Skipjack
Restoration Project: Introduction
Introduction
| Project History | The
Skipjacks
Project Manager | Shipwright Apprentices
The daily loss of seafaring folk
culture, commercial fishing livelihood,
maritime skills, and historic working watercraft
has reached a crisis point in this country
and abroad. In a unique way, the Chesapeake
Bay Maritime Museum has responded to this
situation through our Skipjack Restoration
Project. [More]
Skipjack Update
The skipjack Fannie L. Daugherty,
built in Crisfield in 1904 and currently
owned by Capt. Delmas Benton of Deal Island,
was nudged off the Boat Yard railway on
the morning of Nov. 1, 2003, the date
of the Museum's annual OysterFest and
coincidentally just in time for her crew
to begin the new oyster dredging season.
Beneath a recoppered hull and a fresh
coat of paint, the boat was refitted with
most of the port and starboard chine logs,
a new white-oak stern post and a considerable
number of bottom boards and side planking.
Near the end of her two-month stay on
the railway, shipwrights and apprentices
logged 50-hour work weeks to get Fannie
ready for the oystering season. The skipjack
is one of the last commercially-licensed
sailboats to dredge Chesapeake Bay oysters
and Capt. Benton and his crew were eager
to put her to work.
Fannie had been at the Museum since
the close of the past spring's oyster
season. Long before she was pulled onto
the railway, boat carpenters replaced
her old mast with a new one shaped from
Douglas fir as well as a new boom from
salvaged wood of her old mast.
  
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