Once upon a time there was a fellow named Norm DeVale.

  Norm was from, well who knows?  He was in San Francisco in the 1960's and looked around for some way to make a buck after he had been kicked out of Univ of California at Berkeley. Norm liked boats and hung around the fringes of the boat people of the San Francisco Bay Area. He wasn't a boatbuilder nor a particularly good sailor but he thought he saw a way to make a buck perhaps two bucks if he was lucky, with boats.

So he trimmed his beard, put on his best tweedy jacket and visited the consulates of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. His plan was to go to Europe and buy a Baltic Schooner and fill her with the products of those countries and sail her from the Baltic to San Francisco as a publicity stunt showcasing the products of the region. Of course the products needed to be able to stand a cross ocean voyage with out refrigeration or normal ship stowage. The only products able to meet that criteria were canned or bottled items. Norm was able to get the breweries and distilleries and other foodstuff producers of those countries to donate cargo for this venture.  He found a vessel about 70 years old, two masted, built of sturdy baltic oak and pine and with an ancient two stroke engine that was primed with kerosene before it would fire on its own.

  The voyage across the Atlantic was uneventful and after a few brief stops on the east coast of the US.,the Frei, as the vessel was named, headed through the Panama Canal.  Nobody is quite sure why, but the operators of the canal were not too kind to the old vessel and as a consequence, several seams were started. That word, started, describes a condition where the seams or spaces between the planks of the vessel are strained to the point of leaking water into the vessel. Being a stout little ship nothing was noticed till the vessel was off San Diego and the Frei entered the harbour at San Diego to pick up some pumps before continuing on to her destination of San Francisco. When the Frei arrived at San Francisco there was much hoopla made of this voyage and the cargo she had carried across the Atlantic and into the Pacific and on to San Francisco.

After the press and dignitaries had left, the vessel was given a good inspection by the Customs Agents.   The Customs Agents condemned the whole cargo of the ship!

It seems that the started planks and the water that had entered the vessel had soaked into the packing cases of the alcoholic beverages and had loosened the labels on the bottles and the canned goods had developed rust on the cans. Without labels the cargo could not be sold or offered to the public. The whole cargo was consigned to the dumps! All that fine beer, liquors and food stuffs were to be bulldozed into the garbage heaps of the city of San Francisco. When the press heard about it, it was all over the front pages of the local papers.

Norm was crushed. The consulates had promised money to refurbish the vessel upon arrival and now because of failure to deliver the cargo they declined to honour that commitment.

Well being a canny survivor of the times, Norm contacted his friends in the hippie communities of the Bay Area and lined up a large group of volunteers to help him 'rescue' the Frei from disaster. I was working back at Anderson and Christofani and some of my old acquaintances were there too, including Don MacIntire, the last journeyman caulker  in San Francisco and he knew Norm.

The upshot was Norm conned one of the partners, Walter Anderson, to drydock the Frei over a weekend and let him do the repairs in the yard without using the regular crew. Don asked me to assist him, in making back the started seams and whatever else needed to be done to make the vessel tight. I agreed but 'not for free' on the Frei.

Early Saturday morning the Frei which had be hauled out on the high tide of Friday eve was attacked by a horde of long haired bushy bearded ragged dressed men followed by another horde of long haired long skirted sandal shod females bearing baskets and boxes on up to the deck of the Frei.

As Don and I were spinning some oakum the men were cleaning the hull with hoses and bristle brushes. Clearing all the growth of several thousand miles from the hull took some time but it gave Don and I opportunity to go over the cleaned areas to examine for obvious leaks and/or missing caulking from seams. Nothing really jumped out at us just hard usage and not too much recent care.

We went at it and by noon time we had gotten some good work done. Norm was constantly walking around the hull asking Don how things looked. He was relieved when Don told him things were not bad at all. One of the long skirted ladies came by and invited us up onto the deck to share lunch with the others.

That we did and it was some spread. Sesame seeds on everything and tofu on top.  Not a bit of red meat to be found. It was nice of them to ask us and we did enjoy the food.

After lunch we prepared to pay the seams we had made back and then fill with white cement. The men took over and did the paying and filling of the seams. There were not enough trowels or putty knives for all so some were spreading the white cement with their hands and smoothing the seams with their fingers!

On Sunday we did the other side and by 3PM were done. The Frei was ready to hit the water on Monday morning with seams made, payed and hull painted with anti-fouling.

As we were packing up our tools I asked one of the fellows why he had worked two days like a 'trojan' for no pay and just a free lunch or two? 

His answer was, 'I'm into wood, man.'.

Oh the Frei? Last I heard of her she was the flagship of a group heading out to confront the French in the South Pacific over nuclear testing.

  Norm DeVale, I saw his name in the 1980's associated with a company importing tropical hardwoods. He was doing business out of Mendocino in northern California. Those folks are pretty serious about the environment so perhaps Norm was again at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The poor Frei, well a vessel from the Baltic without a coppered hull in the warm waters of the SouthPacific, not too good says I.