Wendy Goodwin had been so busy running Cape Cod Shipbuilding, the 122-year-old family business, she didn’t have time to have a family of her own. Then the pandemic hit, the opportunity arose, and she began the process of fostering to adopt an 8-year-old girl.

On a day in early spring, when the sun shines on the Cape and the winter is almost forgotten, Goodwin’s daughter is in her office attending math class remotely. Goodwin is in a spare room, once the domain of the parts manager. Long before that, this space was where her grandfather, Les Goodwin, slept with his ballerina bride, Audrey, in the early days after they purchased the boatyard.

The place today certainly looks its age. Past Cranberry Highway, on the south side of the two-lane Narrows Road, a sign welcomes visitors onto the waterfront property along the swift-running Wareham River, which feeds into Buzzards Bay. A dozen buildings of different sizes and shapes are strewn about the 9.5-acre grounds. Most wear their patina of age with pride. All serve their purpose. No one ever said that a working shipyard had to be fancy, but quite a few boats inside and under Cape Cod’s care certainly are.

The past here is omnipresent. Outdated molds gather moss and have become part of the landscape, proving the longevity of fiberglass. Old-growth wooden floors inside the buildings are worn smooth by generations of boatbuilders. Big machines, lathes, jigs and tools created by dearly departed artisans live on, ready to put in an honest day’s work on designs that may well be immortal.

A nautical archeologist would have a field day here; it seems that bits of the past are behind every open door or cracked windowpane. Beneath these buildings and buried deep in the soil, he or she could very well unearth artifacts from the late 1800s, the time when—according to local historians—brothers Myron and Charles Gurney were manufacturing wagons and carriages on the western bank of the river. The Gurney brothers later got into skiffs and dories, and then ­sailboats—namely the Cape Cod Knockabout, an 18-foot one-design by Charles Gurney, first built in 1925 and still raced in parts of New England.

Upon the passing of Charles Gurney, a fellow by the name of G.S. Williams took ownership in 1935, but according to company legend, Wendy Goodwin’s grandfather Les Goodwin, a dealer from New Jersey, bought the company after visiting to complain about the quality of the builds he was selling. He and Audrey relocated to Wareham and moved into the office to run the new company.

In 1940, so their story goes, Goodwin purchased the Sparkman & Stephens-designed Mercury and built more than 200 of them while also building military tugs and launches for the US Navy. Postwar production then returned to small craft and one-design sailboats. According to the company archives, the Goodwin family enjoyed a rush of fiberglass production: Herreshoff Bull’s Eyes (derived from the Herreshoff 12½) in 1949, followed by Ravens in 1951, the W. Starling Burgess-designed Atlantic in 1956, the Knockabout in 1959, and the Capt. Nathanael Herreshoff-designed Goldeneye in 1960. It was 1962 when now-Hall of Fame inductee Cornelius Shields turned to Goodwin to build his eponymous one-design, drawn by Sparkman & Stephens.

Goodwin’s son, Gordon L. Goodwin, began working full time for the family company in 1969 and led Cape Cod Shipbuilding through its next chapter as a full-service boatyard. As it should come as no surprise, in 1993, Wendy Goodwin joined and brought a generational trifecta to the yard. The following year, E.L. Goodwin passed away at the age of 95, right before the yard was contracted to build new boats for the Day Sailer one-design class, which continues to this day.

Family is the keel of Cape Cod Shipbuilding, and it has kept the business upright and on course for more than 100 years. Goodwin’s first memory of the shipyard is feeding ducks from the dock when she was 4 or 5 years old. When we meet in early April 2021, she was out of breath, having just launched a flotilla of docks, which marks the beginning of another busy season on Massachusetts’ south coast. It’s the ebb and flow of every New England boatyard: Good weather brings customers out of the woodwork, and on this day, Goodwin’s phone and email inbox are blowing up.

One of the many challenges of keeping this boatbuilding business afloat in the United States in general, and on Cape Cod in particular, is balancing repairs with new builds. When people are not commissioning new boats, Goodwin takes on more repairs. Managing customers’ expectations, she says, can be more challenging than managing the workflow. “The hard part is letting customers know that we have an abundance of new boat orders and we can’t get to a repair,” she says, “or vice versa.”

Some in the industry might call that a good problem to have. Diversification is a sound financial practice. It’s also a wise strategy for a boatbuilder.

“The fact that we don’t have all of our eggs in one basket is the reason why we are 122 years old,” Goodwin says. “We don’t do just one thing. Right now in my shop, we have three Day Sailerss, one Heritage, some Bull’s Eyes and Herreshoff 12½s. If I didn’t have the Herreshoff 12½s to varnish every year, we couldn’t keep the payroll going. There’s no one bread-and-butter boat.”

At times, being the president of the operation means difficult decisions must be made, such as retiring boats like the Cape Cod Knockabout, which are no longer financially viable. “Dad didn’t talk to me for a week after I decided that,” Goodwin says, “but it was the right decision for the company.”

Regarding Wendy’s work ethic, the tree isn’t far from the fruit. Gordon could be retired at his age, but instead, you’ll find him at the boatyard every day. “You’ve got to get out and get the men and get them going so they can build the boats so I can go home and put bread on the table,” he says.

Is building antique one-designs romantic? Wendy Goodwin laughs when I ask—it’s something she does quite frequently. “This is not a romantic job,” she says. “That’s how people sell books and ­stories—the romance of boatbuilding. In reality, boatbuilding is dirty and smelly. What I find fantastic are the relationships and connections I make with other people through boatbuilding.”

One of those people is Matt Holt, the new owner of an older boat. Holt lives in the British Virgin Islands, and his boat, Tern, is a Cape Cod Marlin, designed by Herreshoff and built at Cape Cod Shipbuilding in 1961.

Holt describes Tern as “your most comfortable pair of jeans,” and says before he took ownership, Tern was cared for by Englishman Dr. Robin Erskine Tattersall. Tattersall modeled for the famous photographer Richard Avedon, represented the BVI in the Soling class in two Olympic Games, and cared for the medical needs of his community.

For 40 years, Tattersall loved and sailed Tern. Two back-to-back Category 5 hurricanes, Irma and Maria, however, did a number on it. Tern’s dock was ripped out, it was struck by numerous charter yachts, and partially sunk deep in the mangroves. Its spars were broken, but the hull was intact.

Tattersall sold Tern to Holt for $10, with the understanding that he was its new steward. Holt reached out to Goodwin, and a trip to the records room in Building No. 33 revealed that Tern had indeed been built by her grandfather in 1961, and she was able to locate the paperwork, which documented all of its parts.

The historical records collection at Cape Cod Shipbuilding is vast, not so much because grandpa Les Goodwin was trained as an archivist, but because he didn’t throw away anything. The old invoices, Goodwin says, are invaluable when new owners of older boats ­discuss refits. “The fact that these boats are going on three, four generations, it’s pretty awesome.”

Goodwin and her team were able to re-create a spirit of a ­traditional rig for Tern featuring a single extrusion tapered mast, a new boom, standing rigging, running rigging, sails and covers, all shipped to the BVI. “The crate they built for me was two-by-fours ­covered in carpet. The rigging was laced into the crate using the sails as cushion,” Holt says. “The two-by-fours were covered in plywood. They hit a home run with the delivery, which was no small feat getting it down to this little island in the Caribbean.”

This dedication to craftsmanship brings all types of customers back to Cape Cod Shipbuilding. One fan is Olympian, sailmaker and world champion of many classes Steve Benjamin, who once fell in love with Atlantic No. 128, Cassidy. Benjamin was struck by the beauty and sailing capabilities of the W. Starling Burgess design. He also was impressed by the competition, the camaraderie, and the opportunity for mature sailors to remain competitive.

A skipper known to keep his race boats in Bristol condition, Benjamin has refit at least 10 boats over the years. Cassidy needed new deadwood on the keel, which was completely waterlogged, a topsides paint job in Awlgrip, and a bottom job coated with Baltoplate.

Past Olympians are not the only sailors who enjoy boats built by Cape Cod Shipbuilding. Geordie Shaver has sailed in five America’s Cups, and these days he gets his kicks racing in Newport, Rhode Island’s cutthroat Shields fleet. Shaver estimates that 90 percent of the Newport Shields fleet were built by Cape Cod Shipbuilding. And when there is a problem, people are happy to have an active builder nearby.

Like many boatbuilders, Cape Cod Shipbuilding would like to receive group orders for one-design fleets because building one boat at a time is less efficient. In fact, if a group order of six boats arrives for a retired design, Cape Cod Shipbuilding is happy to build the boats.

With the Shields class, Goodwin says, the goal is to always keep things one-design. “We’re walking a fine line keeping the class alive and making sure the competition is fair,” she says. “I don’t want the new boats to be slower or faster than the existing boats. We’re loyal to all of our fleets to make sure things don’t change.”

After listening to all of her customers, Goodwin noticed that many Herreshoff 12½ owners were tired of wrestling with outboards and outboard brackets. Looking to the future, Cape Cod Shipbuilding invested in crafting a redesigned Cape Cod Marlin Heritage. Designed by Herreshoff, the classic combines the best of the Fish and Marlin designs, and offers modern amenities such as inboard power, an iPod-ready sound system, and USB charger ports. A just-built flag-blue example sits on a railway cradle that leads to the water, freshly varnished brightwork shining like a gem.

No amount of cajoling will get Goodwin to name her favorite boat at Cape Cod Shipbuilding, but she will admit that the boat the family owns is a Shields. She was the Shields-class secretary for quite a few years and co-wrote a book about the class turning 50. “I adore the racing and the competition,” she says. “There’s nothing I like better than getting together in the cockpit and working together to make the boat move. It’s about the people in the cockpit and the smarts that’s shared between them.”

Goodwin’s love of sailing would strike a chord with her grandfather Les, who once wrote, “Sailing is a family sport that can be enjoyed by young and old together, so I hope my little girl may learn to sail, race and love small sailboats as real insurance against becoming a ‘sailboat widow.’”

In due time, Goodwin may well say the same thing to her daughter, who, should she keep up with her math homework, could be the next Goodwin to keep Cape Cod Shipbuilding sailing into the future. ν

The post The Kin of Cape Cod Shipbuilding appeared first on Sailing World.

Inside Building No. 5 at Safe Harbor New England Boatworks, Jocko Alpress stands on Running Tide’s new deck. When the boatyard is quiet, he can hear voices from the boat’s past. He was on the boat for seven years, with two owners. On this cold March day, however, quiet reflection isn’t an option for Alpress, who is on the team responsible for the Tide’s comprehensive refit. Those voices are inaudible over a cacophony of power tools as a small army of craftsmen swarm the vessel, which has been stripped to the bones and is in the ­process of being refaired, repainted, rerigged and reimagined.

Running Tide was built in 1970 by Jakob Isbrandtsen, a shipping magnate and passionate racer, who commissioned Sparkman & Stephens to design a yacht that could beat the likes of Windward Passage, Yankee Girl, Dora and Sorcery—all the hot boats of the day.

Isbrandtsen’s one requirement of Olin Stephens was that Running Tide be 45 feet on the waterline. With the assistance of one of his favorite crewmembers, Vic Romagna—who won the America’s Cup in 1962 aboard Weatherly and again in 1967 aboard Intrepid—Isbrandtsen created the deck layout.

“Nothing against Rod Stephens, but my father was never a fan of his [deck] designs because you were always tripping over sh-t,” says Isbrandtsen’s son, Hans.

The Huisman yard, in the Netherlands, built the aluminum ­vessel and then shipped it to City Island, New York, to rig the deck at Kretzer Boat Works under the watchful eye of Romagna. “Running Tide was one of the first stripped-out racers,” says Hans Isbrandtsen, whose father passed away in July 2018. “We did the deck layout to sail the boat with eight people. The idea was to have an easy-to-sail boat with people who knew what they were doing.”

Running Tide’s design was exceptional, as was the ­camaraderie of its crew. Before Isbrandtsen and his team would sail against the likes of Ted Turner, they squared off against Nazi Germany. Isbrandtsen, too young to enlist in the Navy, was the captain of the yawl Edlu, a 68-foot Sparkman & Stephens design, whose mission was to patrol for Nazi U-boats off Greenport, Long Island.

German U-boats could submerge for only eight hours before they had to surface and run their engines to recharge batteries. When Isbrandtsen and his crew, which included Romagna, spotted a U-boat, they called in air support to bomb them. They assured themselves that the Germans would not waste a torpedo on the likes of Edlu or the other sailing vessels patrolling 10-mile grids. Freighters and US Navy ships were the preferred targets.

The camaraderie and teamwork Isbrandtsen’s crew fostered during their submarine-hunting days was realized decades later when Isbrandtsen assembled the very same crew on Running Tide. They won countless regattas, including the 1971 Southern Ocean Racing Conference, as well as their class in the Bermuda Race. Their results are memorialized with trophies and silver dishes, but the comradeship is what crewmembers remember today.

Bizzy Monte-Sano, part of the team that competed in the Admiral’s Cup in 1963 aboard Windrose, recalls that after the regatta, the crew was relaxing in Isbrandtsen’s home in Cowes, England, when there was a knock on the door. In the vestibule, festooned in full yachting regalia, stood two emissaries of the Royal Yacht Squadron who cordially invited Isbrandtsen and his two watch captains to a cocktail party, the first time nonmembers had been invited to enter the Royal Yacht Squadron.

“It took seven of us to get the boat here, and we would all like to attend,” was Isbrandtsen’s reply, Monte-Sano says. The emissaries said such a thing was not possible, so Isbrandtsen then informed them that he had just checked his calendar and he was going to be busy on that particular evening.

After his business came upon hard times in 1972, Isbrandtsen chartered Running Tide to Turner, who sailed it to victory in numerous races. After the charter period, Running Tide was auctioned off, and Albert Van Metre, a wealthy American developer, was the high bidder. Turner, the second-place bidder, wasn’t amused, so he purchased Lynn Williams’ yacht, Dora IV, and renamed it Tenacious. A rivalry was stoked, and Running Tide kept running, fueled by a new father-and-son team and a band of brothers.

John Marshall, East Coast manager of North Sails at the time, believes Running Tide had soul from the day she was drawn at Sparkman & Stephens. “The Van Metre family had a real reverence for Running Tide,” he says. “It wasn’t just a boat. It was an honor to own it and race it. Al Van Metre always struck a tough deal on a sail. But if I said, ‘Al, Running Tide needs a new genoa,’ he would say, ‘All right—you gotta strike a good price, but let’s do it.’ He never cut a corner to make that boat go better.”

Butch Ulmer, another sailmaker who made his hay in the ­heyday of offshore yacht racing, estimates he has sailed on more than 200 boats in his lifetime. Running Tide is his favorite. “There were a number of boats that could do everything well,” Ulmer says. “Running Tide was one of those. She was so well-laid-out.”

Van Metre, he says, was the quintessential high-class owner. Even in moments of chaos on deck, he would address the crew as “gentlemen” before he would request a change to the heavy-air jib. His son, Beau, was a good sailor too—a really good sailor, Ulmer says. “He didn’t play the owner’s son. I think Running Tide was, for the sake of a better analogy, the glue that kept Beau and his father together for a lot of years. Running Tide was common ground for both of them.”

During Ulmer’s time on Running Tide, the yacht had a reputation for going upwind well. Downwind, there was room for improvement, so he challenged one of his smartest sail designers, Owen Torrey, to come up with a better spinnaker design. Torrey, a Harvard and Columbia graduate who quit practicing law to become a sailmaker, had a keen mind. In those days, most people used a footlong slide rule, but Torrey’s was 3 feet because it provided him with greater accuracy. Torrey eventually ushered Ulmer to the loft’s roof in City Island. There, flying from the flag pole was a radial-head spinnaker that boasted a beautiful, round, full shape. “This is great, Owen,” Ulmer said. “How the hell did you come up with the design?”

In those days, navigators consulted with Bowditch tables, which were as thick as a dictionary. Torrey found a table that gave him the distance between meridians at a given latitude. He made the head of the spinnaker the north pole, the bottom of the head the equator, and the leeches the two corresponding meridians. The shape was so impressive, Van Metre promptly ordered a few spinnakers from Ulmer.

For 16 years, the Van Metre family and three generations of crew campaigned Running Tide hard. They sailed out of Annapolis, Maryland, in spring, Newport, Rhode Island, in summer, and then delivered it south for the SORC races. For Beau, the wins were ­exciting, but Running Tide was all about the journey.

By 1986, the young Van Metre retired from racing and sailed Running Tide to France with plans to cruise the Mediterranean and beyond. After the cruise was delayed due to Suez Canal construction, he sold the yacht. “The first guy I sold Running Tide to had the boat for 15 years,” he says. “I’d call every couple of years to see if he was interested in selling. The gentleman had the audacity to ask for $500,000,” Van Metre says, “but I sold him the boat for $175,000, so I thought that was ridiculous.”

Every year, friends racing in St. Tropez would send Van Metre photos of Running Tide. When he started thinking about getting back into sailing, his broker called the most recent owner and queried his interest in selling. The owner was 85, in poor health and ready to sell. The yacht, however, was in rough shape. The plywood deck was cracked, and down below, Van Metre was shocked to find the same cushions, the same gauges, and even the Igloo cooler he had placed on the boat some 35 years earlier.

Its deplorable state would not sway Van Metre’s mind, ­however. “I knew it needed to be gutted,” he says. “I thought it would be much better for me to own Running Tide and fix it up than to have ­someone else’s boat or to build a new one.”

For the refit, Van Metre tapped designer David Pedrick, who knows his way around Sparkman & Stephens yachts, having started his career with the firm in 1970, just about the time Running Tide was launched at Huisman. In Running Tide, Pedrick saw a classic Sparkman & Stephens design that was evolved from 12-Metre designs in general, and Intrepid in particular. “Intuitively, Olin thought about being friendly to the water,” Pedrick says. “He wanted to make it easy for the water to get around the boat.”

Continuous improvement was an ethos in the Sparkman & Stephens office. When Pedrick pulls out a book today with a line drawing of Running Tide, he is quick to note eraser marks over the rudder area. Stephens was always looking forward to the next great idea, never looking back, says Pedrick, so the responsibility of ­drafting Running Tide’s refit is one he does not take lightly.

“This is one of the most phenomenal, legendary yachts around to be brought back to better-than-original with modern equipment,” he says. “It’s more than a second life. This is a real rejuvenation.”

The goal of Running Tide’s extensive refit, which began in October 2019, is to preserve the yacht’s hard-racing soul, while modifying it so Van Metre can effortlessly daysail it with his wife and family—thus the installation of powered winches. The 2020 Bermuda Race was also on the boat’s reunion tour, but with the race’s cancellation in late March, Van Metre is suddenly afforded the luxury of two more years to whip it into racing shape. Given where they were with the refit in March, it would have been a ­miracle to cross the starting line in Bristol fashion.

Early on, the decision was made to preserve Running Tide’s 1982-era keel. It was “good enough,” Pedrick says. Changing the keel would be extremely expensive and would also surrender the boat’s age allowance. The eraser marks on the rudder of the original plan were there for a reason, so Pedrick focused on a new rudder. The old skeg-hung rudder was large, low aspect and heavy. The new rudder, a carbon spade hung from the hull, is 200 pounds lighter than the appendage it replaces.

The new rig, built by Offshore Spars, has a carbon standing-­rigging package that is one-third the weight of rod rigging. It is 10 feet taller than the original and will carry much more sail area. An additional 300 square feet or so puts the new inventory at 2,023 square feet of high-tech sail area—flatter, more powerful and far less likely to stretch than the Dacron of Tide’s early days.

As the vision for Running Tide 2.0 came into sharper focus, plans became shop drawings and shop drawings became hours upon hours of hard labor. For the craftsmen of New England Boatworks, the first back-breaking task was to strip Running Tide to bare hull. When Thomas MacBain, of NEB’s metal department, first saw the boat, he reached a different conclusion than Alpress. “I’m 33 years old. I didn’t know what Running Tide was,” he says. “I thought it was a pile of scrap until I saw the older guys taking pictures of it.”

After stripping paint and filler, the metal department ­determined that a few parts of the hull required patching, and the shaft log had to be replaced. Pedrick called for significant alterations: new chainplates and frames to support the rig’s higher loads, and the bustle—the area ahead of the rudder—needed to be streamlined.

The aluminum work requires a unique approach, says NEB master welder Abraham Sabala. “Welding it isn’t easy,” he says. “[Aluminum is] a softer material than steel. It heats up quickly and moves, so you have to control the material with jigs and stiffeners. You can’t afford to be off the target, as the margin is slim to none.”

A new ram mast step, engineered to take a 3-ton working load, was installed, as were extensive hydraulics for the push-button winches. Francis Meisenbach, a naval architect at Pedrick’s design firm, used to be a boatbuilder, so when he sends model drawings to Simon Day, an engineer at NEB, he checks their accuracy down to the millimeter. According to Meisenbach, “Slack bilge, long ­overhang boats like Running Tide don’t have a lot of volume. One of the challenges was fitting in the new amenities.”

Day’s job is to take the engineering drawings from Pedrick and Meisenbach, and turn them into construction plans his team can use to guide the build. “The best place for an engineer to be is upside down in the bilge with a tape measure,” Day says. “The ­tolerances on the new systems are tight.” As a young engineer, Day is intrigued by the cutting edge of the sport, but he also has great respect for the history: “Speed isn’t everything. Having a story behind what you are doing is almost as important, and in some ways, more.”

One guiding principle for everyone involved in the project is that Running Tide harken to its past but live in the present with modern technology. This required them to overcome the challenge of adding a furling boom and push-button winches. There was debate over how the winches should be powered. NEB rigging expert PJ Schaffer believed ­hydraulic was the way to go.

The philosophy behind the rigging, however, is old-school, Schaffer says. “Every good program I’ve been on, the simpler the boat, the better the program. My challenge was to make the boat convertible at the deck level. I want it to be clean so when it’s sitting at the dock and Beau is going cruising with his grandkids, it’s minimal. Two sheets and a mainsheet, you go. But it also needed to work for bluewater sailing and the Bermuda Race.”

Running Tide’s interior is being carefully crafted by Wayne Rego, a master joiner with hands the size of baseball mitts. The new plywood deck went on before the interior went in, so everything Rego and his team builds must first fit through the hatches. To make sure he is fulfilling Van Metre’s vision, Rego built mock-ups of the cabin sole that ranged from highly polished book-matched mahogany to hardwood with more grain. Van Metre chose the grainy wood with more character because it is in keeping with the spirit of the original.

While the team at NEB works on finishing the project throughout the spring, Van Metre is focused on his vision of eventually racing to Bermuda with his son and daughter. “They know the history,” he says, “but they haven’t experienced it.”

It’s March, however, and sailing days are still months away. With a moist southerly licking the outer walls of Building No. 5, Van Metre can practically taste his first summer outing. If all goes to plan, he’ll once again bury the rail of this iconic yacht, with Isbrandtsen, his father, and all those who sailed aboard Running Tide in its glory days, sitting on the weather rail in spirit.

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