Retired Coast Guard, Current Boat Builder 

by Mary Ellen Hare
Coastal Journal contributor

It's early morning on the Damariscotta River in East Boothbay. The sun is climbing slowly toward the meridian. A pale-blue sky, dusty with cirrus clouds, is reflected in calm water, gray with the depths of an incoming tide.  The air is still, damp and fishy.  Retired U.S. Coast Guard petty officer Ron Peabody is right on time at the Ocean Point Marina fuel dock. His white wooden boat, also a retiree, nudges the pilings with the familiarity of countless landings, and I climb aboard.

Captain Ron releases the lines and standing on the coxswain's flat, I look around. Washburn Doughty off the port, Hodgdon Yachts straight ahead, and a stocked marina to starboard. This tiny cove of East Boothbay is the center of the little town's claim to fame: its venerable history of shipbuilding. 

Black-green pointed firs line the opposite shore of Bristol, another of the craggy little nooks in Maine's coastline. Tall and lean at the helm, 49-year-old Peabody has steamed across from his home in Bristol. He can't wait to show off his 1941 MLB Surf Runner former Coast Guard 36640), an original, restored 36-foot U.S. Coast Guard Motor Lifeboat.

This wooden boat is the culmination of 14 years of work for Peabody. “I had this dream, and it is coming true this year.”
Since retiring from the U.S. Coast Guard, Peabody has worked as a professional captain for tugs, rescue vessels, ferry boats and excursion crafts. “I got tired of making money for other people,” he said, “and decided to go into business for myself.”

If everything goes as planned for Captain Ron, he will start offering private charters this summer.  He hopes to create a niche market by picking up passengers at their own docks or other convenient locations and allowing them to “create their own cruise” for picnics, viewing coastal sites like lighthouses, puffins and seals,  or simply celebrating a special occasion with friends and family.

The boat, originally designed for the Coast Guard's inshore surf and bar rescue, has an exciting history, according to Peabody. “I could tell stories all day,” he said, adding that his roots in Maine go way back. Although he grew up in Ipswich on the North Shore of Massachusetts, he started coming to Maine as a boy.

“I'm descended from a long line of sea captains on both sides of my family,” Captain Ron said. My grandfather and great-grandfather were both lobster fishermen out of Beals Island. And my great-great grandfather had the Sylvina W. Beal  built as a lobster smack and fishing boat. He named it after his wife, my great-great grandmother.”

Peabody's ancestor, Charles H. Beal of Beals Island off Jonesport, had the two-masted 84-foot wooden fishing schooner built at the Frank J. Adams Yard in East Boothbay. The boat fished as both a herring and a seafood cargo carrier until being converted to a windjammer passenger schooner in 1981. Now berthed in Eastport, the boat has provided the setting for two movies, Amistad (1997) and Age of Innocence (1993).

Peabody, who pointed out that he is a Pisces, has spent all of his adult life on the water. He joined the Coast Guard after high school and was stationed throughout New England, doing much of his service on the Maine coast.  After retiring in 1999 with 20-plus years of service, he settled in Bristol. “I fell in love with mid-coast Maine, and I don't have to tell you why,” he said, gesturing to miles of open sea framed by rocky ledge and firs.

Some of Captain Ron's assignments have taken him to duties at a fog signal station on Manana Island off Monhegan, to four lighthouses, six search and rescue stations, a buoy tender and presidential security detachment for two presidents. He has worked on boats from Nova Scotia to Norfolk, VA.

But for this captain, every experience pales in comparison to his first love: an old wooden boat that he is determined to preserve and display as a piece of U.S. Coast Guard maritime history.

The boat, built in 1941 at the U.S. Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, MD, is constructed of 1 _ -inch cypress planking on oak frames and fastened with bronze, Monel (stainless metal alloy) and copper fastenings. “She's an extremely rugged and seaworthy boat,” her captain said.

A 194-gallon bronze fuel tank gives the vessel a maximum cruising range of 202 nautical miles. She is powered by her rebuilt 103-horsepower 471 Detroit marine diesel engine and designed for inshore surf and bar rescue under what were often the worst of conditions. Self-righting and self-bailing, she can carry up to 20 survivors.

“The evolution of her design dates from the early part of the century,” Peabody said. “This type vessel was considered the work horse of the Coast Guard and was stationed throughout the United States. It was on both coasts and on the Great Lakes, and they can be just as rough as the ocean. There is an old saying in the Coast Guard: 'The rule book says you've got to go out, but it doesn't say anything about coming back.' This boat actually did that; it brought the guys back.”

Unlike many other retired boats, which have been saved and restored by groups of people interested in restoration, Captain Ron's MLB Surf Runner has been a one-man project. “I bought the boat in October 1993 from Bang's Boatyard in East Boston. I was stationed at U.S.C.G. Station in Portsmouth at the time, and I kept it at the station and started the restoration that fall. I've been restoring each piece of the boat little by little to its original state for the past 14 and a half years. Sometimes it seems as if there is no end in sight. However, I try to stay focused and keep on plugging away at it.”

Peabody's motivation to get the project finished came from an unlikely source: his dog.  Marlin Spike is a black, male Labrador retriever acquired almost 13 years ago. “I got him specifically as a mascot for this boat;  Labs are the traditional mascot for the Coast Guard. He said to me recently, 'You better get this job done because I won't be around forever.'”

Captain Ron said he can't keep his first mate out of any boat. “He used to jump off into the water, but I don't let him do that anymore. I'm afraid he won't be able to get back up.”  “Spike,” as he is familiarly called, is named after the “fid” on a jackknife, a tool used to splice lines. 

Peabody said several wooden boat builders have told him that restoring an old wooden boat is a labor of love; that you never get back what you put into it cost-wise. “What I hope to get out of it is the satisfaction of saving a piece of U.s. Coast Guard maritime history, to give the public a chance to take a step back in time and experience what it was like to cruise on one of these vessels. One boat restorer told me it's like painting the Golden Gate Bridge: Once you finish it you have to start all over again. I have a plaque that someone gave me. It says, 'Nothing Works on an Old Boat Except the Owner.' I plan to have it mounted on a bulkhead.”

Based on old Coast Guard documents, Peabody believes the boat was assigned to the U.s. Coast Guard station in Woods Hole, MA, and later “transferred as excess personal property.”

If Captain Ronald Peabody gets his way, he will be sharing a lifetime of knowledge and experience with summer visitors to what he says is the prettiest place in the world.

As we finish our trip out to Fisherman's and Ram Islands and head back up the river, Captain Ron spots smoke. “That black smoke looks like gas or oil,” he says. And sure enough, as we round the point, ripples of smoke are leaking out of the Washburn and Doughty shipyard. Within the next two hours, as flames soar and explosions rock the area, another part of history has disappeared from the Maine coast.