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Buying The Buy-Boat

Mimi Parish says that the owner at that time, a Mr. Ward, stepped off the boat to go to a doctor one day and never came back. After he passed away, she says, the buy-boat “sat for three years.”

Ted and Mimi Parish on their Chesapeake Bay Buy-Boat, the Nellie Crockett. Behind them, the open deck where bushels of oysters used to be stacked and then taken to shore.

“She was rotten,” Mimi Parish says, “destined for the swamp.” She might be there today, except that Ted Parish, a waterman and pilot, had his eye on her for two years.

In 1990, he bought her and for the past 23 years, he’s been restoring her. Mimi Parish says the buy-boat has been “rebuilt from the waterline up.”

In the pilot house, with its varnished but original wood. Surf, one of two dogs on board, checks out what had been the lowest of three bunk areas in the pilot house.

Those one-time bunks are now the pantry.

Rebuilding the “Nellie Crockett”

Inside the pilot house, brightly varnished wood shines from the floor to the curved walls. That’s the original wood, there from the start, but it had been cloaked over the decades. Several layers of linoleum covered the floor in bridge and cabin. The solid wood floor is now varnished clear, showing off the wear and dings of history. The bulkheads once sported multiple coats of paint. Each plank’s been removed, stripped and varnished and put back in place.

Gleaming character. The floor in the pilot house of the Nellie Crockett. Linoleum used to cover the surface.

Forward of the pilothouse is a wide hatch leading to the hold once used to carry cargo. It’s now the main living quarters when the crew is aboard. Aft is an open engine room. The engine pushes the boat at about 8 knots and drinks 5 gallons an hour.

Original to the boat is a pulley system to adjust the rudder. The rope’s been replaced, but the boat still steers by that arrangement running along the top edge of the engine room.

Mimi Parish’s tour of the boat includes the engine room where the original pulley still guides the rudder.

The far end of rope and pulley system, extending to the rudder.

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Posted Tuesday October 29, 2013 by Melinda Penkava

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