Some History

Middle of July and we're stilling working on the Shady Lady. This week we hope to get her bottom wet, then a couple of days in the straps while the planks soak and swell (and the bilge pump runs!). Then we can step the mast, find the sails, etc., and motor down the Clinton River to Lake St. Clair for our first sail! There will be pictures...good and "oops!"

Built in 1958 in the Nouway boatyard in Norway, the Shady Lady is a Sparkman & Stephens design (six-meter class, I believe, from what I can see in "All This and Sailing, too," Olin Stephens's 1999 autobiography), with teak ribs and transom and spruce planking. She is 36' overall, with a 10'-6" beam and a 5'-6" draft.  She was intended for the Fastnet Race in which she competed more than once, and was bought by three Detroit firemen (in the 1960s?). They sailed her across the North Atlantic to Detroit, raced the Shady Lady in the Port Huron-to-Mackinac Race several times, ironically had a small galley fire while they owned her (all repaired now).  Future project: document the races the Shady Lady was in. 

The Shady Lady was bought by a new owner in the 1970s who restored her.  She was stripped down to the ribs and planking, with a new cabin and teak-strip decking installed.  Shady Lady was the summer home for he, his wife and two children, in Gore Bay, Ontario for many years.  In 2008, she was sold to a new owner who sold her to Carol and I last November.  Ironically, as we small-talked after the sale, we discovered that we worked with the former owner's wife's uncle--a family transaction of sorts. 

Over the past several months she has undergone another set of renovations, painting and varnishing, mostly.  Hopefully, we'll move the Shady Lady to the water in Lake St. Clair this week.  After getting used to sailing her, we'll sail to the Upper Peninsula in August.