The sloop Eleanor returns home to be restored

Published in the Register-Star Dec. 18, 2010

She used to sail the Hudson, a fast gaff-rigged racing sloop, her mahogany hull, painted white with a blue streak of paint at her water line, cutting through the tidal pull of the river. The Eleanor, her mast gone, her paint chipped, returned home Thursday. Her owner watched as the 36-foot-long boat was deposited on land, a vision of her former glory and her impending restoration in her mind.

“I learned to sail on her,” said Louise Bliss, standing on Joe Kennealy’s land, Clay Pond Farms, in Greenport where the Eleanor will be restored. “I have many wonderful memories of her.”
Originally owned by Henry Livingston, the sloop was built around 1903 by the well-known naval architect Clinton Hoadley Crane. The ship’s design, based on another—the Lanai—he built for Commodore Arthur Curtiss James of the Seawanhaka Club in Oyster Bay, Long Island, was of a class known as “Raceabouts.”
According to Crane, writing in his 1952 memoir, the Lanai was about 300 pounds lighter than any of the ships of that class and “was seldom beaten.” Her sister sloop the Eleanor was also fast, though she was slightly longer and wider. The ship was built at the Woods boat yard on City Island,  in the Bronx.
“She was very fast,” said Bliss, adding that the sloop did well in the Hudson’s tidal waters and never required motorized propulsion. “We sailed her only by wind.”
According to Bliss, the Eleanor is the last surviving example of the seven Raceabouts Crane designed.
Crane was interested in boat design since youth and eventually studied naval architecture in Glasgow, Scotland. He would win the Seawanhaka cup four times and build the motorboat Dixie in which he made a world speed record. Crane, before turning his mind and career towards mine engineering, designed U.S. war boats for a Philadelphia firm.
Even after becoming the president of Missouri's St. Joseph Lead Co., the largest of its kind at the time, he continued to design boats for friends.
Described as “white-haired and “straight as a ramrod” in a 1936 Time Magazine article written when he was 63, he told the reporter he might consider yet another career. While he didn’t pursue another field, he did remain true to his first love, serving the Seawanhaka Yacht Club in a variety of positions and continuing to design boats. He died in 1958.
The Eleanor was purchased by Bliss’ father, Philip Egan, in 1951. “My father found her in Catskill,” said Bliss, adding he had searched for a long time for the right one.
“He was an apple farmer and sailor,” she said.
The family spent a lot of time on the Eleanor and, said Bliss, many area residents were taught to sail on her.  “A lot of people remember her,” she said.
In 1982 the sloop was put on the National Register of Historic Places.
After her father’s death in 1998, Bliss and he sisters decided they couldn’t provide the care the sloop required.
She spent two years looking for the right place for the Eleanor and in 2001 offered the sloop to the International Yacht Restoration School in Newport, Rhode Island. The boat was supposed to be restored, said Bliss, but never was. She eventually asked for the Eleanor back, deciding to spearhead the sloop’s restoration herself.
Enter Casson Kennedy, shipwright. Originally from Chatham, he learned his craft working on boats on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts and had recently moved back to the area, settling in Hudson.
“I’m very excited,” he said. “She’s a great project.”
He said it was wonderful that she was back home. “This boat will get a second life,” said Kennedy, but added that “getting her back here is the first of many, many steps.”
His first job is “investigation,” he said. They haven’t been able to locate any drawings of the Eleanor so they may have to be created.
After that “it”s a matter of...deciding what the best approach is,” he said. “It will be a complete restoration. She’s over 100 years old. She’s a delicate boat.”
On Bliss’ end, her first job will be creating a corporation and filing for 501(c)(3) status, in order to be eligible for grants. Fundraising will play a big part in the Eleanor’s restoration.
“We have a good support system,” she said.
The corporation is being named the “Hudson River Historic Boat Renovation and Sailing Society,” said Bliss, adding that Mike Aguiar, president of Riverview Marine Services, Inc. in Catskill, has agreed to be one of its first directors.
Bliss said they hope to restore other boats in the future as well as teach people to sail on the Hudson River.
An informational meeting about the history of the Eleanor, its designer and the sloop’s future will be held Jan. 6 at 5 p.m. at Wonderbar & Bistro, 744 Warren St. in Hudson. For more information contact Louise Bliss at 518-828-7884 or Joe Kenneally at 518-828-0538. Bliss asked that anyone with photographs of the Eleanor that show her lines to please forward copies to City Locksmith, 191 23 B, Hudson, New York 12534.
“We have to set our sails,” she said.