Historical Summary:
From her last owner:
Many people don't realize that I moved to my cabin after living aboard an old classic yacht. I worked at the BOEING CO concurrently with owning this old boat, (1984-89). I left Boeing May 16, 1989 and my boat sank two weeks later! It sank on May 29, 1989. I usually refer to it as "I moved from a boat that sank to land that floods! lol" On this page I have some pictures that were sent to me from a guy that owned it the longest. His name is HW "Mac" McCurdy. The M/V "Moby-Dick" was a 63' boat designed by Ted Geary [sic, she was actually designed by Lee & Brinton] and built in 1914 at a shipyard on the Duwamish owned by Ed Heath. The old shipyard was eventually sold to Bill Boeing, an airplane builder. It was painted red and and called the Red Barn that became Plant I. It was eventually moved to the Museum of Flight near near Plant II in Seattle. "Mac" was very helpful and supportive of my intentions fo restore the Moby-Dick. He sent me a packet of 5 X 7 sliver nitrate negatives of the Moby-Dick. "On this page you can see some of the photos he had taken just before it was taken by the military for war use.
A followup with the former owner gave more details on her fate:
Moby-Dick sank at its moorage at Dagmars Landing May 29, 1989. It was raised by me two weeks later and towed to the 13th street marina in Everett where it sat for years surrounded by a crude chicken wire fence. A homeless guy was living in it. Thieves had removed and cut up all the rare port lights and any thing of value. Eventually the Port of Everett cut it up when they expanded the Marina.
And from "Knee Deep in Shavings", By Norman C. Blanchard:
As an adult Mac was never a sailor; he was always a power boat man. . . . [In 1934 he bought] a 62-footer, designed by Lee & Brinton that had been built as the Olympic in 1914 at the Heath Shipyard on the Duwamish River. She had served duty in World War I and was a well-known boat and highly thought of by everybody on the waterfront. Mac had her completely redone, and renamed her Moby Dick.
Mac was so notoriously pinchpenny at the time he bought the boat that a lot of people who worked at the Blanchard Boat Company, and who had helped build her, thought, well, that poor old boat's going to go to hell now. But that never came about. Mac had a full time man on her named Otto, who'd been a deep-water man, and this fellow was just one of those jewels without price. He not only kept the boat up year round all alone, but he did all the cooking when they were out cruising. THe Moby Dick won the Pacific Motor Boat and Rudder Cup races in 1938. Mac kept that boat until she was commandeered by the Army in December of 1941. He did actually buy her back after the war, and she was in a sorry state. He again completely re-outfitted her, but, as I recall, he did sell her fairly soon after that.