Let me introduce Duffy, our Bridgedeck Cruiser that we have owned (or has it owned us?) and have been working on for about a year now. Duffy was commissioned by Dr. Eugene Kidd for the enjoyment of his family in Seattle, WA. The design was penned by Edwin Monk Sr., a prominent West Coast naval architect, in 1947 and she was built by the Adams Boat Company, a small boatyard on Seattle's Lake Union. She was launched in 1950. Her original Plan Drawing, 1947: And two pictures from the day of her launch, 1950: Dr. Kidd owned Duffy right up to his death in 1992 and in those 42 years, two generations of his family plied the Puget Sound, Salish Sea, and the Inside Passage to Alaska. She was purchased by the Byrnes Family and given a cosmetic and systems restoration from 1992 to 1996. The Byrneses cruised Duffy mostly in the protected Southern Puget Sound until advancing age enticed them to sell her to my wife and I in the spring of 2017. In the year that we have had Duffy, we have given her quite a workout, cruising her the length of Puget Sound. She has reciprocated in giving us plenty of projects and issues to attend to. I'll leave those details to a later post or posts in this thread...
No, Duffy has never been anywhere but the West Coast. However Edwin Monk was a prolific naval architect who designed several thousand vessels over a half century including commercial fishing boats, WWII patrol boats, sailing yachts, rowboats, and pleasure cruisers like ours. The boating industry through the 1950s was very different from today. With the exception of a few companies, like Chris Craft, boats were not built on assembly lines and the vast majority were bespoke designs by a naval architect and built by small, local shops and boatyards each with their own flavor and way of doing things. It was very much akin to coach builders in the prewar auto industry. Monk's series of "Bridgedeck Cruisers" all follow a familiar format and layout, but of the perhaps thousand built, virtually none were identical to each other. They range from 30 to 50 feet, and differ in interior layout, mechanical installations, engines, framing, hull shape, and other little details, even if they look the same from a distance. For instance, a boat designed by Monk for a customer in Georgia might be made of locally available cypress planking over live oak frames, while a boat built here in Washington, like Duffy, would be Yellow and Port Orford Cedar over white oak. As a result the framing and other structural layout will be tweaked to optimize those materials.
Here's a years worth of adventures in pictures... The day we had her surveyed before agreeing to take Duffy on: Bringing Duffy to her new home, via the Tacoma Narrows: Commencement Bay on the 4th of July:
And then in February we had a surprisingly bad windstorm that caused quite a bit of damage in our marina. Duffy was a casualty when her stern cleat pulled out of the deck and the wind and tidal surge pushed her bow into the concrete dock...
We had planned on having her out of the water this spring, but with the damage our timetable and to-do list got changed quite a bit. We brought Duffy up to a boatyard in Seattle, not far from where she was built, to have her stem repaired in addition to a bunch of below-the-waterline work and a repaint of the hull. They put in the yard right next to one of Duffy's cousin's, a 1948 Grandy built Monk that was having some planks replaced: We cut out the bad portion of the stem and got to work scarfing in a new piece of white oak:
In the meantime, my wife who is a trained shipwright, recaulked the bottom while I replaced fasteners:
Now she's ready for another season of cruising around the sound. We took her up to Vashon Island a couple weekends ago...
Thanks. I'm not sure if we will make it, we tentatively have the North Sound planned for that time of year, but it all depends on my ever changing work schedule...
Recaulking the boat bottom! Helped a friend do that when I was off from knee surgery many moons ago. Boy that is hard and awkward work. Your boat is beautiful, and so are your sailing destinations.
That thing is bitchin! When I lived up in the Puget Sound area I often dreamed of one day having a boat of my own to cruise around. I bet there will never be a shortage of areas to explore, just in the Sound. You guys are living the dream!
That is wild. Absolutely beautiful. Growing up landlocked I didn't get much exposure to classic boats and they've always had this almost fantasy-esque appeal to me.
Thanks all. I can't wait for this summer's cruising season to get some fruits out of our labors. Originally Duffy was powered by a Chrysler Crown Flathead Six. In 1956 she was re-powered with a Chrysler 331 Hemi. The Hemi lasted until its 1996 restoration but by then was apparently beyond saving, it was replace by a GM Vortec 4.3L V6. The the V6 was replaced with a rebuilt one of the same type a few months before we took ownership. While part of me wishes she still had the Crown or the Hemi, the other part of me is fine with a power plant that has just as much (or more) power than the previous mills but at a much lower weight and fuel economy. I also like the fact that when I turn the key, I know it will start, and the fact that I can get parts anywhere. When the current motor gives up, I want to switch to a small diesel, but with only a couple hundred hours on the V6, it'll be a while before I have to think about that.
In a collision of Hotrods and Boats, I bought this a while back... ...the 1957 Large Logo SW gauges will be going in one of my cars, while the panel will be going into Duffy as it is a match to what was originally at her helm (I'm on the look out for some nice "Wings" electrical sender gauges).
The Jalopy Journal
