Gen. Patton’s schooner being restored

D.W. Nutt, Ithaca Journal 7:50 p.m. EST December 21, 2013

(Photo: SIMON WHEELER/Staff Photo)

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When Gen. George S. Patton had a schooner custom-built in 1939, he was still a colonel in the U.S. Army and the American military was just beginning to mobilize as war erupted in Europe.
Patton eventually christened his ship the “When and If,” because when the war ended, and if he returned alive, he planned to sail it around the world.
Patton did not live to fulfill that dream. The schooner’s new owner, Doug Hazlitt, still has a shot at it.
Hazlitt, 50, the owner of Hazlitt 1852 Vineyards in Hector, spent his childhood sailing sunfish and catamarans on Seneca Lake, and for much of his adult life, he has raced and refurbished boats.
In 1989, he bought a 38-foot schooner named the Chantey, restored it and started a day-sail charter business on the lake. He later upgraded to the Malabar X in 2001, which he rebuilt with the help of longtime friend Dennis Montgomery of Ithaca, who owns Cayuga Wooden Boatworks. Hazlitt ran the popular Malabar X out of Watkins Glen until 2007, when he sold it and suddenly found himself without a ship.
“I thought, ‘Well, that’s fine.’ We were running the winery, we had four kids. I certainly had plenty to do,” Hazlitt said. “But I always had the idea that I still never really got to fulfill my dream, which was to actually be able to own a boat and go cruising on it, take it and use it, race it in races, go to Europe in the summer and the Caribbean in the winter.”
When a boat broker in Maine mentioned that Patton’s historic schooner was coming up for sale, Hazlitt immediately expressed an interest.
“Of course, I knew about the boat,” Hazlitt said. “It’s been around forever. It’s very famous.”
The 63-foot schooner was built in Wiscasset, Maine, in 1939 by renowned naval architect John G. Alden, who also designed the Malabar series. Alden was known for making swift, hard-working schooners that consistently won all the major ocean races, according to Montgomery.
“This was built for Patton to be a much more robust boat but look the same. Basically, to be more of a world ocean-cruising boat,” Montgomery said. “This thing could circumnavigate the globe safely.”
While Patton never sailed the When and If around the world, Montgomery and Hazlitt said the general was rumored to have sailed it at least once after it was built. Patton’s family, however, got plenty of use out of the When and If after he died in 1945, all the way through the late 1970s, when they sold it. The ship has long been a fixture of the yachting circuit around Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., and up and down the East Coast.
Not long after Hazlitt learned it was for sale, another party bid $400,000, and Hazlitt decided not to pursue it. A year later, the sale had yet to go through, and after the initial bidder grew tired of waiting and bought another boat instead, Hazlitt made what he considered a lowball offer of $180,000.
To Hazlitt’s surprise, his offer was accepted, and in spring 2012, he took possession of the When and If.
“I picked the boat up at Martha’s Vineyard and went to Maine for the summer with it, and had a bunch of fun with the family,” he said. “I brought it down to Newport (R.I.) over Labor Day and raced it in the Newport yacht regatta, and then decided it’s time to bring it home and restore it. I knew it needed a bunch of work.”
Restoration
For the last year, the boat has sat at Cayuga Wooden Boatworks’ shop at Beacon Bay Marine on the north end of Cayuga Lake, where Montgomery and his team of skilled craftsman are restoring the boat stem to stern.
“We took the whole back of this boat off. The entire transom and cockpit and everything on the back end of the When and If was completely torn off,” said Montgomery, who built his first boat in 1967 and established his boatworks in 1991. “We lifted all the cabin tops up, stripped all the old teak decks right off the boat, and repaired all the frames under them. We put all-new teak decks back down. That’s what we’re just finishing right now. Two-inch solid teak decks.”
Montgomery has long been Hazlitt’s go-to guy when it comes to rehabbing his boats.
“Obviously, we must be doing something right because we remain, after lots of money, good friends,” Montgomery said.
Hazlitt estimates the total cost of work on the When and If will reach about $400,000. In addition to replacing the transom, the horn timber, the teak decks and framing, the boat still needs to have its hull painted and interiors done: plumbing, electronics, air conditioning and other general systems work. Montgomery praised Hazlitt for his close involvement with the whole restoration project.
“As far as saving a boat like this, it takes a special person to even want to do it. But it takes Doug Hazlitt to want to do it and want to do it right,” Montgomery said. “Doug has been around these boats for so long and has sailed on so many of them that he definitely has his own ideas of what he likes to see. And that’s good because making your mind up is half the challenge. If you do one thing, it’s a compromise for something else.”
The repair of classic wooden boats presents its own set of unique challenges. Not only are skilled shipwrights and artisans hard to come by these days, but so are the original blueprints. At the shipbuilding industry’s peak, when it was steadily producing boats, all similar in size and design, there wasn’t much need for paperwork, according to Montgomery.
“But today, if you’re going to build a boat like this and you hire a naval architect, you’ll get 85 pages of specifications and plans spelling out the size of every nail for every piece,” he said. “When we get one of these (old ships), we get, like, three pages, and it’s anybody’s guess what they use. ... So it takes a lot more thinking to restore one.”
The When and If will be stored for the winter in Watkins Glen, where workers will finish the interior. Come springtime, Hazlitt plans on taking his ship out on the open sea, possibly chartering it from time to time to recoup some of his expenses. But his main goal is to sail the When and If around the world.
The captain
At the helm will be Capt. Seth Salzmann, 29, of Key West, Fla., who previously ran the Malabar X for Hazlitt for 4½ years. Salzmann sailed the When and If in from the coast last year, and he recently returned to the area to help with the restoration effort. He said it’s amazing to be able to watch the ship’s restoration.
“I can tell you the very first time I ever saw this boat,” he said. “I was working on another boat in 1998 and saw (the When and If) sailing up the Eggemoggin Reach up in Maine. I was a kid, but I could identify every schooner out on the water, and I looked through the binoculars and I couldn’t identify the boat. And we sailed by, and with the binoculars I read the name, and I’m like, ‘Aw, what a beautiful boat.’ And right then and there, it’s like falling in love with a girl for the first time. You remember when you saw her.”
Salzmann isn’t the only person with vivid memories of the When and If and its famous pedigree. Hazlitt’s daughter Shannon, 20, recalls seeing her father sailing the ship during a regatta in Maine not long after he bought the boat.
“It was really, really, super foggy, and boats were coming out of the fog in all directions, and I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is so freaky, I don’t know how my dad is steering through this,’ ” she said. “But he just seemed confident, you know, in his element. And I almost felt like, ‘Wow, maybe he’s channeling Gen. Patton.’ ”
About the boat
? Length: 63 feet, 5 inches.
? Length including bowsprit: 83 feet.
? Displaces 43 tons and carries about 1,700 square feet of sail area.
? Originally built: 1939 by F.F. Pendleton in Wiscasset, Maine.
? Make: Custom John G. Alden Wooden Schooner.