Anyone who knows boats will tell you that you don't buy a wooden boat, you marry one. Like any good relationship, it takes patience and attention, and you have to love the process of doing it, not just the end result. When it's done right, you can see the love gone into it from a mile away. Take a walk on the Lund docks and spot the Lady Miriam and you'll see what I mean.
"I fell in love with that boat when I first moved to Lund," said Steve Suche, who bought it in 1999 and spent the next five years tearing down and rebuilding it.
"I like working on her almost more than I like taking her out," said Suche. And it shows.
Lady Miriam was built in 1957 by the Verstad family of Annieville Slough on the Fraser River and named after builder Oli Verstad's wife, Miriam. A well-known Norwegian shipbuilding family, the Verstads built over 100 boats in the traditional way, completely without plans.
Lady Miriam was built as a gillnetter and came to Lund in the care of second owner and commercial fisher Charlie Francis of Tla'amin Nation. At 35' with a 10' beam, the Norwegian heritage shows in the upswept bow of its oak keel beam and the graceful rounded lines of its stern.
Suche jumped at the chance to buy the retired fishing boat and rebuild it, enlisting the help of Bill McKee at Sevilla Island Boatworks.
"Bill taught me everything I know," said Suche. "I couldn't have done it without him."
Starting with tearing out all the rotted planks from 50 years of hauling fish, Suche and McKee eventually replaced 60 of the boat's oak ribs and re-planked it in local cedar salvaged from an old logging bridge, which they steamed and bent in a specially built steam box at Suche's shop.
The original wheelhouse had to be removed for the rebuild and was rebuilt to new, slightly bigger dimensions with period details by Suche.
"I mocked it up first with sticks and cardboard," he said. "It took me three tries to get it right."
Yellow cedar for the framing and bulkheads of the wheelhouse came from another salvaged log, found by following the wood's aromatic scent detected on the beach by Suche and his wife, JoAnne.
Finished, repainted and with a full rebuild by Marvin Sorenson on its six-cylinder diesel engine, originally out of an old combine harvester, the renewed Lady Miriam launched from the Lund Harbour in 2004.
Stepping aboard the boat is like taking a step back in time. The original mast shows the scars and dings of the old iron gill net rigging it bore for many years. The smell of the yellow cedar bulkheads still drifts richly out of the wheelhouse.
"I've tried to sell her a few times," said Suche, "but I always chicken out."
So, for now, Lady Miriam waits patiently in Lund Harbour for the summer cruising season to begin, a piece of living west coast history right here in our little village.
