Michael Norgang

Sitting comfortably in the dog house of Adventuress with the wind howling outside and the boat pitching with every gust and swell, I enjoy thinking about the chain of events that have led me here as delivery crew on Adventuress.

About three years ago I was hired by Rockport Marine and was one of three carpenters to begin restoring this same boat. My first day at RMI I was instructed to pull a garboard plank constructed of two inch thick teak that was through-bolted and tightly fit. In the words of my project manager, we were going to "take a look." With a feeling of trepidation, but with Taylor Allen's encouragement, I took a two inch chisel and proceeded to demolish what, at the time, was the most expensive and exotic piece of wood I had ever touched.

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The last time I anchored in Pulpit Harbor, my wife volunteered to get dinner ready, and so the kids and I set up the rig for our little tender and ghosted around the outer harbor in the last of the light before sunset. I didn't have a camera with me but I found these shots online taken by another family who enjoyed the same view of the sun dipping behind the Camden Hills as one of the local windjammers anchored for the night…you get the idea.

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Since our last post, summer has faded into fall, and frantic pace of the ADVENTURESS project has finally slowed down. The work list, seemingly endless and overflowing on yellow legal pads, has been whittled down to a few items. The boat has traveled to the Maine Boats, Homes and Harbors Show, the Newport International Boat Show, and the Eggemoggin Reach Regatta and thousands of people have taken off their shoes, walked over the decks, poked through the drawers and cupboards, and run their hands over the raised panel interior.
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It’s been a while since I posted about the goings on in the design office here a Rockport. If you’ve been keeping tabs on us in other ways—Facebook, newsletters, or out on the water—you already know it has been a busy summer here at Rockport Marine and I hope you’ll forgive us for the radio silence from the design office. Every project is an all hands on deck effort as completion dates approach, and ADVENTURESS has proved no exception. We had a spectacular turnout at the launch, engine trials and sailing trials went smoothly, and we got to show her off at the Fife Symposium in Castine alongside a few of her cousins. Perhaps most memorably we had a fantastic few days of casual racing in the Castine Classic Yacht Race, the Camden Classic Feeder Race, and the Eggemoggin Reach Regatta. In fact, if there was a downside to that whole week it was that from the foredeck I never got to see how good she looked going about her business. It would be fair to say she was well received. In fact I think ADVENTURESS is the first of our projects to draw enough traffic to the website to crash the server. She did it twice.
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The night before we launched ADVENTURESS, I went by Rockport Marine Park on my bike to look at the boat before I pedaled home. I crossed the little creek we call Goose River, and marveled that in less than 24 hours an 83-foot boat would be maneuvered into it. It looked narrow and shallow as I cruised over the tiny foot bridge. 


Across the green lawn of the park, opposite of the statue of Andre the seal, ADVENTURESS looked huge. She dwarfed the lime kilns and old train, the remaining artifacts of Rockport's former life an industrial town. Although it was evening, long after closing time, our crew was still moving up and down the ladder. Martha Coolidge, the interior designer of the boat, was planning to be there late into the evening installing cushions, adjusting pillows and fixtures and making sure all of the interior details were just so.


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Over the course of the year, I give a lot of tours to school classes. Although the teachers sometimes balk as their charges frolic through the heavy machinery and scaffolding, kids generally love the boatyard. For some kids, it is even a real "a-ha" moment--that they might be able to make a living making something beautiful with their hands.


Over the past three years, I have shown hundreds of school kids the ADVENTURESS restoration. Kids and adults alike find it overwhelming, 83 feet of classic yacht loveliness crammed into one of our work bays. On the floor, the boat towers over us, and when you walk on deck, you must duck to avoid hitting your head on the ceiling. My favorite question to ask them is, "How the heck do you think we're going to get this big boat out of here?"


The question really stumps them. I've heard children postulate that we could remove the roof and crane it out, flood the shop and float it out, or even drag it out with ropes. To complicate matters, our boat hoist can't lift a boat like ADVENTURESS, she is just too heavy. So now really--how are we going to do it?

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“A friend and, in a technical sense, an employee, but more truly as a partner.” That’s how Olin Stephens described his relationship with Aage Nielsen. As to their working relationship during Nielsen’s tenure as head of the Sparkman & Stephens Boston office, he had this to say: “Theoretically I was the chief designer, but I was well aware that Aage’s knowledge and experience were far greater than my own.”

As far as endorsements from your boss, on a scale of one to ringing, that one knocks the bell right off the top. And this is from a man who has himself been described as the most successful and influential yacht designer of the last century. Mr. Stephens wrote these words for all posterity in the forward to Maynard Bray and Tom Jackson’s book Worthy Of The Sea. The book is a fine effort filled with biographies of Nielsen and his boats and is an excellent introduction to his life and work.
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