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After all, why would a crew spend months this year at the Westmoreland County shop hewing a sailboat keel out of a huge pine tree with little more than a chain saw and hand tools?
Not to mention rehabbing a hull with odd-sized pine planking with enough twists, turns and angles to make the most experienced shipwright scratch his head.
Then, after using hand tools to carve out a centerboard case just 4 inches wide but 5 feet long, there were the deck planks to be lined with cotton batting. Each piece had to be tamped in with hammer and chisel, ready to be pinched by planks that will pinch the batting when wet.
"Most of the deck was in bad shape when we got the Virginia W.," said Marty Miller, the man who headed the effort to save this 37-foot shallow-draft sailboat known as a skipjack. "Back in the days when it was working, the salt water kept it from rotting. But she hasn't been worked for many a season."
That storied past is the reason Miller and a handful of others who care about Chesapeake Bay history and maritime heritage have created the Port Kinsale Foundation Inc.
Over the past four years, the group of businessmen, lawyers, artists and others have begun raising the $100,000 they say it will take to restore the Virginia W., built in 1904 in Guilford on Virginia's Eastern Shore.
Purchased from Tilghman Island Capt. Bobby Marshall in 1998, the Virginia W. is in the third year of a reconstruction program that has captured the attention of many who love bay lore and the old ways of boat construction.
"The keel was a pine tree that was down on the road at Sandy Point," said Jeffrey Moss, a member of the Port Kinsale crew working on the boat under the direction of shipwright Ian Williams. "There aren't many keels cut these days with a chain saw."
Those not familiar with the term skipjack won't understand what the single-masted sailboats symbolize for many, or why otherwise frugal businessmen will spend and raise big money to keep one of these boats sailing.
"It's part of this area's history, symbolizing the way of life that existed here for so long," said Robert Crown, one of the foundation's board members. "It's that way of life that brought so many of us here, the charm that is a part of this place."
The Virginia W. is one of only a handful of survivors from a skipjack fleet that once numbered nearly a thousand.
Taking advantages of a shallow draft that allowed them to get into oyster beds in low water, the vessels were the workhorses of the oyster-harvesting industry, scraping millions of bushels of sharp-shelled oysters from grounds up and down the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.
The sailboats, limited to just a day or two of harvesting by push-boat motors each week, once covered the waters like geese on a fall pond, their small stern compartments the only home oystermen knew for days on end.
Tales, ranging from everything the never-ending seafood stew pots to drunken bar customers shanghaied for skipjack crews, are just the spice of the skipjack history that many hold dear.
Miller, who lives in Aquia Harbour in Stafford County but runs Port Kinsale Marina and is developing a residential project in nearby Coles Point, said the three-year restoration is coming to an end.
In the first year of the work, the restoration crew repaired the decks. Next came the removal of the copper sheathing on the hull to replace rotten planks there.
This year, the focus has been on installing a new keel and replacing weakened sections of the bottom and its bracing.
Miller, who noted that the old keel had to be cut out and removed before the new one could be installed, said they found an interesting piece in that process: a section of a tree trunk and a large branch extending from it that served as the angled "L" bow support.
After the restoration, the foundation plans to use the boat as a piece of living history, and will take it from time to time to demonstrations or historic celebrations.
It's home harbor will be Port Kinsale Marina, where visitors can step aboard.
"The Kinsale Museum sends people down from time to time, and that's exactly what we have in mind," said Miller. "We have gone through this restoration so people can step on the Virginia W. and see a piece of the bay's history."
It's one of three skipjacks being restored in the Northern Neck. One was done privately by Herb Carden at nearby Sandy Point, and another is ongoing at the Fisherman's Museum in Reedville.
Those interested in visiting the Virginia W. may call the marina at 804/472-2044 and ask for David.
ROB HEDELT can be reached at The Free Lance-Star, 616 Amelia St., Fredericksburg, Va. 22401; by fax at 373-8455; by phone at 374-5415; or by e-mail at rhedelt@freelance star.com.