Free Rescue of the Bounty: Disaster and Survival in Superstorm Sandy by Michael J. Tougias, Douglas A. Campbell Page B

“horrible.” Bounty was leaking badly and had grounded more than once.
    Wyman recommended that the entire bottom of the hull be covered in plastic with plywood nailed over it. When that was accomplished, Bounty was towed to Gloucester, Massachusetts, where a shipyard refused, due to Bounty ’s condition, to haul her for repairs.
    The towing continued up the Gulf of Maine to Boothbay Harbor, where Sample’s Shipyard agreed to put Bounty in dry dock.
    Joseph Jakomovicz was the yard manager at Sample’s, where he had worked since 1978, first as a carpenter and two years later as manager. When Bounty came out of the water, Jakomovicz saw her leaking like a colander. He was flabbergasted. Hansen was there beside him, and he, too, was shocked. The bottom planks were thoroughly tunneled with wormholes. Jakomovicz asked Walbridge what had happened. The captain told him that Bounty had been in Florida, where worms were a problem, and there was not the money to make repairs.
    Now, however, Bob Hansen was there to write checks. He told Jakomovicz to repair the bottom, and the work began. Hansen’s plan was to carry passengers, so a coast guard inspector came to examine the ship’s condition.
    It was agreed that the original white-oak framing was in decent shape. A half dozen pieces of frame were replaced. But the planking was another matter. All of the bottom planking below the waterline was replaced with white oak. Since planks twenty to forty feet long were needed, Jakomovicz had to look outside New England, where the supply of tall white oak had been depleted.
    Jakomovicz traveled to Tennessee, where he located a mill that could saw forty-foot planks. He selected the timbers he wanted, and they were sawn to three-and-one-quarter-inch thickness, all of them with their own shapes. The wood was air-dried. Jakomovicz said that you can bend green, fresh oak in a steamer, but you can never bend dry oak. So it was carefully sawn to shape. One plank near the ship’s transom twisted from nearly vertical to nearly horizontal.
    The oak planking was installed and Hansen wrote the checks, and by the end of that yard period, when Bounty left Sample’s, Jakomovicz thought it was in much better condition than when it arrived.
    All boats need constant maintenance and repairs. Wooden boats—particularly forty-year-old boats—prove this rule. In 2006, Bounty was back in the yard, now called Boothbay Harbor Shipyard. Hansen and Walbridge wanted major work done, including replacement of the frames and planking from the waterline to the deck. Partway up from the waterline, Bounty had a wale strake—a piece of planking thicker than ordinary—painted yellow. Below the wale strake, the planks were white oak. Above, Smith and Rhuland, the original builders of Bounty , had used Douglas fir.
    Jakomovicz was not fond of Douglas fir, thinking it more susceptible to decay than other woods. On the positive side, it was available in long lengths. Douglas fir came in two grades, Jakomovicz told Walbridge. To plank Bounty with the lower grade would cost $20,000 as opposed to $50,000 for the better grade. The difference, Jakomovicz said, was that the better grade of planks had straight, vertical grain and few knots. Jakomovicz asked Walbridge what he wanted. Because of the knots on the lower-grade fir, the wood won’t take a good finish. But Walbridge chose the lower-grade fir for the planking above the wale strake, the job was completed to Jakomovicz’s satisfaction, and Hansen paid the bill. In July 2007, Bounty was relaunched.
    From 2001 until the summer of 2012, Bounty visited various shipyards and was hauled five times, according to Jakomovicz’s tally. She was hauled in Norfolk and in Tampa, and the 2007 launching was followed by dry dock in Boothbay in 2010.
    In 2012, Hansen was looking for a buyer for Bounty . He was offering the ship through the broker WME Yachts Ltd. as “a master class example of square-rigged yachting.” Hansen’s asking