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Then came the nationwide
economic troubles of 2001, which slowed the travel industry. Putting chartering
aside, Gauthier decided that if she was really going to “own”
Ursa Major, she also needed to, as she says, “own Ursa’s
history.” So, she e-mailed the Irish Life Society in Ireland to uncover
the history about Malahide trawlers in general and the specifics of her
boat, knowing only that Ursa was built in Malahide, Ireland, and launched
in 1972. In return, she received the e-mail address of Dennis Phethean
in Australia, who was searching for the same thing. Gauthier says, “Dennis
was thrilled when I contacted him. He’d once seen Ursa Major
in a wooden boat magazine advertisement. It was the first Malahide he’d
seen, and he fell in love.”
It was then that Gauthier
realized, “The history was out there, in different minds, in bits
and pieces, we just had to find it.” And so the two teamed up to
bring together their expertise—hers in research, his in Web design—and
launched the Classic Trawler Network (www.classictrawler.com)
in November 2001 to “use the site along with people’s enthusiasm
to document these vessels’ history.” Shortly after, people started
sending in information about the location of Malahides, and they realized
that the highest concentration of the boats was in Puget Sound. As Myles
Stapleton, Ursa and Explorer’s original designer, said in
an interview, “This is where they were destined to end up. These
boats are for use in the cold waters.”
Once the information
started pouring in, Gauthier organized a rendezvous in Puget Sound to
bring Malahide owners together. It also gave her the opportunity to meet
Phethean and Stapleton, and give Stapleton, now 58, the first opportunity
to see his designs in more than 30 years. (He’d given up boatbuilding
when the Malahide yard folded in 1983, reportedly because rising labor
costs in Europe compared to that of Taiwan drove the yard out of the market.)
Although only six boats were present, Gauthier estimates from various
sources, including Stapleton, that there are probably about 30 Malahides
out there. For her, the most beautiful moment of the event was flying
Stapleton over from Ireland to see his creations. Stapleton said to Gauthier,
“One year ago, I could never imagine I’d be seeing these boats
again. You have to keep alive the enthusiasm for people to want to learn
how to build these...I have a good friend who was the foreman shipwright
in the yard in Dublin and is now 86, and when I told him I had the opportunity
to come here and see some of our boats, he said, ‘Oh, how I envy
you. If only I could go.’” Gauthier says the photo of Stapleton
on the upper deck of Ursa (see photo on page 75), “takes my
breath away. It’s a beautiful story.”
Two years after her
self-established “drop-dead date,” Gauthier managed to bring
Ursa to life and uncover her magical history and that of other Malahide
trawlers worldwide. (Last April marked the second-annual Classic Trawler
Rendezvous, with a total of ten boats participating.) Gauthier continues
to work on the Classic Trawler Network in addition to being a full-time
physician in the Seattle area. She says she gets about one inquiry each
month and hopes someday to uncover all the secrets behind these hidden
beauties. Only time will tell, but no doubt, it will be another beautiful
story, indeed.
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