Times were good in the summer of 1964, when my father decided to look for a vessel large enough for our nine-member family. Our 19-foot Bristol was proving too small and had other problems—last time I saw it, she was underwater, sunk at the marina.

With the help of a newspaper classified ad, Dad found a 45-foot, wooden party/work boat at a dock in Pawtuxet Cove, R.I. One afternoon, we met with the owner on board. Dad asked questions as I followed along, keeping my distance. I liked the boat as it was, simply because it was a boat and floating. Dad liked it too, but he had a vision, $6,000 and a plan. We bought her that day.

The maiden voyage took the boat south to another Rhode Island marina, this one at Chepiwanoxet Point, a peninsula jutting into Greenwich Bay. I missed that voyage and the boat’s haulout, and next saw her parked next to the marina’s gravel entry road. Demolition had begun, including removal of hardware, steel frames and hull paint. I joined the work crew and spent after-school hours, holidays, weekends and vacations scraping, sanding and painting.

My first task was to remove the gray hull paint with a scraper and a blowtorch. It was almost my last job too, as I set the boat on fire while trying to remove paint around a porthole. Either a flaming patch of paint, or a flaming rag stuffed into the opening, fell inside the boat. I hustled down from the staging plank, up the ladder to the stern deck, and belowdecks to the smoke-filled forward compartment. Between gagging and coughing fits, I stomped out the fire with my feet. Then I went outside and pretended nothing had happened.

Meanwhile, Dad asked Charles “Chick” Street, a naval architect, to design and draw his vision for what the boat might become. I still have a three-page set of plans dated December 26, 1964. Street’s design was similar to many trawlers that began production in the late 1970s.

Once demolition was complete, the bare wooden hull was moved into a shed. Plastic sheeting protected the building, allowing the sun to shine through for a little heat during the winter.

My father, a U.S. Navy carpenter’s mate during World War II, had built smaller boats and restored a 34-footer that Hurricane Carol damaged in 1954, but this conversion was his largest. The entire stern and transom was removed and rebuilt with mahogany. Much of the hull planking was replaced. The gunwales were extended, giving the hull higher freeboard. Decking was replaced, a new pilothouse was constructed, and hatches and hardware were installed. Decks and the cabin roof were fiberglassed for water-tightness. Sheets of MDO plywood, rolls of fiberglass cloth, buckets of resin and tubes of hardener went into the rebuild, along with teak for the swim platform and mahogany for the caprail. The Cummins diesel driving the single propeller remained, but the old steering cables were replaced by a new Morse system.

While Dad was building the new superstructure and interior, my brother David and I worked on the hull. “I froze my ass off sitting on a staging plank gluing wood bungs into the new planking to hide the recessed fastener heads,” David recalls. “Dad taught me to match the grain direction of the bungs with the grain of the planking.”

My job was caulking new and old hull planking with oakum, sanding smooth the bungs and planking, and applying three coats of paint. The rebuild lasted all winter and spring of my senior year in high school. I did have a date for the senior prom, but begged out of staying up all night to attend the senior breakfast, preferring to work on the boat. If I had a do-over, I would still work on the boat.

Prior to launching the vessel, we lined the interior of the hull with wet burlap bags, repeatedly dousing them with water. The theory was that the planks would swell against the oakum caulking, so the hull would stay watertight.

Nine Knotts launched during summer 1965 amid much fanfare and blue smoke from the tow vehicle. My six siblings and their friends witnessed the launch, expecting the aging marina cradle, trailer, truck and lift to collapse at some point in the process. We considered the launch successful, even though the boat had no cabin doors or windows. All the finish work would be completed later.

Our navigation aids and electronics included a marine radio, compass, depthfinder, horn and spotlight to get us through foggy nights on Narragansett Bay and avoid a collision with a Block Island ferry. Radar was discussed, but never materialized on board.

My mother would later sew curtains for the salon windows, and covers for the cushions, from the same material that she made outfits for my three sisters. Some days, everything and everybody matched.

Sleeping accommodations included the dining room table, which dropped down to form a double berth. It also was comfortable for dinner for four, but there were always 10 to 12 people aboard. I don’t remember it being a problem. The salon had a wide couch that converted to bunks for the captain and first mate. My berth was in the pilothouse, while six pipe berths held my siblings and their friends down below. My two youngest brothers slept abaft the stairway and above the stowage area for our food supply. They were never hungry.

As my father added the finishing touches, and as my graduation slid past, I filled my girlfriend void and brought her on our first Vineyard cruise. In August 1965, Nine Knotts—with nine of us Knotts aboard—left the Chepawinoxet docks bound for Tarpaulin Cove in Massachusetts, then to Martha’s Vineyard.

The next day, crossing Vineyard Sound, we experienced engine trouble and had to shut down amid a rolling sea. Dad went to the engine room to resolve the issue, which turned out to be an oil leak, and he became ill from the boat’s rolling and the diesel’s stench. When Dad came topside followed by Smokey, our pooch, he stepped outside for a breath of fresh ocean air. Smokey immediately took a large dump on the front deck, probably not helping Dad’s queasy stomach.

Despite all that, our initial voyage was a success. Nine Knotts would go on to visit Menemsha, Oak Bluffs, Edgartown and Nantucket before reversing course for Narragansett Bay. Menemsha and Lake Tashmoo would become the favorite destinations for our family’s summer cruises.

From the East Greenwich Yacht Club, Nine Knotts would take us to the Vineyard multiple times, and around Buzzards Bay and Narragansett Bay. She served as the committee boat during Wednesday and Friday night races. From her deck, we watched Intrepid defeat Dame Pattie in the 1967 America’s Cup races.

Those years on the Nine Knotts was the best of times for our large, close-knit family. After several glorious seasons, a truck driver with liveaboard retirement plans purchased the trawler, and on a spring morning in 1970, Nine Knotts motored out of Greenwich Cove for the last time.

A piece of each of us left with her, mine larger than my siblings’ because of the hours invested working alongside my father and brother during the conversion. My father replaced the trawler with a 33-foot Richardson. Sadly, that boat would never leave the dock, as cancer would take Dad from us in the fall of 1970. My father’s vision and hours of work produced the family trawler we all loved and the memories that have lasted a lifetime. 

This article was originally published in the May/June 2023 issue.