❖ LOBO DEL MAR from LOPEZ ISLAND ❖ by Louise Dustrude

L-R: Tom Chamberlin, his son Conrad 
and "Floyd,"
Late 1970s on Lopez Island, WA.
Courtesy of Jan Chamberlin.

"The 38-ft work boat, LOBO DEL MAR, has a sweet English Ford engine with a Sabb marine conversion that will push her along at hull speed, 8-knots, on less than two gallons of Diesel an hour with the help of a variable pitch propeller.
      The designer-builder-owner Tom Chamberlin, who would have been 100 years old today, 15 October 2016, loved sailing, so he designed the boat to run under either power or sail.
      Called a 'schooner' because of the location of the cabin astern, the boat is actually designed with a modified ketch rig with a 40-ft foremast and a 24-ft mizzenmast. 
      Tom said the sails offer 'another way to get home if something goes wrong,' but another reason is that 'sailing is fun.'

LOBO DEL MAR
at work in the islands in the early 1980s.
by C. Christensen

      At 38-ft overall with a 4-ft draft, the boat is small enough for it to lie alongside the reefnet boats from which he purchases salmon (he buys from gillnetters as well.) The hold capacity is probably about 12 tons, he figures. In his first two seasons, 1980 and 1981, he sometimes single-handed and sometimes had the help of his son-in-law, Malcolm Lea, a summer resident of Shaw. He was buying for Island Fresh Seafoods of Lopez.
      Tom designed the boat and then made a model he 'whittled away at' until he was satisfied, and then drew the final plans. He built the boat in a shed on his Lopez property overlooking Fisherman Bay, with the help of sons Conrad and Hank, of Douglas fir on oak frames. It took 13 months; the launch took place a couple of days before the first eruption of Mt. St. Helens.

LOBO DEL MAR
Friday Harbor marina
Courtesy of John Dustrude©, Friday Harbor, WA.
undated.

      Tom estimates that LOBO DEL MAR is 'about the 35th boat he's built, so he had some experience to draw on. He started when he was in the fifth or sixth grade with a little rowboat that ''leaked like hell,' and along the way he built a 57' ketch, CIRCE, taken after the L. Francis Herreshoff design, TIOGA I.
      He built CIRCE in 1961 and 1962 in Spain, and then sailed her in the Med with his wife, Sally, and their seven children. They had taken the children, then aged 5 to 16, to Europe because of their dismay at the lack of intellectual disciplines being taught in US public schools. In fact, it was when their daughter was being taught the use of lipstick and rouge in her fifth grade class that they decided to go. They wanted to expose the children to other cultures 'to give them some options,' and after about three years in the Med they went on to spend the next 13 chartering in the West Indies.
      The nearly three dozen boats Tom built over the years included four he built in the early 40s with George Calkins, designer of the 'Bartender,' using all hand tools; one was a 60-ft fishing boat and the others were 34-footers.
      Here in San Juan County Tom served on both the Energy Committee and the Tidal Generation Committee and found plenty of time to socialize with friends. But he's also at work on another boat, a 12' flat-bottomed skiff with a little sprit-sail, designed by his son Carl in Port Townsend.
      'I'm one of those guys who's happiest on the water,' but a close second had to be building a boat to take him out on the water."
Above words by Louise Dustrude. San Juan Islands Almanac Vol. 9.
Long House Printcrafters and Publishers. Friday Harbor, WA. 1982.
      We hear LOBO DEL MAR was shipped to the east coast. Thanks Louise, for capturing this boat and her family when she was living in the San Juan Islands.