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May 10, 2009

Sail ferry had no dock, operations plan

Design is based on vessels from local history

By KIM SMITH DEDAM

LAKE PLACID — Built in 2001, the replica sail ferry Weatherwax lacked a solid operation plan since day one.

It was built by traditional boat builder Douglas Brooks in a covered canvas Quonset hut at Crown Point.

The idea at first was to carry tourists on original sail-ferry crossings at the lower end of Lake Champlain, between Crown Point, Port Henry, Westport, Ticonderoga and Vermont.

No landing dock was built or arranged for the boat, since most sail ferries years ago landed flat against the sandy shore.

The historic use of a sail ferry, it seems, did not fit into modern transportation regulations.

Jim Bullard, a ferry operator at Ticonderoga for 22 years, gave a history presentation on sail ferries recently at the Ticonderoga Historical Society.

His extensive collection of photographs and original licensing documentation shows most sail ferries plied short crossings south of Westport and Port Henry.

Sail ferries were designed by farmers or lay ferryman generally, in the late 1800s to haul straight across narrow sections of southern Lake Champlain.

The boats were square and box-like, with a fixed sail swung to one side. They were built double-ended, the hull shaped the same fore and aft.

A unique lee board provided stability in the waves, and the vessel had a long steering oar run manually as a rudder.

The boats didn't turn in the wind, Bullard told an overflow crowd. They were a unique piece of Lake Champlain history.

Weatherwax was built as an exact replica.

The Coast Guard certified it to carry passengers a half-hour at a time and no more than a mile from shore.

Officials in the Town of Moriah looked into adopting the Weatherwax in 2003 but opted out when they realized it would cost nearly $20,000 per season to operate, including insurance, dockage charges and captain's fees.

Dr. Anthony Vaccaro, president of the Champlain Valley Transportation Museum, which is looking to permanently dry dock the replica, quantified the estimate, saying they have put $40,000 into the boat and its operation since they rescued it from frozen docks at Chimney Point in late December 2003.

A $3,500 grant helped foster educational programs on the Weatherwax in its first year of sailing in Plattsburgh, said its former Plattsburgh captain, Frank Pabst.

"And I hauled over 300 school kids in the second year."

In the third year, 2007, the Transportation Museum obtained a $15,000 grant from Sen. Betty Little to continue to run the sail ferry, Pabst said.

The operation sold from $3,000 to $8,000 in ferry tickets.

But Pabst left the operation.

He said the Transportation Museum inadvertently threw away the original Weatherwax sails, worth about $8,000, "thinking it was garbage."

"I was very distressed at how everything was going," Pabst said. "We (Vaccaro and the museum Board of Directors) got a lot of sweat and blood into that boat ourselves."

Vaccaro said that after the first three years on the water, the museum lost its new captain, Doug Powers, in 2008, and the Weatherwax stopped sailing.



E-mail Kim Smith Dedam at: kdedam@pressrepublican.com

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