As Heritage Boaters pause now and remember Ferd, each of us in our own way, it seems especially timely to reprint the following article, which captured so much of who he was:

The Wisconsin Sailing Connection -- Wooden Self-portrait boats

from a 200-acre farm

by Jim Dean

In the rolling dairy country of central Wisconsin, there's a 200-acre farm that builds boats. Wooden boats. Some 50 miles west of Fond du Lac, near Neshkoro, Ferdinand "Red" Nimphius, now 82, has been laying keels, fairing strakes and stepping masts since 1929, from the days when commercial sailing ships were still to be found.

His Nimphius Boat Co. has turned out well over a hundred boats, ranging from his first boat, a 20-foot dory built when he was 19, to the 40-foot ketch Fleetwood, that won the Chicago-Mackinac race five times, a record that still stands, and the 65-foot, 42-ton Red Lion, a half-sized replica of a 16th century Dutch frigate, launched in 1983. The original Rote Lowe, built in Amsterdam in 1597, guarded the port of Konigsberg in East Prussia.

What makes a man turn from a rolling deck beating up Lake Michigan in his Alden-designed (but Nimphius-modified) 32-foot racer/cruiser Sieglinde in the 1932 Chicago-Mackinac Race (his first) and from dreams of sailing around the world to plant his long ash oar in Wisconsin farm country to build boats?

Red Nimphius, born Ferdinand Rudolph Carl Maria Nimphius in 1909 in Borkum, Westphalia, Germany, came with his family to this country at the age of six. He first started building boats in the 1920s in a 37-acre yard on the lakefront in Milwaukee. It wasn't all work. To get to the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago, he with three others sailed there, then across to Holland, Michigan, and back to Milwaukee, "all on $21 bucks!" Nimphius weathered the Great Depression and World War II. He worked in his Milwaukee yard until 1950, then after two years in Chicago building minesweepers for Henry Grebe, he migrated north to Neshkoro, "October 3, 1956," his wife, Betty, recalled, "no water and no electricity." Why head up north? "I thought I'd build little boats, ha!" And there he's been, for over 40 years, a legend to fathom.

On wet winter day, thermometer around 30, a northeastern blowing heavy snow across the road-slush, I set out to find this man, first heading west from Oshkosh to Wautoma, then south 10 miles on Wis. 22. Between stands of pine and corn fields, Guernsey-colored with the dirty snow of late winter, appeared a weathered sign, "Nimphius Boats." The drive stretches a half mile, flanked by snow banks crusty from recent thaws and freezings. Hidden behind the trees is an old red brick farmhouse with a half dozen barns and sheds, an old trailer from another era and derelict equipment rusting about. To a dusty eye, it's just another bit of decayed America. But to an aqueous humor, the Nimphius Boatworks is a special place.

At an age when most men begin eyeing retirement, Nimphius scarfed his life to Neshkoro, to turn out still more boats. From the trailer's next room Betty, bright-eyed and white-haired, looked up from balance sheets and a stack of bills and added "one child was two and a half and I was pregnant with another when we moved up here." Beethoven boomed on the radio. Nimphius passed that razor-edged plane back over his life again, and said, "I'd finished a 36-foot McGregor-designed canoe-sterned ketch--not slow, no slouch, and she's still sailing in Palm Beach--and sold the shop in '50 or '51, and was going to sail around the world." He looked at his wife, "then you and I got involved." To me: "She was 25, and I was 43...we had seven of 'em in 10 years," all with red hair. He opens a book. "You see the buttock lines were nice and the bows were sometimes blunt like a dolphin's nose, but they go like hell in the water." He turned to a copper engraving of the plans for a 16th century frigate.

Over the years all of the Nimphius' children have had a hand in building boats, like his daughter, Barbie, who carved the figurehead for the Red Lion. We went back to the barn where Nimphius was working on a boat's wheel. On that February day, son Alex, with thick glasses and carpenter's rough hands, was just back from having his eyes checked. He was replanking the hull of an old runabout. Also working for Nimphius is Jeff, his son-in-law, "They're taking it over, more or less."

Landlocked, Nimphius must truck his larger boats 75 miles overland to Lake Michigan from midnight to 5 a.m. with red flags, flashing lights and police escort. "At first, we made our own trailers and hauled the boats ourselves," Nimphius recalled. Why so far from water? One reason is wood. Wisconsin forests supply some of the wood in a Nimphius boat, like the oak he gets from nearby Kewaskum, like the keel for the Red Lion, that was cut out of a chunk of 10" x 12" x 38' -- white oak, one chunk." Mahogany? "I have some 33-inch wide Honduran."

Yet other woods, like Jarra, come from as far away as Australia. "It's harder, denser, sinks in the water, is more resistant to rot than oak. We needed a big piece, 25 inches wide, 26' long, six inches thick, one side with no heart. Got it from a guy importing it in Milwaukee."

From a trailer that serves as an office Nimphius dove into scrapbooks and boat plans to fill in his life for me. His life is his boats. There's a sign in his shop that reads: "Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence." He is proud of fine lines, fine work. In central Wisconsin, the craftsman's pride in the job is as clear-grained as the stout oak ribs in the 41-foot cutter ("You know how to bend them? You have to bend them with the flat grain, like this"), one of six boats under construction in his yard. "She won't quite beat some of the fiberglass new ones, but she'll give them a hell of a run," Nimphius said.

Nimphius is old-fashioned in his ways. He never studied naval architecture, but designs most of the boats that he builds. He goes for a simple, solid boat. He chooses galvanized iron bolts over bronze ones (cheaper and just as durable). He seasons his wood carefully, usually for three years, before using it. Then there's the Christine Margaret, a schooner launched last September. "She's planked with Alaskan yellow cedar. It's longer lasting than mahogany...Now see over here, look at this one...She's a little hollow in her bow, to make her point a little higher..." At Nimphius Boats, as surely as the seasons change, fashioning beauty in a laminate of strength, space and speed goes on.

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Thank you, Ferd -- for all you did, for all you were, and for all you always will be to all of us! You will be missed.

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