By JAKE THOMASES
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: July 18, 2004)


LARCHMONT — Some divers see a mud-encrusted boat nestled on the ocean
floor and imagine the precious cargo it might hold. H.L. DeVore peered
through the muck and saw treasure, too. Except his target was the
fractured, worm-eaten, barnacle-encrusted vessel itself.

Over the course of a year, what began as an offhand comment from
friend and project collaborator Bill Gerety turned into a $20,000
undertaking that brought an abandoned sailboat up from the bottom of
the Long Island Sound and into the ranks of Larchmont Race Week's
fleet.

DeVore sailed the sloop to a second-place finish on the first day of
the 106th annual Race Week, which continues through next Sunday.

"Two years ago Bill said to me, 'You've got so many Shields. You want
another one? I know where one is,' " DeVore said.

It turned out the boat, named for its designer and former Larchmont
Yacht Club member Cornelius Shields, was 3 miles offshore and 60 feet
below the surface — the victim of a 1999 swamping. DeVore initially
laughed the notion off, but, intrigued by the prospect of adding
another Shield to his collection, agreed to investigate if Gerety
could mark its exact location with a buoy.

With the help of a fish finder and the professional diver Lada Sinek,
Gerety pinpointed the sloop that DeVore's daughter Katie later
christened the Mermaid for its aquatic origins.

"You couldn't see your hand in front of your face," said Gerety, "so
Lada found it with his head. He was crawling along the muddy bottom
and bumped into it."

Thanks to the near-zero visibility and Sinek's unfamiliarity with
specific sailboat styles, however, the crew could not be certain this
was the real thing. DeVore volunteered to check it out himself.

"It's a very dangerous thing to be down there in the murk, because
there's all kinds of wires and ropes that you could get tangled in,"
Gerety said. "We were worried because Lada and H.L. were down there
for a long time. If they didn't come up there was nothing we could do
to help them out."

After DeVore confirmed the boat's identity, he made almost a dozen
more dives over the next few weeks to prepare it for towing. When he
hired a crane to haul the 4,000-pound mess to the surface, his
daughter described the sight with one word: yuck.

"Even when we got it up, my father-in-law wondered what we were going
to do with this thing," DeVore said. "But I said 'We've got to fix it
up. We found it, we dove for it, we pulled it up — we've got to take
it into shore and fix it up.' "

DeVore kept the Shield in dry dock for six months, and then he and his
father-in-law, Howie McMichael, set about cleaning it up and repairing
the shattered mast. Amazingly, three years under the surface had not
caused irreparable damage.

DeVore began sailing the Mermaid around the Sound, and eventually
entered it into races, where it performed as well as its
less-waterlogged fellows. Before long he had sold his other Shields
and was racing Mermaid exclusively.

"I only want to sail the one that sank," he said. "I don't want anyone
telling me it's slow and that I should be sailing one of the other
boats. The whole thing cost me about the same as if I had bought a new
one, but you can't buy that story for a million bucks."


Joe

Good story.


"Joe" wrote in message
om...
By JAKE THOMASES
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: July 18, 2004)


LARCHMONT - Some divers see a mud-encrusted boat nestled on the ocean
floor and imagine the precious cargo it might hold. H.L. DeVore peered
through the muck and saw treasure, too. Except his target was the
fractured, worm-eaten, barnacle-encrusted vessel itself.

Over the course of a year, what began as an offhand comment from
friend and project collaborator Bill Gerety turned into a $20,000
undertaking that brought an abandoned sailboat up from the bottom of
the Long Island Sound and into the ranks of Larchmont Race Week's
fleet.

DeVore sailed the sloop to a second-place finish on the first day of
the 106th annual Race Week, which continues through next Sunday.

"Two years ago Bill said to me, 'You've got so many Shields. You want
another one? I know where one is,' " DeVore said.

It turned out the boat, named for its designer and former Larchmont
Yacht Club member Cornelius Shields, was 3 miles offshore and 60 feet
below the surface - the victim of a 1999 swamping. DeVore initially
laughed the notion off, but, intrigued by the prospect of adding
another Shield to his collection, agreed to investigate if Gerety
could mark its exact location with a buoy.

With the help of a fish finder and the professional diver Lada Sinek,
Gerety pinpointed the sloop that DeVore's daughter Katie later
christened the Mermaid for its aquatic origins.

"You couldn't see your hand in front of your face," said Gerety, "so
Lada found it with his head. He was crawling along the muddy bottom
and bumped into it."

Thanks to the near-zero visibility and Sinek's unfamiliarity with
specific sailboat styles, however, the crew could not be certain this
was the real thing. DeVore volunteered to check it out himself.

"It's a very dangerous thing to be down there in the murk, because
there's all kinds of wires and ropes that you could get tangled in,"
Gerety said. "We were worried because Lada and H.L. were down there
for a long time. If they didn't come up there was nothing we could do
to help them out."

After DeVore confirmed the boat's identity, he made almost a dozen
more dives over the next few weeks to prepare it for towing. When he
hired a crane to haul the 4,000-pound mess to the surface, his
daughter described the sight with one word: yuck.

"Even when we got it up, my father-in-law wondered what we were going
to do with this thing," DeVore said. "But I said 'We've got to fix it
up. We found it, we dove for it, we pulled it up - we've got to take
it into shore and fix it up.' "

DeVore kept the Shield in dry dock for six months, and then he and his
father-in-law, Howie McMichael, set about cleaning it up and repairing
the shattered mast. Amazingly, three years under the surface had not
caused irreparable damage.

DeVore began sailing the Mermaid around the Sound, and eventually
entered it into races, where it performed as well as its
less-waterlogged fellows. Before long he had sold his other Shields
and was racing Mermaid exclusively.

"I only want to sail the one that sank," he said. "I don't want anyone
telling me it's slow and that I should be sailing one of the other
boats. The whole thing cost me about the same as if I had bought a new
one, but you can't buy that story for a million bucks."


Joe