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boater with delicate skin might choose a trawler equipped with a pilot house. A person with an inner inclined to sea sickness might choose a stable catamaran. For a sailor that recently visited Oriental recently, it was another sense that influenced the purchase of his boat. “My wife” says John Almberg aboard the 23-foot wooden cutter “Blue Moon”, “has a very sensitive nose”.

Blue Moon

John, of Huntington Station, New York, describes himself as “just a guy with 4 kids, a mortgage – and an extremely understanding wife”. Her name is Helena. Recently, with his kids growing up, he began looking for a new direction in which to steer his life. A computer programmer by trade, he wanted to do more with sailboats. The goal, one day, would be to write about them. Helena, with a background in chemical engineering, was supportive.

John Almberg

John had grown up sailing. Trouble is, for as much as Helena wanted to support John’s new dream, there were a few things that didn’t excite her about fiberglass sailboats. He says she wasn’t enthused of how the gelcoat, the coating that gives fiberglass boats their color, felt when it chalked and turned powdery over time. More troubling was their odor. She “didn’t like the way they smelled below”.

One day, during a Northern cold spell, she and John went aboard a wooden sailboat. A ship’s heater warmed the wood cabin, releasing a cedary aroma that much cheered Helena’s sense of smell. The aroma struck a positive note unfound in previous plastic boats. This she could live with.

“So” Johns says, “I decided to get a wooden boat”.

John inspects Blue Moon the morning of his departure. A wood boat through and through, she sports laminated ribs, plywood decks and a wood spar.

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Onboard the systems are simple and accessible. In an emergency, the blue manual bilge pump can be operated from above or below decks.

In early 2010 John purchased a wood sailboat he’d spotted on eBay. The boat was Blue Moon, a gaff rigged yawl built to Thomas Gilmer’s “Blue Moon” design. She was constructed of strip planked wood, measured 23 feet, drew 4 feet of water and displaced 8,000 pounds – heavy by modern standard.

While her design was clear, her history wasn’t. John says it was “rumored she was possibly built in the mid-West”, then sailed down the Mississippi River to the Caribbean and Venezuela. She wound up in Florida. Her second owner neglected her. The next, an aged gentleman named Bob, owned 10 wood sailboats.

He put her on the market and John bought her “about a year before it was too late”. Trouble was, Blue Moon was 5 miles up the Steinhatchee River on Florida’s west coast. And he and Helena lived on Long Island.

Some commuting was in order.

Hang on: Blue Moon lacks stanchions and lifelines found on most contemporary cruising boats. This reinforce the old saying “One hand for yourself, one for the ship”.

Over the next months, John and Helena traveled back and forth between New York and Florida preparing their new boat for the 2000 mile trek North. A thorough sanding revealed sections of paint John describes as “swimming pool blue”. The deck received a coat of cream-colored paint more in keeping with the vessel’s traditional lines. The spartan interior, which had never really been completed, was tidied. All in all, though, the vessel was in solid condition. By April, Blue Moon was ready for the Intracoastal Waterway.

Traveling down the Florida Gulf Coast, John traversed the Sunshine State via Lake Okeechobee. Here he encountered short, steep waves that were more like the “square waves I remembered from electronics shop in Junior High” than the easy ocean swell most sailors prefer.

In St Catherine’s Sound, Georgia, John says he sailed “into a black cloud at water level”. Just as he entered the tempest, a 50 foot boat emerged into the weather that “looked like something out of the movies”. The larger boat’s crew was fleeing the ill weather.

John and Blue Moon traveled through it and emerged unharmed.

A deep well occupies Blue Moon’s forward deck. When going forward in inclement weather, it offers John a secure area to work the jib and staysail. It also provides a handy place to store any anchor chain that may not fit below decks.

One of John’s biggest challenges have been keeping Blue Moon on course when he’s not at the helm. For basic self steering know how, he consulted John Letcher’s book “Self Steering for Small Craft”. For the offshore portions of his journey, like the leg from Cedar Key to Tarpon Springs, Florida, Letcher’s sheet-to-tiller arrangements worked fine.

Not so in the Intracoastal Waterway. There, in the sheltered waters that can force crews into endless hours behind the helm, he came to rely on an electronic autopilot. Like most singlehanders who fall in love with the gadget that holds the course without complaint, he gave his a nickname. These days, in a nod to his wife Helena, it’s “Helma” that holds the course when John disappears below for a cup of coffee.

So what does John plan to do with Blue Moon once he returns home?
Top on his list is to make his vessel more “wife friendly”. In its present state, the boat sports a Spartan interior – little more than port and starboard berths and a small food locker. Hammocks and ropes secure loose objects. In the future, he would like to build more accommodations into his craft.

The interior John plans to upgrade for increased spousal comfort

Then there’s the larger dream, the one he bought the wood boat to fulfill. John would like to write about wooden boats and boat builders – how they cut the lumber, mill the wood, construct the vessels. How wood boats, once they’re on the water, live and travel. He must follow the journey initiated by his wife’s nose.

But first he has to bring Blue Moon home. He still has 800 miles to go. And his patient wife has given him until November. “Helena” John says, “says I have to be home before Thanksgiving.”

Related Links:

John is keeping a record of his voyage on unlikelyboatbuilder.com.

Posted Tuesday October 26, 2010 by Bernie Harberts

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