CHAPTER ONE · BALLARD, 1927

The Yard

Built by working boat hands, at the foot of 24th Avenue on Salmon Bay.

SINCE 1871

The shipyard that built this boat is still there. That’s the part I keep coming back to.

Foot of 24th Avenue in Ballard, north shore of Salmon Bay. A Norwegian named Thomas Lake hauled his tools out there in 1871 and started building boats, and people have been building and fixing boats on that ground ever since. By 1927, when El Mistico’s keel went down, the place had changed hands a few times and was called Ballard Marine Railway. Same work though. Wooden hulls, cold water, guys who knew what they were doing.

BMR was not a yacht yard. Go through the build records and it’s fishing boats, tugs, cargo ships, cannery tenders, one after another after another. Boats built heavy because they were going to Alaska and nobody was coming to help them. During both wars the yard turned out minesweepers and sub chasers for the Navy. One of them, BYMS-26, became Jacques Cousteau’s Calypso. Another, YMS-328, got bought by John Wayne and renamed Wild Goose. I did not know any of that when I bought this boat. I have since told approximately everyone.

A wooden hull in the slings on the Ballard rail, recolored

ON THE RAIL · SALMON BAYCold water, wet planks, guys who knew what they were doing.

HULL NO. 226921

Here’s what I find strange. El Mistico is a recreational vessel, and in that ledger she’s the odd one out. Forty-three feet, twenty gross tons, sitting between a fishing boat named Sultan and a 115 foot Hawaiian tug named Mikimiki.

Somebody wanted a pleasure boat built by the same hands that were framing halibut schooners, and I don’t know why, and the records don’t say. But I think that’s the entire answer to why she feels the way she feels almost a hundred years later. She was overbuilt for what she was asked to do, and she’s been getting away with it ever since.

The yard outlived her launch by a couple of decades. In 1946 a group of Norwegian fishermen from the Ballard community put in three hundred dollars a share and bought the place outright, renamed it Pacific Fishermen Inc., and ran it themselves. A co-op owned by the people who actually used it. PacFish is still there, still working, same ground, oldest continuously operating shipyard in Ballard.

The marine railway El Mistico was built on is still hauling boats out of the water. You can go stand on it.

The ocean tug Mahoe launching at Ballard, April 1925, recolored

APRIL 1925 · THE MAHOE GOES INThe largest diesel tug in the world goes down the same ways she'd use two years later.

THE COMPANY SHE KEPT · FROM THE BUILD RECORDS

One pleasure boat in a ledger full of working ones.

1925Mahoe — the largest diesel tug in the world at the time111 FT

1926Sultan — fishing vessel38 FT

1927El Mistico — still on the water43 FT

1928Mikimiki — Hawaiian tug, her berth-mate in the ledger115 FT

1942BYMS-26 — later Jacques Cousteau's Calypso136 FT

1943YMS-328 — later John Wayne's Wild Goose136 FT

Booms and cranes over the Olson & Winge dock, recolored

BOOMS OVER THE DOCK

AS BUILT · PACIFIC MOTOR BOAT MAGAZINE, JANUARY 1928

OWNERE. Michelson, Seattle Yacht ClubDESIGNERThearle & Nordstrom, naval architectsBUILDERBallard Marine Railway, Inc.HULLCustom flush deck cruiser · full displacement · full keelCONSTRUCTIONOak frames, steam bent and doubled · cedar plankingENGINEFairbanks-Morse 4-cylinder marine diesel, 40 hp @ 650 rpm

Her engine controls were a single bronze casting made for this boat. Start it, work the clutch, set the speed, reverse, all from the helm. The magazine liked it enough to predict the design would become standard on this type of craft. I’d very much like to know whether that ever happened.

NEXT · CHAPTER TWOThe Lives She's Lived →