Blog 045 – Calypso

“She looks like she came here to die.”

No, I’m not talking about one of the many people Floating Doctors helps. This instead is the story of Calypso, a Cheoy Lee Offshore 40 built in 1965. Dr. Ben asked if we might take a look at the possibility of fixing up and selling a sailboat that had been donated. A recent earthquake had left them short an entire casita and they were in desperate need of more staff housing.

This boat has beautiful lines, a teak cabin top, tongue and grove hatches, and teak dorade vent boxes with stainless vents. Every inch of teak on this boat had a cover custom made for it, from handrails to the control console. We could tell someone once loved her. She was sailed from San Francisco, California. Ben still had an email address for Scott and Sonya, the people who donated her. So we shot them an email and to my surprise Scott called me back right away. He was encouraged to hear someone was willing to look at fixing her up.

Our conversation was mostly Scott reminiscing about the long history of this now forlorn old boat. It was like listening to someone talk about a long lost friend. I listened to the whole story of her glory days and then how she fell into her current state of disrepair. Her first owner was an older fella who loved to race boats in the Tin Can regattas in San Francisco Bay. Calypso was a sleek, fast yawl that brought home a full trophy case in her day. The Tin Can (or Beer Can regattas as they were called in San Diego) denoted the buoys the boats would race around on a course set up in the bay. Usually they were beer kegs that were repurposed as race markers, hence the name Tin Can/Beer Can regatta. Local yachties would put together a team and race on Friday evenings after work and then all get together for drinks after the race. Many of the yacht clubs started from these friendly Friday night races.

Scott and Sonya, the second owners, had been his crew for many of those weekend races. Sonya had invited Scott to come and crew with them as sort of a first date. So Calypso for them has a bit of romantic memories attached. The skipper was getting too old to sail. He was nearly 80 years old and it had come time for him to hang up his topsiders. He wanted his beloved boat to stay in the family, so to speak, so he made Scott and Sonya a fantastic deal. Years later someone passing by the dock mentioned to Scott that Calypso was also a great offshore boat. She was designed and built to sail around the world and many Offshore 40’s have done just that. Cheoy Lee has enjoyed a reputation for being strong, seaworthy boats. That passing comment started Scott to thinking…I wonder if we could sail around the world?

The seed was sewn. So over the next couple years they began to prepare Calypso for an extended cruise and on the final day said good-bye to their family and friends and the adventure began. With the San Francisco Bay bridge behind them, they pointed the bow to the South. Butterflies in their stomachs, they headed offshore along the West Coast of California. They spent their first season in Baja and the Sea of Cortez. The Pacific trade winds eventually carried them all the way down the Central American coast to Costa Rica. Here they spent another season before they transited the Panama Canal. The locks opened and Calypso slipped her keel into the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea. This was the early 80’s. They made it as far as Bocas del Toro, Panama when the stock market crashed and this ended their sailing adventures. For the next few years they did everything they could to hold onto their sailing dreams, but they both had to go back to work or lose their home in California. I have heard this story time and time again how quickly your dreams can slip between your fingers. I guess thats why so many boats are named Carpe Diem!

Calypso went downhill lying at anchor, seldom checked on for many years. There was even a live-aboard caretaker at one time who “took more than he cared for.” Eventually she became a donation to Floating Doctors and was towed here and tied up next to Sea Horse – another donated boat which has an even darker story. But back to my first sentence, “She looks like she came here to die.” Let me draw you a picture. Calypso has two masts, the main was aluminum and in good shape, but every line on her was black and slimy with mold (so rotten they just fell to pieces in our hands). The mizzen mast was a different story, it looked as if it had been struck by lighting. This was a wooden mast and the upper section was completely rotted away. The shivs that the halyards roll through were dangling three or four feet lower than what was left of the upper mast section. With both spreaders drooping from the weight of the old spreader cables the spreaders dangled limp and lifeless. The hull was covered in red and black and brown mold. The deck was littered with old rotting lines that had fallen down. She once had several teak ladder rungs bolted between the main spreader cables to scramble up the mast for a birds-eye view while navigating around shallow reefs. These were now rotted and dangling, unable to support even their own weight.

The interior was no better. Over time leaks had allowed water to run down the bulk heads and leave mold growing in patches down the walls. The cute little porcelain sink in the head was covered in grime and grease. The toilet bowl was full to the rim with black stinky gunk. The smell was terrible. Ben thought after removing a few items of value he might give it to a dive shop to sink for a local attraction before she sank right here at the dock. She was half way there, a reef was already forming on her hull.

Since we were already planning a marine sale of the many boat parts that had been donated, I asked him what he would sell her for. He said $2,000 but he doubted she was even worth that. He admitted he would take nearly anything at this point. But I saw something else under all that mold and rotted lines. It reminded me of another project early in our marriage. An old travel trailer that was free to anyone who would haul it away. I drove to Los Angeles from Ramona, CA to drag the beast home. I admit it was rough and it was filled with someone else’s trash but I saw something. Later after intense cleaning, sewing and carpentry work that travel trailer became the down payment on our first piece of property in Colorado.

In Calypso, I saw a teak interior with a teak quarter-turn staircase coming down into the salon. The kitchen had a lovely stainless stove but it was all covered in grease and dirt. Her wood decks were still strong she had a stainless and brass diesel heater. This boat was made to be at home both in the tropics and the arctic. I poked around for a while on my own just to see what shape she was really in. I took a look at the electrical panel and found the battery bank was fully charged! How could that be when the solar panels looked cracked and were hanging by their wires, some were even removed and sitting topside. I turned on the bilge pump and it came on, ran for a minute, and went off. This boat had a dry bilge, no leaks from hoses. Next I flipped on the radar and it worked. I flipped on the water pump and fresh water came out of the sink faucet, but the sink didn’t drain. I looked under the engine cover and found everything in pretty good condition. We decided to take on the project.

First I tackled the toilet from hell. The inlet and outlet hull valves were seized in place. I bent the handles trying to move them. Ben told me that if I sunk the boat right here at the dock he wouldn’t hold me responsible. He said he half expects it to sink on its own one of these days anyway. So I went to Silhouette and came back with a pipe wrench, screwdriver, knife, snorkel mask and fins. I dropped a rope down where I should find the hull valves and went for a swim with a big knife to chop away barnacles and locate the holes. I got the screwdriver and carefully cleaned everything off the ball valves. I climbed back aboard and took the pipe wrench to the valves. I said a quick prayer and I had damage control plugs ready just in case. They both slowly came open. Thank God no flooding…yet.

Next I tried to move the toilet hand pump back and forth. The black, scummy, stinky water was at the rim of the bowl. If I moved it to fast it would come out on the deck. Slowly the water level started to fall and the scum was circling. It was down to the last few cups of scum but I forgot the safety requirements of these old marine heads. If anyone has used these, you know what comes next…Yup, I did it…. So happy it was working, I pumped it dry, but forgot to close the lid. That last chunk of scum, you know – floating bacteria mixed with algae and dengue fever – came strait up and slapped me in the face! Thankfully, I had my mouth and eyes closed as I felt it slime off my cheek and fall back with a splash into the bowl. I have no words for the amount of grossed out I felt at that moment! I made the steps in two leaps with my eyes and mouth still tightly shut, out the hatch and overboard. Just thinking about this still gives me the willies.

After that swim and a good scrubbing of the first three layers of my face I continued with the project. I tackled the plugged sinks and got them clean and draining. I opened up the fridge and freezer lid. Yuck again, they were half full of the same slime growing in the toilet. With a bucket and sponge I cleaned and bleached them. Still not satisfied, the next day I painted them with a gloss white epoxy.

This boat was smelling better already. I turned on the fridge and freezer and heard the compressor come to life and the gauges came on line. Liana was willing to help at this point. We tackled the clean up of the interior using vinegar and water. Liana scrubbed the inside of that boat until the walls were white again. I had seen some of the interior cushions lying around base and Ben remembered the rest were put in a shed. Liana pulled off all the covers and we sent them out to be cleaned. Many came back needing seams and zippers sewed so we got out Liana’s 35 ton Sailrite machine. If this thing ever goes bad it’s going to make a great anchor.

So while she sewed all morning I tackled topside. The mizzen was deck stepped and after reading up on Cheoy Lee’s I discovered they all came from the shipyard rigged as a sloop but the yawl rig was so popular they installed the mizzen chain plates on each one so it could be added as an option. It dawned on me, this could be a sloop again. I went to pulling pins and down rigging the broken mizzen mast. I pulled the winches and to my surprise water streamed from the screw holes like a fountain. The mast was wooden and hollow to reduce weight aloft and rain water had filled it to the top. We used the mizzen mast halyard on the boat next to Calypso as a crane to lower the mast along with the main halyard from Calypso. With help from Liana and Ziggy we pulled the chain plate pins. They operated winch lines and the three of us had the old wooden mast lowered over the stern rail and floating in the water in no time. We floated it to the dock and hauled it up.

I gave her hull and topsides the first scrub in years. The hull was actually white with blue trim hidden under all that mold and scum. Liana put all the interior cushions back together and we even discovered a great alpine stereo system – a few loose wires repaired and the speakers were blasting music as we relaxed at the end of a hard work day in a nice clean cockpit.

As soon as we were done Jonas, one of the staff, moved on board. I asked Ben when we were finished if he still wanted to sell her and he reluctantly said maybe but only if the offer is $15,000 or more.

”We don’t want to just give away such a nice boat”…