Beached Schooner on Fire Island

[Cormorant]

It's funny to see this thread resurface. I visited the wreck way back when, and never did learn the final fate of the hull. BUT . . . several months ago I was reading a cruising memoir called "Gentlemen Never Sail to Weather" by Denton Rickey Moore, a newbie sailor who wound up circumnavigating (1981-1983) in a big Concordia yawl. When they were in Tahiti, he writes this:

"Papeete was a great place to meet people. While I was in the hospital, Velda brought two visitors, red-headed Tom Lemm, and his partner D.L. Benton. They were co-owners of the steel pinky schooner Le Papillon, which they had built in Baltimore. D.L., as she is known, did the rigging, while Tom did the welding."

So, damn -- that boat had seen the world!

Hanster -- is your dad Tom Lemm, or did your dad buy the boat from Tom later?

[mbianka]

Originally Posted by Cormorant

It's funny to see this thread resurface. I visited the wreck way back when, and never did learn the final fate of the hull. BUT . . . several months ago I was reading a cruising memoir called "Gentlemen Never Sail to Weather" by Denton Rickey Moore, a newbie sailor who wound up circumnavigating (1981-1983) in a big Concordia yawl. When they were in Tahiti, he writes this:

"Papeete was a great place to meet people. While I was in the hospital, Velda brought two visitors, red-headed Tom Lemm, and his partner D.L. Benton. They were co-owners of the steel pinky schooner Le Papillon, which they had built in Baltimore. D.L., as she is known, did the rigging, while Tom did the welding."

So, damn -- that boat had seen the world!

Hanster -- is your dad Tom Lemm, or did your dad buy the boat from Tom later?

Funny I thinking about this boat the other day. Sad to think about how far it traveled and how much further it could have gone.

[Dogfish]

Months after it was all over I ran into one of the men involved in the salvage attempt--the first one, when they tried to float her again--and he told me that the boat had indeed been cut up for scrap.

"hanster's" post seems a little suspicious to me, but I could be wrong. The story I heard was that they ran her up onto the beach, on a lake-calm day, because she'd started taking on water--possibly from the same hull damage that kept her from floating again when they tried to pump her out.