Cynthia and I lived aboard the Pious Puffin between College and Seminary for most of 1976. By this time, Ken and Lue had been restoring the Puffin for almost two years and were nearing completion. We had hoped to be leaving on some voyage in about 6 months.
If you’ve never lived aboard a boat, it is difficult to describe what a unique experience it is. We were amazed at how accustomed we became to life on the water, and feeling odd to venture inland. Storms seemed not so fierce – until we went ashore and saw the downed trees. And who could forget falling asleep to the sound of love-sick mudtoads coming through the hull, or the times I thought I was really going crazy as a flock of laughing gulls flew noisily by?
I spent the first several months completing the electrical wiring and connecting the 120 volt DC system. It terrified me to work on the live DC panels, since muscles contract with contact to DC voltage, and you cannot escape. I only ‘connected’ twice, and both times my hands fortunately flew away from the hot wires. I was also able to find and restore about 60% of the original inter-cabin telephone system.
Cyndy spent most of those months helping to pound scuppers and refinish the teak decks. She also carefully scraped the old varnish off the many exterior carvings and applied new coats. In the end, there wasn’t a single wooden surface that had not been redone.
As July 4th and the bicentennial came around, we took the Puffin out for a parade of tall ships coming to Yorktown. The next day the newspaper reported that the parade was accompanied by all sorts of ships, from tiny canoes to “a lumbering pleasure barge!” We sure knew who that was.
But our plans of a voyage never happened. It was during this time that Ken had to make the decision to sell the Puffin. Originally he had a secret partner in the venture. Their friends, the Gustins, had contributed to the initial purchase and the plan was that Bill would retire from John Deere and they would join my parents – in a couple years.
Between Bill continuing to work and Dad running out of money, the only choice was to begin offering the Pious Puffin the following year. In the end, Ken could not afford to even keep her insured. It was a nervous time – to have all their money tied up in one, uninsured basket. But after the sale, he figured that he had cleared $20,000 a year above the remodeling expenses. (That’s $60k in 2018 dollars!) Not a large amount, but the benefits of also living aboard made it well worthwhile.
So, our voyage became a shorter trip around Chesapeake Bay. We flew kites while at anchor, ate soft-shelled crabs in Delaware, and Lue took Ken for a spin in the “Huffin Puffin!” Dad and I even had a navigation contest. I had learned celestial navigation at Iowa State, and he at Kings Point many years before. Of course, one only uses celestial navigation at Sea where precision is not that necessary, but at least I got us somewhere on a nearby river! Dad’s calculations were not even in Chesapeake Bay!
It was a year of highs and lows, but also a lot of fun. The Pious Puffin is definitely a unique ship, and worthy of her name. One day a small boy on the dock, hearing the piano playing and seeing the stained glass windows, exclaimed, “Hey Mommy, they’ve got a Church in there!”
