N.J. man restores old-plank fishing boat as promised to late captain
This is not just a story about a man restoring a boat. It is so much more than that. It shows how friendships live on forever. It shows the love and respect one can have for an old friend.
N.J. man restores old-plank fishing boat as promised to late captain
Published: Monday, November 29, 2010, 3:53 PM
CAPE MAY CITY — The experts told Jimmy Klotsas to just let the old boat go.
One boatyard wanted $200,000 to restore it. Another refused to lift Tuna, an old-plank fishing boat made out of angelique wood, saying it would fall apart.
But Klotsas, 43, of Cape May, refused to believe it and has taken on restoration of the boat he worked on as a boy for the late Capt. Robert Bennett.
Before he died in 2009, Bennett instructed daughters Kate and Betsy that on his death they should give Tuna to Klotsas. An actor by trade, Klotsas said he knew this would happen some day. He also knew what he had to do.
"I promised him I wouldn't let this boat go," Klotsas said.
He said Bennett told him that Tuna would last another hundred years. Others were not so sure.
"Everybody thought I was crazy. My family thought I was crazy. People said save the engine and chop the rest up," Klotsas said.
But it wasn't just about the boat. It also was about his relationship with Bennett, a renaissance man of sorts. Born in Cape May in the family home, Bennett came from a long line of Delaware Bay boat captains. He left town, got a degree from Princeton University and became a physics teacher and lacrosse coach at a Pennsylvania high school.
Bennett continued to spend summers in Cape May and built Tuna to take clients — including doctors and New York Times writers — out fishing.
Later, when he retired from teaching to his home overlooking the water on Schellengers Landing, Bennett would dock Tuna right under his house, where he rigged it for gill netting in the Delaware Bay.
Klotsas said he served as a deckhand on fishing trips that always included lessons about life. Klotsas was headstrong, always rushing into things, and one final lesson from Bennett came in a note he found while renovating the boat. Bennett had placed the note in a hidden compartment aboard Tuna that Klotsas knew about.
"The essence of any civilized activity is destroyed by rushing it," the note stated.
That's why Klotsas is not rushing the job.
He got a boatyard in Middle Township to pull Tuna out of the water. He hired Dave Appenzeller and enlisted his cousin, Anthony Fiore, of Evesham Township, Burlington County, to help.
After more than 2,000 hours of work and more than $15,000, the boat has been restored from the bowline to the bottom of the hull. The 1941 Detroit Diesel 671 engine has been rebuilt. The next step is to restore the pilot house, flying bridge, fighting chair and other areas on deck. Klotsas figures the entire project will cost about $50,000.
Stockton Place resident Kate Walder, Bennett's daughter, said her father built Tuna in the backyard of their home in Swarthmore, Pa. He began work around 1955 and was finished in 1960. She remembers some issues getting it down their tree-lined driveway, but he got it to the shore, and thus began several family traditions.
One was to take his wife, Casey, and their children into the open ocean.
"My mother would make steak sandwiches. We'd keep them warm on the engine. We'd jump off and swim and then eat steak sandwiches," Walder said.
Klotsas said Bennett was way ahead of his time. Angelique wood is now considered superior to teak. It is stronger, cheaper, more abundant and more resistant to rot and wood-boring worms, a fact that is just becoming known.
Bennett got angelique wood from the South American country of Suriname more than a half-century ago when locals were using white oak, cedar and other local woods for their boats.
"He had the keel laid in Suriname. It's from a 150-to-200-year-old old-growth tree. It's 24 inches to 36 inches wide in places and about 53 feet long from bow stem to stern," Klotsas said.
Each plank was secured by hand-hammered copper rivets. The key to angelique wood is that it swells with water to tightly seal the planks. The wood gets fuzzy when wet, and Klotsas said some have confused this with rot.
Klotsas just put Tuna back in the water after rebuilding the hull and figures it will take two weeks for the wood to swell back up.
"The Tuna weighs 16.5 tons dry and 80 tons wet. The wetter it gets, the stronger it gets," Klotsas said.
In the meantime, the bilge pumps are running constantly just to keep it afloat while the wood swells back up.
Another unique feature is that Bennett built the 40-foot-long boat in the shape of a tuna. It has a V-hull, and Klotsas said it can get up to plane and then just cuts right through the water, reaching speeds of 20 knots. The boat is narrow, just 15.8 feet at its widest point.
"You don't get the slap. He built the high bow to cut through the water," Klotsas said.
Another unique feature is the rope tied with periodic knots that Bennett would throw off the stern when he was fishing. That's because he often fished alone.
Klotsas said Bennett was hand-lining cod 40 miles off Cape May at the age of 60 and fell off the boat into 50-degree water. He almost couldn't get back on. After that near-accident, the rope always trailed the boat. Bennett left Klotsas spare parts for just about everything on the boat, and most of the metal parts are made of stainless steel and brass. The interior is trimmed with mahogany and teak.
Bennett used to tell people he wanted to go down with the Tuna. Klotsas said Bennett once told him that when the time came he would fill the tank with diesel, run far offshore and shoot holes in the hull with a shotgun.
In recent years, when daughters Kate Walder and Betsy Sands came to visit, they would sleep with life preservers next to the bed. They were worried about the Schellengers Landing house built over the water that was leaning precariously. The house, sitting on rotting piling, swayed in the wind. The boat never worried them.
The house fell into the water earlier this year. Bennett died a peaceful death on shore. But before he died, he had time to leave his last instructions to Klotsas.
"The family feels good at having it fixed up because it's a one-of-a-kind boat. That's one of the reasons Jimmy has it now," Walder said.
