By Ryan Willentano
When Tom Brand, 74, salvaged his King's Cruiser folkboat, it had not been
sailed in more than two decades. After pulling it from the pine trees and
sand burrs in Luddington, MI., he worked feverishly on the boat for four
months.
"I felt like I should have been punching a clock." Brand says of his nonstop
schedule working on Tarna.
Tanra, Swedish for "Seabird", is 11 inches longer than the typical 28-foot
King's Cruiser. Built in 1961 by A.B. Telfar shipyard in Goteburg, Sweeden, she
came with head and accomodations for four. Her galley included monogrammed
glassware, china and silverware (Tarna still has her original set).
The rigging is stainless steel, the spars are Oregon pine and, below the
water-line she carries a ton of cast iron for ballast in the full keel. The
cabin sides, coaming and hull are of a golden African mohogany. Hull planking
is copper riveted and plugged.
Sailing under main, genoa and the single-cylinder Volto-Penta diesel
"pop-pop-popping" along. Brand can cruise along at 7 knots. When he first
started sailing in the late 1950's, it was the beauty of the King's Cruiser
that captured his senses. Today he just wants to have a nice sailing season.
"If you've got a wood these days, you flaunt it" says Tom Brand, 4, who owns a
King's Cruiser folkboat. And flaunt it he does. As an artist, Brand fell in
love with the slender lines of the King's Cruiser before he even knew how to
sail.
Design by committee
The folkboat sailed off the design table in the early 1940's as the product of a
design competition in Sweden. The resulting "volkboat", or people's boat, was a
combination of the four entries. To its credit, or despite it, this design by
committee process produced a boat that has endured the tests of time as a
favorite among wooden-boat owners.
The idea behind the folkboat was to build a relatively inexpensive, tough
little boat for small families. When Sweedish designer Tord Sunden offered his
modified folkboat, King's Cruiser, its popularity brought it national
prominence as one of the most popular one-design auxillary class racer-cruisers
in the United States.
Debuting in 1955 at New York Motor Boat Show, it cost $8,190. To many sailing
enthusiasts attending the show, it was the best new entry. By the mid 1960's
some 250 of the 300 Sweedish built King's Cruisers were exported to the United
States. Fleets grew across the country from Long Island Sound and Chesapeake
Bay to San Fransisco Bay. In the Great Lakes the boat became popular, in part,
for its seaworthy reputation. By 1968 chicago enjoyed a fleet in excess of 30
boats.
European builders made about 1,000 folkboats in all. It was said that many
shipwrights of the day broke in ther first set of tools building a folkboat.
As a testament to the reliability of these little boats, in 1960, aboard the
26-foot modified folkboat, Jester, Colonel "Blondie" Hassier sailed alone from
Plymouth, England to Newport, R.I. in the first trans-Atlantic, single-handed
race.
Life of a sailor
In 1948 Brand moved from Indianapolis to attend the School of the Art Institute
of Chicago where he studied for five years. Brand became a founding member of
the Chicago Artists Coalition. He was active in the Exhibition Momentum student
art showcase which hosted judges like Jackson Pllock, Mies van der Rohe and
Alfred Harr. After leaving the Art Institute Brand returned to the family trade
of printing in Chicago, started a family and took up sailing.
Brand's first boat was a King's Cuiser. He became part owner in Dover, hull
number 223, in the early 1980's. For the next dozen years he would sail Dover
on Montrose Harbor on Chicago's North Side.
Brand and a group of sailors and wooden-boat enthusiasts founded the Heritage
Boat Club which, which operates out of the Corinthian Yacht Club in Montrose
Harbor. Brand was the first editor of the Heritage Hailer, the club's
publication.
He eventually sold his interest in Dover to the next generation, his partner's
son. For a few years Brand went without a boat until retiring to the sand dunes
and quiet of Michigan City, Ind. in 1995.
Giving up the printe's trade at age 62, Brand started spending more time
painting with his seccond wife, Carol, also an artist. One day while working in
his studio, Brand received a call from his second wife, telling him about a
King's Cruiser. She was still active in the Heritage Hailer and had received a
phone call placing an ad to see the King's Cruiser, Tarna. Brand says she hade
missed sailing on Dover since their divorce and had purchased another King's
Cruiser some years earlier. She knew Brand missed sailing as much as she had so
when she got the call she called him immediately. He bought the boat for $2,500
before the ad was even printed.
The restoration
Tarna had not been sailed for more than 20 years. Only rain and snow poured over
her decks. Her owner had become too busy to sail her and she rested quietly
among the pines, visited only by the squirrels who had made a home in her
cabin. Brand saved her from a slow yet certain death in April 1996.
After he got the boat home he worked on her for four months. His list of
priorities flowed over pages of yellow notebook paper: sand and varnish mast,
put injector in engine, clean engine, remove paint from hull and varnish.
He began by removing deck hardware and coaming chrome. Topside paint was
removed by scraping, sanding, then with chemicals and finally, success with a
heat gun. The deck veneer was removed down to the strip planking and rotted
planks were replaced. He purchased tools and experimented to find what worked
best-grinders, disk sanders and the heat gun, for starters.
"It was slow going those first few weeks," read Brand's project notes. By the
end of the first month he was making progress. Rechroming was under way at a
pricey $400;the grab rails were being varnished; the hatch covers were being
made;the cabin house was under repair, and here and there, varnish was being
applied.
By June the mast had three coats of varnish and was ready for the rigging to be
assembled. At the stern the rot around the transom was repaired and some
varnish was applied.
The port side was stripped with the heat gun and made ready for sanding. By
mid-June the port side was varnished. The golden beauty of the African mahogany
would breath new enthusiasm into the project.
He finished recovering the cabin with WEST SYSTEM epoxy and Dryel fabric. For
paint he chose regular old porch paint.
"All you need is a good oil paint. I'm a painter, I know good paint. You don't
need a paint you buy in a ships's store" says Brand. "I'll have to paint every
couple of years", he added.
At the end of August Brand felt it was too late to put the boat in the water,
and he half believed it might sink if he did. "These old wooden boats need to
soak up some water before they float" he said. The first sail would have to
wait until the next spring.
The next spring Brand put Tarna in the water and it did not sink. In fact it
floated so well he sailed it about 50 miles ot Chicago and entered it into the
Heritage Boat Show at his old club in Montrose Harbor. He won the Resurrection
Award for the best restoration and the Skipper's Choice award voted on by the
owners of the boats in the show.
"I didn't restore it to set it on the mantel" Brant said, I restored it to have
a nice sailing season.
Ryan Willentanois a sailing instructor and freelance writer in Chicago.
