The early stages were difficult because we didn't feel like throwing money at every little problem that came up. The first was how to move the boat up to the yard some fourteen miles away. And the marina owners were quite firm about moving the boat as soon as possible. The motor was turning freely but the starter generator was a solid block of rust. Nonetheless we soaked it in diesel and took it apart and put new running brushes into it, and it ran well enough to get the motor started. The owners of the marina were very helpful on this part of the project. And the guys at Faulkner Electric here in Portland, OR had any part to fit just about any motor for a few dollars and change. So after a few dollars and a few hours I had a running motor. Not something to put out to sea with, but reliable enough for the needs of a morning.

We started it up on a Saturday morning and motored up Lake Washington and through the cut, across Lake Union in Seattle. At the time I didn't even know how to signal the bridge tenders. But luckily enough there were boats waiting to go through at each point just as I arrived and I fell in with them. And we arrived well ahead of our haul out appointment after a couple of hours of motoring on a beautiful warm sunny flat calm morning.

We took her out of the water up at Sea View East, a large industrial yard on Salmon Bay and were tucked back into the far corner between two mega yachts for a couple of weeks. Surveyors and boatwrights and well-wishers all offered fantastic insight and advice. But not being from Seattle and not even being able to drive at the time due to an impaired license, I found that it was just too much work to accomplish in the heart of that busy deep pockets yard. And so we went looking for less expensive options. We found the good folks at South Park Yard when we were looking for boat haulers and for a few hundred dollars they got us out of there and took the boat down to their yard just south of Seattle on the Duamish river. The cost of ownership dropped from $25 a day+ to more like $50 a month. It gave us some time to regroup and muster our resources. But working such a project several hundred miles away from home can put a big strain on the family with all the time away. So we finaly put it back on the truck and brought it to our house in Oregon City where we set upon it with torches and scrapers and all manner of hammers and saws.

One year later, half the deck has been removed, and the cockpit, tanks and engine are out. The rudder is hanging from a tree. The deck beams are in sad shape, and there's a lot of 'iron sickness' in many parts of the boat. I look out my window at the old hulk and I still think there's something shaped like a boat out there. And I look around all the time for good sources of pine and bronze fastenings, but I've been happy so far to keep the issues on a plane where I can work them out at the computer these past few very wet months. Plan your work and then work your plan. And don't get in a hurry about things that can't happen yet anyway.

My computer searches and correspondence have netted some interesting information about this spidsgatter. We know from the title that The boat was built in 1939 in Sweden by a builder called "Bechrod".

I found no maker's mark of any kind so far. Only the words "4 tonne" on the inside of the fore hatch.

I sent a large number of emails around to anyone who had a boat-related Web site in Sweden or Norway or the Netherlands or even up to Finland, and I got a lot of interesting replies. The maritime traditions of the region go back more than a thousand years and the people were very kind to look over my pictures. There were a good number of people who feel they can look at a boat and tell me for a fact that it was built on the western coast of Sweden for the open ocean. But the particular builder's name was a mystery to everyone I contacted.

As far as the designer of this boat, who knows? We've looked at some photos of boats designed by famous designers like Georg Berg, Aage Utzon and M.S.J. Hansen, and our boat certainly has a lot of similarities to those. But it also bears a strong resemblence to the colin archer boats and it was suggested that the builder, whoever he was, was trying to copy and scale down one of the archer designs.

Another peculiarity uncovered by this search has been nature of the word spidsgatter. While it's true that there is a group of class built spidsgatters built early this century, the word spidsgatter derives from a boat pointed at both ends, and is freely used to denote any double ended vessel. The word it self seems to be as generic as the word coupe, or sedan, or even truck.

I recently came upon an ad for a boat for sale and the seller was very good about the nature of the definition. He wrote:

'Bente' was built in Norway in 1939 as a 40 square meter 'spisgatter' cruiser-racer, of close seamed Norwegian pine on oak frames at 8" centres, copper and bronze fastened. This yacht was almost totally rebuilt in the 1980s, and relaunched in 1986, re-engined, and with the hull epoxy-sheathed, a new alloy rig, and a complete new deck and coachroof in WEST wood-epoxy. Since then she has cruised extensively, crossing the North Sea again twice, and raced successfully in classic racing (three wins out of five starts in the classic racing boats class in the Round the Island Race).

Spisgatters were built in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, normally in varying sizes according to class racing rules, common sizes being 20, 26, 30, 40, and 55 square-meters. The class rules normally specified that materials used should be sourced in Scandinavia, thus most were of pine on oak or ash frames, with a spruce mast.

We are hoping to learn whatever we can about the history of this boat. Anyone with information to add is invited to email us!. We'll be adding more information to this Web site as time goes on. Check back regularly for updates!