THE REBIRTH OF STAR 1159 by Marc Müller Eschwege, Germany (Editors note: The following is the story of how Star #1159 got restored, and gives the reader some of the heart and soul of what goes into such a project. For historical background, Star #1159 was built in 1935 by C. Waap, Heikendorf, Germany. Its first owner was Chr. Backhaus, Jr. who was a member of the Hamburger Flotte and Norddeutsche Rudder Verein. The original name of the boat was Moorhex III. While pre-war records are not very good, the 1938 Log shows that 1159 placed third in the 1937 Kieler Woche.) I have been ask to write about the restoration of Star # 1159. Before doing so however, I would like to give the history of the boat. For me this boat is not just something to sail in. It is a vision, an embodiment of the romance of sailing and also a good part of my autobiography. When I was about 8 years old, my parents, after a very long discussion in the family and a month of deliberation, bought their first boat. In the beginning I did not do very well at sailing, but at least it was a beginning. Shortly thereafter I took sailing lessons in the Junior Sailing Program at the yacht club. Of course I wanted to know how well I could sail and took part in regattas. I had middling success, but it quickly became clear to me that to win had something to do with having the right boat despite regular training. As the years went by and the boat building materials improved there was always this old Star boat which sailed along in our sailing area even in wind which barely rippled the water. It invariably appeared to me that this was truly what a racing boat should be, fast and elegant. As a teenager I sailed in 470s, but the vision of the Star was always stuck in my mind. When I think back on it, I picture the owner of the boat sitting in the cockpit, smoking his pipe and with the tiller over his shoulder, quietly sailing his boat all by himself. The people called him “Sparrow” Döring. He was an older, smallish man, eternally tanned from being a former French Legionnaire. Apparently he had seen a lot during his life. His inner peace seemed to come through in how he sailed the boat. His appearance was friendly and outgoing, and the people like him because of his quiet and well-balanced manners. He was the type of person who exuded a composure which could not be ruffled. I looked upon him as being somewhat mysterious. “Viola” (such was the name of 1159, named after his daughter) and he seemed to be an totality which appeared to me to be inseparable. It seemed to me that the boat was a meaningful part of his life philosophy. During the warm summer’s nights he would drape the mainsail over the boom as a tent and sleep in the boat. People said that he even used part of the mainsail as a sleeping bag as well. In the aft end of the boat under the deck he had built a mahogany cabinet in which, besides various shackles and other sailing gear, he kept a metal flask which was always filled with schnapps. Supposedly just to be able to call on Rasmus (if you cam believe that...) At some point “Sparrow” decided that he had gotten too old to continue with the upkeep which a wooden boat needed. The condition of the boat was no longer as good as it used to be and needed a general overhaul. The boat and “Sparrow” parted company. “Viola” sat on the shore and her owner did not come to see her. What was even more remarkable was that as the boat’s condition got worse so did the health of the owner. For more than a year the boat sat there without anyone taking any interest in her. Nobody wanted to buy her. Finally she was given to the yacht club, but the club didn’t want her since there was no one who had the time or interest to restore a now sadly deteriorated boat. At this point I heard that the boat was available for the asking. I was immediately filled with enthusiasm with the idea of getting the boat sailing again, but I had no idea what such an undertaking would entail. Not the least of my problems was that I was still a student and didn’t have money for such a project. My girlfriend, who unfortunately didn’t have any interest in sailing, tried to convince me to forget about the boat. And then there was the problem of how to take care of the boat. It seemed probable that she wouldn’t last through another winter. This was a serious problem. I had long discussions with my father about the boat. We talked about the history of the boat and of her former owner, who was now so sick that he was in the Hospital. It seems to me that it was in September of 1992 that I was able to find an old shed in which I could place the boat. I could now take possession of the boat. I remember though how many people made a joke saying that we should organize a barbecue party and that they would be glad to bring the meat. I had more than enough wood. So now the boat was mine, and my dream. I was full of energy as I began to strip the paint off the hull with a blowtorch. It seemed like the paint was a couple of centimeters thick. I had to go over the boat twice since the undercoat didn’t come off the first time around. I spent every free minute on the job. I had more than enough time since my girlfriend decided to go off on her own. As I continued my work on the boat it became clear to me what matters in life. During the restoration various people and things came and went. The one thing which was constant was my Star. It was during this time that I came to the conclusion that the boat should not simply be made ready to sail; it had to made to gleam like new. No matter how long the job took, it was a matter of principal. When I would take a rest from working on the boat I would sit on the afterdeck and look forward over the bow, dreaming how, full of pride I would be gliding over the water. In the spring I got the unwelcomed news that the owner of the shed was not happy with all the mess the restoration project was making and that I would have to get a new place for the boat. He would rather have a house trailer in the shed. Fortunately, I have an old friend who ran a woodworking shop, and because he had built a new building his old shop was empty. This was actually the best luck I could have had since the old workshop still had various tools now at my disposal. There was also a hoist which I needed very much. Without these tools probably sooner or later the project would have come to nothing. Because the keel plank around the keel was somewhat rotten the keel flange had sunk into the plank more than a centimeter. This of course had to be replaced. Once again my friendship with the owner of the woodworking shop come into play, because he could find for me a 4 meter long plank of mahogany. As you know, the keel plank is almost as long as the boat, so 4 meters is not long enough. My friend simply sawed the plank in half longways and cut one of the ends in a bevel. To install the plank all I had to do was to place the bevels on top of each other and screw the ends together. Another problem which confronted me were the rotten ribs. The bottom planks were neatly fastened to them with bronze screws every 2 centimeters. The corrosion had actually made the screws so that they were chemically bonded to the wood in such a way that we couldn’t back out even one screw. At best, just the heads of the screws would break off. At this point I would sincerely like to thank my father for his helping hand. What he did was to saw off each screw one by one, armed only with a hacksaw and gloves. It was unbelievable the perseverance he brought to this work, despite the bloody hands which he got while doing it. I will never be able to repay him for all that he did on this project! It was during this time that my mother came down with a sever illness. The situation overwhelmed us. I took a semester off from school so that I could stay with my father and help him through the crisis. When he was not either at work or at the hospital we spent time working on restoring the boat. I am not sure how he views the time we spent on the project, but for my part I would say that my already good relationship with my father grew even stronger because of the difficult times and the long hours we put in together on the boat. Now it seems to me that we understand each other’s thought even without saying much. When I see 1159 I think of my father, kind of like the pocket watch which a father hands down to his son, and which the son will some day hand down to his son.   The question of how to make the boat watertight is always a heated topic of discussion. The usual method is to sink the boat like a submarine until the wood swells up. But I wasn’t interested in that option. Furthermore, I wasn’t interested in the thought of taking off the paint every couple of years to apply a new paint job. I would prefer to have the illusion of having a wooden boat but with the ease of maintenance of a glass boat. After hearing lots of opinions and reading many books and articles I came to the conclusion that the boat should be fiber glassed. I will long remember the smell of almonds. It was a warm summer’s day, about 30? C (?85? F), actually too warm to experiment with epoxy. Within 15 minutes the resin should be mixed, the fiberglass mat filled with a thin layer of resin on the hull and smoothed out without bubbles. I couldn’t believe how the resin seeped through the cracks in the wood. A further problem was the curvature of the hull which made it difficult to lay out the fiberglass without getting bubbles and folds. Very quickly everything the resin touched was glued tight and couldn’t be wiped off. The loose glass fibers became stiff and pointed like needles and had the feeling of acupuncture needles. But even this part of the job was completed and we believed ourselves to be getting near the end. “A little bit of spackle, apply the paint, and go.” However, the reality was something else. The surface of the fiberglass had become so wavy that just the fairing and sandpapering took another couple of years. There wasn’t any land in sight. Now I bought the sandpaper in sleeves instead of one by one. During the winter months I had a small kerosene heater. There was no way it could heat up the workroom, but it was good to be able to warm up the hands from time to time. Perhaps the job could have gone faster, but I wanted to do the best job possible. I had this idea in the back of my mind that if I didn’t do the job correctly now that it would always be visible and I would always be unhappy with the result. Furthermore, it was a matter of principal: my family is known for the quality of workmanship. To each person who asked how the work on the boat was going I would answer, “It is better to take the time to do the job right than to do it halfway.” And that’s the truth which they all understood. As time went along it seemed to me that people actually began to believe that the boat really didn’t exist, and at some point stopped asking me how things were going. The one thing I did do was to let the friends of the former owner of the boat how things were going. I wanted “Sparrow” to know that his “Viola” was in good hands, and that I wanted him to make the maiden voyage with me when he had finally recuperated and came out of the hospital. For the moment he lay in a coma as the result of not coming out of an operation, otherwise I would have been sending him photos of how the work was progressing. In German the car builders call it a wedding when they place the motor in the car. The wedding of 1159 finally came when the keel was reattached. Near were I lived there was a auto paint shop. I took the boat there so that the boat could have a beautiful coat of virgin white. The problem was how were we going to set the boat up in the paint shop, since the shop didn’t have a hoist. We tried to lift the boat out of the trailer with a jack. Boy was that a bad idea! Both the jack and the boat almost fell over. Fortunately the boat landed back onto the trailer and nothing special happened. After looking about we found a fork lift in the neighborhood. (Why didn’t we think of this to begin with?) For a couple of beers the fork lift operator was glad  to help. As agreed upon I came back in four days fully expecting to be able to take my gleaming boat home again. Indeed, the deck and the topsides were painted, but there wasn’t enough paint to finish off the bottom. Fine, since I had bought marine paint and didn’t want auto paint on the boat I went back to buy some more paint. Again, why do the job just half way? When the job was finally done I took the boat back to my friend’s workshop then began the second part of the job, working on the interior. Without going into greater detail, this was the worst part of the job. Of course I wanted to keep the charm of a wooden boat, so all of the old paint had to be removed. Of course this was easier said than done. The old paint had a lot of oil in it and couldn’t be taken off very easily with sanding. So back to the blowtorch to get the paint at least halfway off, being careful all the time not to burn the wood. The paint had penetrated the wood so that some of the wood had to be scraped off with the paint scrapper. The further we fought our way towards the bow the tighter the fit and the more difficult the job of removing the paint. In the bow the shoulders were gripped by the topsides; there just wasn’t any room to move about. With one arm down along the chest and the other above the head the paint was peeled off. It was the same drill, but with a dust mask over the nose and mouth, for the next phase, but this time with the orbital sander. Under normal circumstances a vacuum cleaner would have been helpful to keep down the dust, but not under these conditions. Some days the work was so tiring that I couldn’t motivate myself to do more than a half an hour. My whole body was black and blue. Truly, I was paying for all of my sins, even those which I had not yet committed! To whomever is contemplating doing such a job: while I certainly would not want to discourage him, there are three things which he should know: 1: it is an impossible task without the right tools, 2: it will always take longer than expected, and 3: you need to bring a lot of idealism to the job. Up until this point one thing had eluded me: finding a name for the boat. I had asked around for ideas. I had been thinking of some sort of word-play having to do with stars. At the very least the name should have a nice sound. I even tried names in several different languages, some of which were Cassiopia, Starlight, Swesda (Russian for “star”), etc., but none of them sounded quite right. I had set my sights too high: my Star shouldn’t be named after a handheld PC made by Casio. Starlight was not imaginative. The Russian name was too hard to pronounce (and further I am not sure if that would make the boat male or female). Clearly, more time was needed to think this problem over. Aside from needing fittings and other such, the one thing which I really needed was a usable suit of sails. I posted my needs on the internet and got an answer from a Swiss. He sent me a good suit of sails which had hardly been used. Since I was really tight on money I am especially thankful to him that he didn’t want to bill me for the sails. I would have liked to have expressed my thankfulness to him but because my computer crashed I lost all of my e-mail addresses. (Thanks, Mr. Gates!) With the hope that the donor of the sails at some time will come across this article, I would like to thank him here! Now that I think about it, a person really needs four things for a restoration project like this. Aside from the three things I listed above one really needs connections. Without people who can help out in the various special fields of expertise such a restoration project would be almost impossible. It would be too much to talk about all of the special parts which had to be fabricated for 1159, but there are a couple of items I should mention; the keel bolts and the chainplates which were made out of stainless steel. Despite all of the various difficulties finally the six-year long project was coming to an end. In the mean time I begun working in an office and through one of the jobs had found a paint shop which would put on the finishing touches which I was hoping for. 1159 gleamed like all of the stars in heaven on a cloudless summer’s night. With great joy I spent hours polishing the hull. It looked brand new. Gone were the memories of the times during which I thought of giving up the project. Also forgotten were the problems with the girlfriend because of spending the whole weekend working on the boat. I was simply proud of the job. It was really worth all of the effort. This was the result. If something is truly important you just have to see it through. Anything less will not do. When finally everything was done I could hardly wait to tell “Sparrow” that his former boat “Viola” was soon to be launched. Needless to say I was hoping that his battle with his infirmity and his struggle to come out of the coma would be won. Now that I look back on it it seems to me that his year-long exertion to stay alive continued just because he wanted to know if his boat would ever sail again. Just after he received my invitation to the launching of the boat he died. I will never forget the moment I took 1159 to the yacht clubs launching area! The best confirmation for a job well done is always that when the know-it-alls who said that the job couldn’t be done walk around the boat and have nothing to say. Not that I was waiting for any praise, but the surprised looks made me feel really good. Since I don’t like to stand on ceremony, I celebrated the launch of the boat with a small circle of friends. The name of the boat was covered over by a pirate’s flag which came from the Kiel Week. I didn’t want to allow the customary breaking of the champagne bottle on the hull, so we squirted the champagne on the boat instead. And so the boat was baptized with the name “Sirius.” More than 2000 years ago the old Romans would split rocks by swelling up wooden wedges. Getting water into the wooden hull would certainly ruin all my work, so the moment that “Sirius” once again touched the water was of great concern. Fortunately my fears were groundless. The only problem which was encountered was that the old mainsail could not be hoisted since it would not fit into the mast groove. But then of course I had the newer sail which went up very nicely. Just out of curiosity to see what “Sparrow” must have felt when he slept in the boat, I tried it out. I left the boat in for three days, something which I normally not do, and got a kerosene lantern. Then I arranged the old mainsail the way I had seen the former owner do it and experienced with one of my good girl friends an unforgettably cozy evening. In the early morning after my companion had gone home I was tired enough to be able to go to sleep on the hard wood floor of the boat. When I woke up my whole body was sore, and now I knew why “Sparrow” had kept a flask of schnapps in the cabinet. Many skeptics believed that because of the fiberglass skin “Sirius” would be too heavy and would sail like a lead duck. Quite the contrary, I believe that because “Sirius” no longer sucks water into the wood that it is actually lighter than it used to be. In any case, she is no longer a competitive Star boat, but she sparkles once again the way I remembered her when I was little. Furthermore, I really like it that those people who try to keep up with “Sirius” in their boats like I used to do against “Sparrow” give up after three or four tacks. It is the nature of the Star to point so very high. When I sail in the light breeze, sitting at the back of the cockpit with the tiller over the shoulder, gliding smoothly over the water and think back on the story of the boat, I forget the daily stresses and am at peace with the world. Yes, the dream of my youth has become a reality. I would like to dedicate this story to the memory of “Sparrow” Döring, and to thank my father whose heart and soul is bound up with the rebuilding of the boat “Sirius”.   HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH   Leonhard Mader Sr. 1926-2003 After a short but difficult illness Leonhard Mader Sr., founder and head of Bootswerft Mader, died on April 23, 2003. Leonhard Mader leaves behind his wife Resi and family. His son Leonhard Mader Jr. continues to run Mader Boat Works.    

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