I'm Pepper, I'm a boatbuilder, sailor, cold water swimmer, and storyteller. Kathleen is a spicy story of love, loss, high adventure, and rebirth. She has come to me through many hands, some skilled and some not, but always with the appreciation of a beautiful form and a dream of gliding across the sea in a present day manifestation of an ancient working vessel.

Kathleen is a gaff rigged cutter designed for heavy seas and hard work. She's heavy, wide, and well built.

She has suffered for many years after the tragic loss of her former caretaker, Luke Maheu, who was a well loved, widely known figure in our small wooden boat community.

The boat laid untouched for more than five years in the corner of our marina collecting mussels and sideways glances. She was becoming a waterway hazard and came to a recent board meeting as a save or scrap item.

I hoped "someone" would take her and fix her up, her lines were still obviously classic and fair, but her hull condition spoke of disaster.

With the threat of a city dump becoming her coffin, I stepped up to organize a rescue.

It's scary and a huge risk because I'm on a fixed income and have very little capital to allocate for such a large project.

On the other hand, I'm uniquely able to do much of the labor and organization necessary to bring her back to full service having gone to wooden boatbuilding school and spent a great deal of time meeting other shipwrights and wooden boatowners in Port Townsend, WA and Portland, Maine learning about restoration work.

I want to share the process with you can't wait to make her an active part of the Master Mariner community again! I've already started on her restoration and hope you'll help to make her a sound and celebrated sailing vessel once more.

My first update:

Kathleen continues to inspire me in more and more ways. Her history is rich and since she isn’t older than me, previous owners have been reaching out in different ways, all with stories and reminiscences of Kathleen in better times.

Lila Scott owned Kathleen for fifteen years. Her daughter Falipa grew up on the boat, swimming in the bay and sleeping in her cozy interior for years at a time. Falipa is now an apprentice to Bob Darr, director of the Arques school at the Spaulding center in Sausalito. I recently met Bob at the wooden boat festival where he agreed to come look at Kathleen and do a survey with his two apprentices, Falipa and Tim. Falipa reminisced about her childhood and also shared that she was becoming a rigger, working with another traditional master rigger on the schooner Freda B! She is interested in helping me inspect, re-rig, and, serve the new shrouds Kathleen will require. I’m very looking forward to having her “onboard” the restoration project. She’s a personal delight and seems already very knowledgeable about traditional rigging methods.

Another delightful person I met was Ian at Brion Toss rigging. I drove up a couple weeks ago to speak with him in person. Which almost didn’t happen because they were having a closed door meeting. As I was leaving a phone message about “Kathleen, a Lyle Hess Gaff rigged cutter,” the door burst open and Ian asked if I was the message—leaver. We both laughed and had a very nice conversation about steps going forward with her restoration. We have an agreement to make concise, clear conversations about exactly what it is I need specific help with, because his time is $200 an hour. I am hoping that between our local expert Courtney, Falipa, Bob Darr, and Chris Jainini, I won’t have to ask Ian very many questions.

Another BIG deal, Tom List helped me sort out was starting Kathleen’s engine!!! She runs GREAT. The water pump needs to be rebuilt, but she’s under her own power at present, coming from a healthy sounding 1GM Yanmar.

Other progress thus far has been: Replaced one of the cockpit settee supports. Shimmed the tiller with a piece of doorskin that I will later swap for a thin piece of G10. Removed the gallows, had the survey, and unstepped the mast which was completed on Wednesday, July 2 for $275. I had it done by Jessy at KKMI because I wanted to keep the mast at the club while I work on it, the price per day to have the mast at KKMI is far beyond my means and also much farther from the shop where I’ll be making new spreaders and replacing the missing hounds… aaand where I HOPE me and Falipa will be parceling and serving the new shrouds. Below the mast step, there was a 2016 nickel and a Sacajawea dollar that Lila placed next to the nickel that was there prior when she unstepped the mast.

I have covered the mast partner opening where the racoons and other critters could otherwise get in, make nice little beds and eat my cashews.

My summer goals are perhaps lofty: I wish to complete the rigging and re-step the mast. (Currenty, I am making a proper set of supports so that the mast will easily spin as required for work) After the rig is complete, I want to haul her out, and sister all of the broken frames (I counted 9) and while she’s out, I plan to paint her topsides white and grey. That feels pretty ambitious to me, but very satisfying indeed.

Second update:

Kathleen’s mast is down, stored for now on the back fence at PSPYC. Mitch and I have taken all the shrouds and halyards off the mast and neatly organized it for later this month when I will gather a small band of riggers to try and sort out exactly what I have to accomplish in order to re-step and re-rig. Most days right now, I’m sanding, repairing and protecting the spars, working on the new chainplates, knocking down corners so they can be properly galvanized. I’ve gotten four of six back, the last two should be completed in the next couple weeks, then they go for galvanizing. I’ve also gotten a bucket of ceramic coated bolts to mount them with.

I’ve changed my mind about how to protect the spars a couple times. I have a book that tells me I should use beeswax and corn oil. Someone else said I should use a different oil with the wax. Another person said I should just use tung oil.

A couple weeks ago I met Ian on Facebook who has the same exact boat. He’s pulling his mast this week also, and told me his twelve year old Awlwood Awlgrip covered mast is still shiny and bright! So, I pivoted. The deal with the beeswax blend is that it’s inexpensive, but I’d have to go up the mast and slop some more on quarterly to every six months…. Any soft oil coating, actually, which is not something I have looked forward to doing. Ian has also shared with me some photos of his drawings (he’s got a complete set of plans) so that I can more effectively establish locations and connection points for the missing rig items, most notably, the spreaders which are MIA. The spreaders have been an item of concern for me since getting the boat. I couldn’t figure out exactly where they went…. or how they’re mounted.

Some more help I’ve gotten is from another guy on Facebook who goes by the name “Lyle Hess.” His actual name is Michael Hess and he’s Lyle’s (Kathleen’s designer) Nephew. We met because I was trying to track down a set of plans. I heard they would be $500, and I felt that would be a fair price. Michael tells me they’re in fact, $2500. Which is a price far beyond any I’m willing to pay. However, Michael says he’ll help me out with numbers and any details I need a plan for. He’s also sent me some good photographs of the original “Renegade” drawings and given me a location for attaching the spreaders.

As I work through the inspection of the spars, I note the mast appears sound, if not darkly stained and dry. Aside from some peeling varnish, the boom looks very good, but the gaff has some issues. I’ve noted a bit of dry rot in the aft section, a portion that would only be under strain when I raise the topsail. There are also lot of empty holes where hardware has been installed and removed, creating some soft spots near them. I’d considered scarfing the one aft section with the dry rot, but I’ve decided to repair the area with some graving pieces, fill all the holes and put the gaff back into service, but with plans to build a new one. I intend to take Kathleen offshore and don’t want to have a potentially jenky spar scratching at the back of my mind.

The logistics for this restoration are complex. I may not be getting it right, but I feel like things are moving in the right direction. I’ve been concerned that perhaps I should have first repaired the cracked frames, dug out the rot from her transom and repaired the broken and missing planks, but I also wanted to know if the spars were sound. I’m not sure how that would have changed anything, but it was top of mind for me. I’m anxious to get to her hull, but I don’t want to have big projects everywhere all at once. I’m also worried it will feel overwhelming. ….More overwhelming.

As of this writing, I have four coats of Awlwood clear on the boom and three on the bowsprit and companionway cover boards. They look great! The gaff will be simply varnished since I don’t intend to have that item in service for many years, and the Awlwood coating is extremely expensive.

Also, at this moment, Kathleen is hanging on her mooring ball. She looks so pretty floating out there and I keep imagining her with a fresh coat of paint and bright spars. Sigh…. she’s a real dreamboat.