Written by Joel Thurtell
Photographs by Adam Thurtell
I thought I had everything I’d need for the job — a 100-foot tow rope, lines for tying the boat to docks, my tool box and one of those compartmentalized plastic tackle boxes that loads from two sides. Long ago, so long ago that I’ve forgotten most of what I loaded into it, I stuffed in every sailboat part I thought I might ever need on a Canadian island far away from a West Marine store. I’ve got turnbuckles because once I lost a couple turnbuckles and couldn’t find replacements; turning blocks of various descriptions, cleats, rivets and a rivet tool, a swaging tool, hog clamps, spare telltales and many things I’ve forgotten.
I had all the tools, all the parts I’d need. And I had a plan.
My plan that day was to drive our motorboat from our cottage roughly eight miles through McGregor Bay waters in northwestern Georgian Bay to a marina on Birch Island, where my sailboat was parked on its trailer. The mission: step the mast in the boat, launch the boat, and tow it back to our island cottage.
My sailboat is Plug Nickel, a wooden Lightning. There is a long story about that, but I’ll leave it for another time.
Oh well, here it is in a nutshell: Plug Nickel began life as a male mold for making female molds for manufacturing plastic sailboats which had come into vogue by 1965, when the “plug” was built. A boatbuilder named David Nickels, working for a company called Nickels & Holman in Fenton, Michigan, assembled a hull from western red cedar planks formed to mahogany frames with a mahogany centerboard trunk. The result was a beautiful Nickels & Holman Lightning, consigned to the inglorious role of making a succession of molds and to lie upside down in a shed until I paid $500 for the hull in 1994.
Seven years later, in June 2001, after encountering many unforeseen glitches, I finished converting the plug from an industrial artifact to a working sailboat when I launched Plug Nickel in Cass Lake at the Pontiac Yacht Club.
I’ve written plenty about the trials and tribulations of restoring my wooden Lightning — enough for the first of a series of books, for sale on amazon as PLUG NICKEL.
My guide through the restoration process was Dave Nickels, builder of the last wooden hull turned out by Nickels & Holman. Future Lightnings would resemble my boat, which provided the matrix for both hull and deck.
When I bought the hull in 1994, my plan was to take my wooden Lightning to Canada, where my wife’s family had a cottage on an island in McGregor Bay. My idea for the boat was to encase the wooden hull in Fiberglas as protection against hitting the many hard rock shoals that abound in McGregor Bay.
Dave Nickels let me know he thought it was a bad idea to sheathe the hull in plastic.
If water gets in between the glass and the wood, it could rot the western red cedar hull planks, Dave warned.
But I knew the waters and one thing I did not want to suffer was damage to my sailboat’s hull from those unexpected rocks that so often loom in front of McGregor Bay boaters.
By the time I brought Plug Nickel to McGregor Bay in spring 2010, my wife’s family had sold their island. In 2009, we bought a cottage on another island in the Bay. Our cottage faces water virtually without shoals, in contrast to the old site that was surrounded by some of the nastiest underwater rocks I’ve ever seen.
It was a beautiful June day in 2010 when I loaded my tools into our Crestliner motorboat and headed for the marina to launch Plug Nickel for its first jaunt on McGregor Bay.
I’d spent a lot of time thinking about just how I would rig the boat. I had all the tools I’d need. The one thing I forgot was my camera.
J & G Marina can get pretty busy around the boat launch, and I’d given this some thought. I wanted to concentrate on rigging the boat, and given Plug Nickel’s somewhat complex set-up, I didn’t want to be interrupted by calls to move the boat or by well-wishers who might want to chit-chat. Rather than rig the boat near the launch area, I decided to put the mast up on high ground in the parking area.
With the help of one of Harold McGregor’s workers, I stepped the 27-foot mast through the deck and took my time fastening forestay, shrouds and backstay to the hull.
I’d already attached the trailer to our Honda CR-V car. Karen and I got into the CR-V, and I slowly wended my way along the dirt road of the parking area. I’d need to back the boat into the launch, and my plan was to drive the car behind the J & G store/post office, then back the rig while turning, pointing the stern of the boat toward the launch ramp.
Karen and I were chatting away as I approached the store. Karen looked back and shouted that Plug Nickel had fallen off the trailer!
Well, the boat didn’t exactly fall off the trailer.
It might better describe what happened to say that I literally scraped this 700-pound wooden boat off the trailer.
I’d forgotten about the power lines that run across the J & G driveway.
Those power lines are lower than the 27-foot mast of Plug Nickel.
What absolute foolishness! Towing a sailboat under a set of low-hanging power lines was just plain dumb!
But at the time my emotions were close to despair. The shame of my stupidity would come later. I’d worked for seven years, on and off, to convert this plug into Plug Nickel, a wonderful, nimble sailboat. Had I destroyed my dream sailboat in a few seconds of foolishness?
I walked around the boat, which was lying slanted on the tarmac of the main drive, its mast caught in the wires. First thought — lucky this is a wooden boat. Wood insulates from electrical current.
On the gray tarmac I could see a faint smudge of blue paint from Plug Nickel’s hull. I looked at the hull itself. A light area on the bottom showed where the hull had slid and lost some paint. Very little paint.
It is a testament to Dave Nickels’ boat building skills that there was no structural damage to the hull.
Nada.
Harold McGregor, one of the owners of J & G, came by and began orchestrating the disconnection of Plug Nickel from Ontario’s electrical grid. Judicious use of a front-end loader allowed for lifting the boat and freeing the mast. Then I had to unfasten shrouds, fore- and backstay, and remove the mast. Harold used the loader to lift Plug Nickel back onto the trailer.
This time, I rigged the boat in the launch area.
“We’ll keep this between us,” Harold said. “I won’t tell a soul.”
“You’re not gonna sell the story to the Expositor?” I said.
“No, no, not a word,” said Harold.
There was a gleam in Harold’s eye, though.
A few days later, I stopped at Harbor Vue Marina outside Little Current on Manitoulin Island. I wanted to talk to the proprietor, Stan Ferguson. When I finished talking to Stan, Harold McGregor was behind me. I walked out of the office and realized I’d forgotten something. I went back into the marina office, taking a place behind Harold. Harold, it seems, didn’t see me.
“You know that guy that just left?” says Harold to Stan. One of Stan’s staffers had seen me come back. She said, “You mean Joel?”
Oops. But it was too late. He’d started the story.
It’s out there now.
