The Work Begins

Brian Johnson of Ocean Bay Marine and Don Corwin of West Wind Woodworking began setting things up around the Thelma C this week by building a work bench and access stairs to the deck of the boat. Their next task is to remove the name "Marina D," - the name the last owner gave the boat- and paint its original name back on. 

Brian will also be hosting an orientation meeting for interested community volunteers at 10 am on Saturday February 18, in Room 106 at the College. If you've ever wanted to learn about  wooden boat construction, from paint chipping to timber shaping and rib construction, come on down and sign up. No previous experience is necessary. The museum anticipates three months of work to get the boat ready for display, but volunteers will be encouraged to work on the project as their schedules allow.

Work Shed Goes Up Over Thelma C

Work shed going up over the Thelma C at Kodiak College

Despite a snowstorm and temps in the 20s, Cache Seel and his men, Brian Stokes and Brian "Peewee" Dougherty, framed up the workshed over the Thelma C over the past few days at Kodiak College. They're hoping now for a calm day to pull plastic sheathing over the wooden frame and then heat gun it to shrink it to the frame. Once that's done, they'll install some doors on the bow end of the shed and put in a few plexiglass windows on the parking lot side, so visitors can watch as Brian Johnson and his crew do the actual rebuild of the boat.

Brian plans to start work on February 15, with Don Corwin and a crew of volunteers. Brian has four decades of woden boat repair work in his resume, and rebuilt the Thelma once before, in 1994.  Don, of North Wind Woodworking is an expert on antique wood construction techniques.He spent the past three summers rebuilding the windows on the Baranov Museum. He's coming over from his hometown of Skagway to help out,

Brian Stokes framking up the work shed on Friday

In the meantime, we're looking for people who want to learn the ins and outs of wooden boat repair by working on the Thelma C. If this is something you've always wanted to learn, now's your chance. We'll supply the tools, the expertise, and the coffee. Please contact the museum for more information, at 486-0384, or info@kodiakmaritimemuseum.org

Thelma C At Kodiak College

Cache Seel checking out the boat.

Cache Seel stopped by the Thelma C this morning to scope out the site for a temporary building around the boat. Cache will be putting up the building in a week or two so we can do the restoration work inside a covered and heated workspace. The structure will be a simple wood frame box with a peaked roof and sheathed with plastic shrink wrapping- the same material that’s presently shrunk around the boat itself. You may have seen other similar temporary structures around boats down at Fuller’s Boatyard.

The Thelma C at Kodiak College

In the meantime, we’re looking for a few good men and women who’d like to volunteer to help put it up- it should only take a day or two. If you think you might be one of those people, please give the museum a call at 486-0384 or email info@kodiakmaritimemuseum.org.

Thelma C update 12-30-2011

Undated photo of the Thelma C

We are gearing up to restore a 36 foot wooden salmon seine vessel, the Thelma C, which the museum acquired from Mark Thomas, its last fisherman owner, in 2006. KMM received a $298,000 grant earlier this year from the Alaska Legislature to restore the boat and build an exhibit around it.

The Thelma C was designed by famed marine architect Bill Garden and built in 1965 at Commercial Marine in Seattle for fisherman Ken Christoffersen. Ken lost his original boat in the tsunami in Valdez following the Great Alaskan Earthquake of March 27, 1964, but he took advantage of a Federal low interest disaster relief loan program to build the Thelma C, named after his wife, to get back on the water. As we understand it here at the museum, Ken fished the boat for decades, mostly out of Valdez, but also in Chignik and occasionally out of Kodiak. One of the aims of the project is to get a more detailed history of the boat, hopefully from Ken’s family and people who fished on the boat. Ken himself passed away in 2005.

Proposed location of Thelma C Interpretive Exhibit

The project involves restoring the boat to its 1965 rigging and wheelhouse configuration, and installing it as a permanent interpretive exhibit near Oscar’s Dock in Kodiak’s St. Paul Harbor. When the project is complete visitors will be able to view the deck from one side of the boat and into the hull through Plexiglasss panels on the other side. A series of all-weather interpretive panels will explain what it’s like to live and work aboard a salmon fishing boat, how the salmon fishery is vital to the people of Kodiak Island, and the effects of the 1964 earthquake on the Kodiak’s waterfront and fishing industry. A cell phone accessible multi-media exhibit will feature oral histories, images and text to augment those stories. A roof will keep rain and snow off the boat, but the exhibit will otherwise be an open air exhibit.

The boat was moved in November to Kodiak College, which has graciously granted workspace to accomplish the boat work. At the moment, the boat is sheathed in white shrink wrap plastic, but in the next few weeks we’ll be constructing a temporary work space over the boat. In February, shipwright Brian Johnson and master woodworker Don Corwin will begin leading a team of volunteers and students in reconstructing the boat. If all goes well, the boat should be completely refurbished by June of 2012 and ready to be moved to the exhibit site in the harbor sometime after that.

The Thelma C moving from storage, November, 2010

We’ll be looking for volunteers to help with the work shelter in early January, and the boat rebuilding in February, so please get in touch with us if you’d like to participate.