{"id":75611,"date":"2023-06-06T13:37:32","date_gmt":"2023-06-06T17:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/?p=75611"},"modified":"2023-08-04T15:02:58","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T19:02:58","slug":"magic-of-karls-boat-shop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/racing\/magic-of-karls-boat-shop\/","title":{"rendered":"The Magic of Karl’s Boat Shop"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Karl <\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n
\n Karl Anderson at his shop in Harwich, Massachusetts, alongside a Wianno Senior, one of his many projects in motion.<\/span>\n Joe Berkeley<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\t <\/figcaption>\n <\/section>\n\t\t\n\n\n

Karl Anderson is working in his shop when he stops to answer what should be a straightforward question: How many boats do you own? After a lengthy pause, the 64-year-old responds, \u201cI don\u2019t even know.\u201d Yet the answer can be found with a thorough inspection of the grounds outside the door of Karl\u2019s Boat Shop in Harwich, Massachusetts. What a passing motorist on Great Western Road might assume is just another Cape Cod nautical junkyard has an eclectic collection of vessels ranging from beautifully maintained racers to unfinished projects. Anderson owns a lot of them\u2014some by choice, a few by trade, but most by chance or unpaid invoices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I pay him a visit, and our discussion turns to an obscure design by Ray Hunt, Anderson perks up. \u201cI have one of those in the woods out back,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can have it if you want it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not an attempt to bribe a reporter into writing a more favorable story, just a fact that it is there for the taking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One reason Anderson has so many boats in his possession is because he has always had a fondness for things that float (or should float). He learned to sail on the waters of Cape Cod in general and Dennis in particular, first in Turnabouts and then in O\u2019Day Widgeons. His first Rhodes 18 was a boat that had washed up on shore, upside down with the centerboard stuck in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Karl's <\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n
\n A wander around the outbuildings, barns and back forty of Karl\u2019s Boat Shop is like stepping into a master boatwright\u2019s private collection.<\/span>\n Joe Berkeley<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\t <\/figcaption>\n <\/section>\n\t\t\n\n\n

In 1973, Anderson begged his mother for the $800 to buy it, and an older sailor advised him on how to restore it. He started sailing with his friends Chris Cooney and Wick Shepherdson. Four years later, Anderson had sorted the boat and made a name for himself in the class. At the helm of his parents\u2019 Ford LTD station wagon, a water buffalo of a tow vehicle, Anderson and his crew drove north to Biddeford, Maine, for the Rhodes 18 Nationals. Before the team entered the tunnel in Boston, Anderson looked up and noticed his father, who turns 100 this year, waving from a bridge above. The drive home was a fun one, as the team won the national title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A love of sailing motivated Anderson to open his boat-repair shop in 1983. The firm\u2019s philosophy is summarized in five words: \u201cHave fun working on boats.\u201d And work on them he does. But first, he sails on many of them so he can develop a feel for what they need. One case in point is the J\/24. Way back, Anderson started out sailing with sailmaker Dan Neri on his J\/24 in Newport and then jumped into a boat with Ken Read. Back in the 1980s, brand-new J\/24s needed substantial modifications to be optimized, and he was the guy to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anderson\u2019s philosophy of boat preparation is the same today. \u201cMy method is the blades first. You make the blades the best,\u201d Anderson says. \u201cSecondly, make sure the rig is aligned with the blades, centered side to side. If the rig can\u2019t be centered side to side, what\u2019s the best compromise? Then the bottom. I might even go rigging, ease of use, then the bottom after that because if you can\u2019t tack the boat, it doesn\u2019t matter how good the bottom is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read, now president of North Sails, is a busy man but eager to make time to talk about his boatwright of choice. He quips, \u201cIs this for an article\u2026or a book?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They started sailing together in the late 1980s and have a lot of time on the water. Read credits Anderson as a critical factor in what he describes as a division of responsibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKarl was in charge of the boat from the waterline down. Someone else was in charge of the waterline up. I was in charge of the sails. Moose [McClintock] was in charge of the safety gear.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Curved <\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n
\n Another of Anderson\u2019s iconic curved tillers takes shape in the shop.<\/span>\n Joe Berkeley<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\t <\/figcaption>\n <\/section>\n\t\t\n\n\n

It was a different era. Professional \u00adsailors didn\u2019t get paid to sail. They all had jobs, and if they sailed well and won regattas, it boosted their businesses. Anderson worked on boats. Read sold sails, and success on the racecourse was good business. And they still had fun. At the J\/24 North Americans in San Francisco, for example, the team could work late into the night to prepare the charter boat. Or they could get most of the work done, knock off early and attend a Grateful Dead show. The vote was unanimous, and Read, Anderson and the rest of the crew saw the Dead in their natural habitat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After more victories in the J\/24 and Etchells than he can recall, Read is quick to credit Anderson. \u201cKarl has a lot of talent and not a lot of ego. I think it comes from a blue-collar mentality. Whenever he introduced himself, he would say, \u2018Karl Anderson, Karl\u2019s Boat Shop, Karl with a K.\u2019 He doesn\u2019t mind getting dirty. Anybody who knows how to use tools and doesn\u2019t mind fairing the damn keel himself is naturally going to have less of an ego. It\u2019s work ethic, family, surroundings, what he does for a living. It\u2019s never pretty with Karl, but it somehow works. If you said to him that the bottom needs to be perfect, it was perfect, exactly to the tolerances you were looking for. He doesn\u2019t do things conventionally, but he always does things right. The guy just wins.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McClintock has sailed with Read and Anderson a fair bit too and says, \u201cSailing is a sport where you have to earn your respect, and Karl\u2019s earned it with everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of Anderson\u2019s reputation is his demeanor. McClintock says he\u2019s never seen Anderson angry. He\u2019s also quick to note that he\u2019s a great athlete. \u201cHe looks like a dumpy guy, but he\u2019s not. He\u2019s quick, he\u2019s agile, he can ski, he can play hockey, and he\u2019s one of the best technical crews you\u2019ll ever see. I learn from him every time I sail with him. He\u2019s really good at making boats go fast.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Read is a well-known sailor around the globe, he is not the most famous customer of Karl\u2019s Boat Shop\u2014not by a long shot. That honor belongs to the late, great Sen. Edward Kennedy. For a decade and a half, the senator entrusted Anderson with the care of his beloved Ray Hunt-designed 50-foot Concordia schooner Mya<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anderson went sailing with Kennedy on numerous occasions. With a grin, he recalls being out on Mya<\/em> for a sail and saying, \u201cSenator, there are rocks over there.\u201d To which the senator replied, \u201cI\u2019ve been sailing these waters for 50 years; there are no rocks there!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About two minutes later, the boat stopped\u2014abruptly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anderson and his colleague John Sheehan made news when they lost control of Mya<\/em> during a delivery at the end of the season and put the boat aground in the soft sand of Cold Storage Beach in East Dennis. The famous vessel was later pulled to safety by a tugboat. The damage was minor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many sailors on Cape Cod are summer people, so when the crocus and daffodils are popping through the underbrush, so too is the pace at the cluttered boat shop. \u201cWe have a very seasonal group that comes here for the summer. They race the local boats, such as the Wianno Seniors,\u201d Anderson says. \u201cThey come the first week of June, and then they\u2019re gone the week after Labor Day. They have a certain amount of time, and they don\u2019t want to miss anything, so if something breaks, they want it fixed yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Few people in the boat-restoration business are fortunate enough to have created an iconic product that is an embodiment of who they are. The Karl\u2019s Boat Shop tiller is a thing of beauty, a shape that can be identified from afar. In keeping with the philosophy of the shop, the tiller wasn\u2019t a creation based on divine inspiration. It was a sublime answer to a practical problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A sailor by the name of Rick Bishop didn\u2019t like the feeling of the stock, straight J\/24 tiller hitting him in the back of the legs. Anderson thought about it for a bit and \u00adcreated a design with a distinctive bend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, his shop was laminating ribs for a boat. Anderson gathered up the scraps and fabricated the first of his iconic tillers. \u201cThey were made from quarter-inch strips,\u201d he says. \u201cWe always said it was mahogany, but it\u2019s really red cedar. That\u2019s how we got them so light. If you don\u2019t varnish them, they will go 10 years. Some guys have them for 20 years. Each tiller receives two coats of sealer, three coats of varnish. The varnish of choice is Epifanes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two of Anderson\u2019s tillers, one for a J\/22 and another for a J\/24, are mounted on the wall of professional sailor Chris Larson\u2019s home because of the wars they have been through and the great memories they recall. After Read moved on to other classes, Larson inherited Anderson and went on to win the J\/24 Worlds with him in 1996.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Karl's <\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n
\n There\u2019s always been a natural order to the chaos of Karl\u2019s Boat Shop. It\u2019s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.<\/span>\n Joe Berkeley<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\t <\/figcaption>\n <\/section>\n\t\t\n\n\n

Larson is quick to corroborate Anderson\u2019s meticulous boat preparation. \u201cKarl was always the master of figuring out what to do next with boat optimization. Once you got the boat back from him, you were confident that it was sorted. You had to have good boat mechanics, get a good start, and if all of that worked out, you were going to have a good event.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Larson adds that Anderson is the kind of guy who simply gets the job done. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter what you have to do,\u201d Larson says. \u201cHis wasn\u2019t a shop where everything was pretty. It was a get-it-done approach. That\u2019s just how Karl operates. He was always one of those larger-than-life guys, always part of the team. Everybody in the boat park knows Karl. He has a personality that everyone likes and respects. He\u2019s the good part of sailing, the nostalgic history of the evolution of certain classes. In the J\/24, he was in the middle of it all, and it would not have been the same without him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professional sailors are not the only customers Anderson caters to. Mark Hillman is a highly accomplished Corinthian competitor who has owned a fleet of racing boats, including five J\/24s and a J\/70. When Anderson was working on his J\/24 (No. 196 named Dr. Feelgood<\/em>), he arrived to find there were still some details that needed tending to. \u201cWe enjoyed a vacation in Chatham while we waited for the boat to be ready,\u201d Hillman says. It was worth the wait; Hillman would later finish third in the J\/24 World Championship and win the East Coasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of boat shops have come and gone since 1983, but what has kept the doors open at Anderson\u2019s place makes complete sense. \u201cStay away from building boats,\u201d Anderson says, looking up from an invoice on his cluttered desk. He has built a few \u00adcustom boats and restored countless yachts, but he has never been lured into the production boatbuilding business. It\u2019s too volatile. Instead, seasonal work, hauling and storage keep the lights on. The race-boat stuff is a passion. Then there are the friends who show up with interesting projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anderson has been in the business long enough that some of the boats he has restored over the years are ready for a second restoration. One he\u2019s trying to get back on the water is Wizard<\/em>, an aptly named 40-foot 1959 Concordia yawl designed by Ray Hunt, which is hibernating in a well-loved boat barn toward the back of Anderson\u2019s property. If he can convince one or two partners to join him, and find the time between a busy race schedule and running the shop, Wizard<\/em> will set sail again on Cape Cod\u2014someday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wizard<\/em> is a big project, one that will \u00adconsume a substantial amount of time, talent and money. But with a twinkle in his eyes, Anderson says he\u2019s bought plenty of things he couldn\u2019t afford over the years, but somehow he found a way to pay for them. Sweat equity is how, and at Karl\u2019s Boat Shop, there\u2019s plenty of it. The work is dirty. And it\u2019s messy. But the result is always fast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The greats of one-design sailing past and present know how and where to find the boatwright of champions\u2014right here at Karl’s Boat Shop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":75619,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"BS_author_type":"BS_author_is_guest","BS_guest_author_name":"Joe Berkeley","BS_guest_author_url":"","hydra_display_date":"","hydra_display_updated":false,"_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":"159","_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":"Karl's Boat Shop is the place for the greats of one-design sailing past and present know how and where to find the boatwright of champions.","_yoast_wpseo_title":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","arc_story_id":"","arc_website_url":"","custom_permalink":"","arc_subtype":"","arc_exclude_from_feeds":false,"sponsored":false,"sponsored_label":"Sponsored Content","sponsored_display_label":false,"sponsored_image":false,"post_right_rail":true,"post_right_rail_ad_1":true,"post_right_rail_ad_2":true,"post_right_rail_ad_3":false,"post_right_rail_ad_4":false,"post_right_rail_recirc":true,"fixed_anchor_ad":true,"post_top_ad":true,"post_off_ramp":true,"post_taboola":false,"labels":true,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":"","ad_settings_ads_on_this_page":true,"ad_settings_automatic_ad_injection_into_the_content":true,"ad_targeting":"","sponsored_url":"","social_share":true},"categories":[159],"tags":[232,2899,177,178],"class_list":["post-75611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-racing","tag-one-design","tag-print-march-2023","tag-racing","tag-sailboat-racing"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}