fasteners had rotted out the wood they were driven into. The issues might have still been repairable had spaces at both ends not been filled with resin and 5200 at various points in the past, leaving both ends either too brittle or too stuck to fix in place. The net result for Aggie is a new stem and transom.
Section of the old stem.
Keel and Deadwood
Going into the project, we knew there were keelbolts that might warrant replacement. In addition, the iron ballast block at the bottom of the keel was rusting similar to the rudder and shrinking in size as a result. All of this was going to mean doing repair work to the deadwood under the keel, but the plan changed when Dave lofted a new rudder from the plans and discovered that it was 5 inches deeper than the keel. Turns out Aggie had been built with a shallower keel than the plans called for – something I had long suspected but never confirmed.
Pattern for a new rudder from the plans showed the keel was shallower than designed.
Combined with the prospect of rot in some of the original deadwood pieces, we decided to replace the whole thing. A new single piece of white oak deadwood and a new lead cast external ballast block will all match the original design specs for the boat. Doing so has also meant that the very last of any old steel in the boat will be removed and replaced with bronze, ensuring a longer life here out.
Stay tuned for future posts detailing each of these projects, and other improvements we’re making. We’ll also have stories about Aggie’s history and the adventures of other Sea Birds over the last century.
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This is the story of a little wooden boat we found in a barnyard a long time ago and the continuing adventure she’s taken us on. The boat is a gaff-rigged yawl named Irene Agnes. No, we did not give her that name, but we could never change it. “Aggie”, as we affectionately call her, is a Sea Bird yawl – a design that dates back to 1901. Aggie herself dates back at least to the 1930s, and probably earlier.
Irene Agnes on Narragansett Bay
If you’ve found this blog, you might already have some idea what a Sea Bird is, but when I stumbled on Aggie in an online ad in 2004, I’d only vaguely heard of the Sea Bird yawl. Laurie and I were living in Rhode Island, and I was just looking for a boat to play with on Narragansett Bay. Aggie ended up being an amazing boat to sail but also connected me to an incredibly rich history that has changed my life in more ways than I could have imagined.
The Sea Bird
The original Sea Bird
The Sea Bird yawl was conceived in 1901 by Thomas Fleming Day, editor of The Rudder, America’s first recreational sailing and boating magazine, which Day founded in 1890. The plans were drawn by Charles Mower, the magazine’s design editor, and the construction drawings were created by Larry Huntington, a New York boatbuilder who built the first hull, named Sea Bird. They published the design in the magazine, sold plans, and, later, a detailed “how-to-build” book.
In a gilded age when yachting was dominated by wealthy industrialists with professional crews, Tom Day believed that middle-class people could and should go out and have adventures on small boats that they sailed themselves. The Sea Bird was designed to meet that need in a simple boat that was relatively easy to build yet capable of seagoing voyages. To prove it, Day took Sea Bird on dramatic voyages, recounting the details of the boat’s performance in The Rudder. In 1910, he and two other crew sailed Sea Bird across the Atlantic from Rhode Island to Italy.
Sea Bird‘s exploits helped make the design hugely successful, but because Day never controlled who built the boat or how, he and Mower never really made money off it in the way that most yacht designers did. No one knows how many Sea Birds have been built in the last 124 years, but it became an iconic design synonymous with the democratization of yachting.
Irene Agnes Finds Us
Irene Agnes is certainly part of that story. Originally built in Grosse Point, Michigan, the keel may have been laid in 1914, but it is not clear that she ever got underway until about 1933. A previous owner managed to track down titles and registrations for the boat going back nearly that far. Aggie’s long story from Michigan to Massachusetts includes detours through Maine and Maryland and is fodder for another post.
We found her in a barnyard in Scituate, Massachusetts in 2004, but the coincidences surrounding that story made it seem as though she found us (more on that later). She was obviously a solid boat that had been extensively refurbished in the late-1980s but had developed some issues – mostly resulting from poor maintenance by the owners who had acquired her in 2001. We bought her for nearly nothing, and with the help of a wooden boat shop in Mattapoisett, we did the minimum that was needed to get Aggie back in the water.
Irene Agnes in the Scituate barnyard where we found her (2004).
Underway, she quickly lived up to the promise of her design. With her full keel and gaff-rig, she was incredibly stable, balanced yet very handy and versatile. In howling conditions, she could sail perfectly well under jib and mizzen. The boat can be single-handed; accommodates two overnight and four comfortably on daysails. With its less than 4-foot draft, we had a blast exploring Narragansett Bay with friends.
Me and The Old Man
At the same time, owning Aggie compelled me to dive deeper into the history of Thomas Fleming Day, The Rudder and the original Sea Bird design. His mission of bringing sailing adventure to regular people and teaching them the skills to do it resonated with me. I had sailed extensively growing up in South Florida before running off to sea on a tall ship, where I met Laurie. After several years teaching traditional seamanship and navigation on sailing ships full-time, I had taken a shore job as the editor of a series of nautical almanacs and pilot books used mostly by cruising sailors. It was that desk job that had prompted me to find a boat of our own to play on.
In 2008, I went back to school for a graduate degree in maritime history, which I figured would give me the best of both worlds – sailing as well as teaching on shore. At Mystic Seaport that summer, I researched and wrote about Tom Day, combing through hundreds of back issues of The Rudder as well as his books and boat plans in the museum’s archives.
Nicknamed “The Old Man”, Day manifested a curmudgeonly personality in the pages of The Rudder, holding forth on all sorts of topics in the burgeoning boating community at the turn of the century. At the heart of it all, however, was his deeply held belief that there was profound value in going to sea on a boat that you sailed yourself.
Thomas Fleming Day in 1889, the year before he founded The Rudder.
Learning the self-sufficiency of seamanship made one a better person, Day argued. At the same time, he embraced the romance of the sea – that something intangible about being on the open ocean enlivened the human spirit. In between writing how-to treatises on boat handling, he penned books of poetry about the sea. I’ve often imagined that he and Jimmy Buffett would have been fast friends had they lived at the same time.
Irene Agnes Returns
Discovering Tom Day shaped the direction of my academic career, but being back in school in the aftermath of the 2008 recession also left little time or money for Aggie. We eventually laid her up in 2011, imagining she’d be back in a couple years. However, life never goes quite the way you expect, and before we knew it, she’d been on the hard for more than a decade.
At one point, at the beginning of the pandemic,we put her up for sale and contemplated donating her somewhere. There was little interest though, and we were struggling to commit to the idea anyway.
Last year, we decided it was time to get back to sailing for fun again. Now living on Cape Cod, Laurie and I both still work in maritime-related professions but are not on the water ourselves as much for work anymore and desperately missed it. We knew no other boat would ever be as unique, interesting or fun to sail as our little Aggie, so she’s gone into the shop for a major restoration.
Aggie begins the voyage from yardbird back to Sea Bird.
This time, we’re doing all the things we skipped over 20 years ago, as well as making up for a dozen years of largely deferred maintenance. With the incredible work of Dave Strecker and Keith Brown at Padanaram Boatworks in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, Aggie is getting set up for another 90 years of sailing adventures. She’s set to launch this spring (2025).
I’ve started this blog to share Aggie’s history and restoration, but also to uncover the stories of other Sea Birds as well as explore Thomas Fleming Day and the Sea Bird design itself. Reach out through our contact page if you’ve got a Sea Bird story or question.
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The Sea Bird Yawl 
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