Flathead Lake Lodge

Lodge Sailboat History

This is a history of the sailboats at the Lodge. We have two very historic racing sloops. The Nor’easter V (one of its many names) was built in 1928, and the Questa in 1929. These were early prototype boats for the famous America’s Cup that billionaire Ted Turner made famous years later. They measure 50’ 6” bow to stern, have hourglass-shaped hulls, and are built of beautiful mahogany wood. They were raced primarily in the Midwest and on the eastern seaboard.

JP Morgan, while not Questa’s original owner, was the primary financial patron who funded and popularized the Q Class fleet at Long Island and Marblehead, effectively acting as the godfather of the class. Questa and Nor’Easter V were the inspiration for the extremely popular Q-Class of racing sailboats from the 1930s to the 1950s. Q-boat racing has been revived in Europe in recent decades.

Both boats are the design of L. Francis Herreshoff, son of Nathaniel Greene Herreshoff (1848-1938), one of the most famous, if not the most famous, sailboat designers in naval history. Interestingly enough, these are the only drawings that L. Francis Herreshoff ever made.

Questa Facts

• 50’ 6” LOA (length overall)
• 32’ 0” LWL (length on the water)
• 8’ 6” beam
• 6’ 11” draft
• 895 sq. feet sail area.
• Built by James Graves (Graves Yacht Yards), Marblehead, MA, 1929

Owners from 1930:

• 1930-35 C.H.W. Foster, Morehead, MA
• 1935-46 Richard B. Harding, Cahasett, MA (power installed 1935)
• 1947-55 John R. McBeath, Marblehead, MA
• 1957- 1979 Wisconsin Yachtsmen Syndicate, Milwaukee Harbor
• 1979 – Present Doug Averill / Quarter Circle Ranch, Bigfork, MT

Nor’Easter Facts

• 50’ 6” LOA
• 30’ 0” LWL
• 7’ 8” beam
• 6’ 6” draft
• 966 sq. feet of sail area
• Built by Geo. F. Lowley & Son, Neponset/ Port Norfolk, MA 1928

Owners from 1928:

• 1928 Named Nor’ Easter V
• 1928-32 Grafton Smith, Morehead, MA
• 1932 Grafton Smith Estate, Morehead, MA
• 1933 William T. Cleveland, Portland, ME
• 1934 Renamed Spindle
• 1934-43 E.V. Preston, Morehead, MA
• 1943-1946 Tony Hermann, Racine, WI
• 1943 Renamed Gloriant
• 1946 Renamed Spindle
• 1947 Vitas T. Thomas, Racine, WI
• 1948 Renamed Gale
• 1948-53 Harry G. Nye, Jr. Chicago, IL
• 1953-59 Harold R. White, Baltimore, MD (power installed 1953)
• 1959 Renamed Jolly Roger
• 1959-61 C. Edward Hartman II, Whitehall Creek, MD
• 1961 Renamed Dutchess II 
• 1961-65 Pierpont E. Dutcher, Riverside, CT (altered to cutter, 1033 sq. feet of sail area)
• 1967-75 National Youth Science Foundation, Sandusky, OH
• 1977-1991 Listing Unknown, Everett, WA (stolen and stripped, recovered by insurance company 1991), renamed   Angel Wings
• 1991 Bryant Ploe, Suquamish, WA, renamed Nor’Easter V 
• 1991 – Present Doug Averill / Quarter Circle Ranch, Bigfork, MT

The Nor’Easter V (under three other names: Gloriant, Spindle, Gale) has won the prestigious Chicago to Mackinac Race 5 times: 1939, 1943, 1946, 1950, and 1951.

Back to our story, we had always had a sailboat at the Lodge, and I was looking for years for a replacement for our original 28-foot sloop. I felt that everything that was out there was just another fiberglass boat. Some of our guests are very accomplished sailors. Many sail all around the world in their own yachts. I felt if they came to Montana and just sailed a 20’, 30′ or 40′ fiberglass sailboat, it would not be of much interest to them.

So, there was a little bit of serendipity and here is a little bit of a lengthy story about how we became the owners of the Questa, the first of the two sailboats.

Our general manager of 30+ years, Kevin Barrows, originally lived in Wisconsin. I was a pilot, and I asked Kevin if he wanted to join me so we could fly back to his hometown to see his folks, and I could build up some flying time. We flew back to the Midwest, went up to Milwaukee one night, and visited the Yacht Club. We went down to the marina to admire the boats. A gentleman at the club somehow found out that Kevin and I were from Montana. I think he hung out regularly at the Yacht Club, particularly at the bar. He’d had quite a lot to drink when he introduced himself. He started telling us about his sailboat that was parked in one of the slips. He went on and on and on, and he just wouldn’t let us leave unless he took us sailing… that night? Well, it was very dark, but we got on his gorgeous sailboat. It was in great need of repair. So, we went out and sailed for a little bit, and when we came back in, he said, “I’m going to sell you my boat.” We had no interest in buying his boat, but he just went on and on about how he was going to sell us his boat. He claimed he would deliver it to Montana if we would take him on a deer hunt. He was very intent on going deer hunting.

We left Wisconsin, flew back home safely, and didn’t think much more about it. But almost every month, a call comes to the Lodge from the payphone at the Milwaukee Yacht Club. You could always hear all the bar noise in the background. He would call again and again when he always had a little bit too much to drink. He would repeatedly say, “I’m going to bring my boat to Montana. I’m going to sell you my boat.” We just kind of played along with him, knowing he was never coming to Montana.

Kevin, our manager, usually drove home to Wisconsin over the holidays. The next winter, as he was driving back home on the interstate, somewhere in the Dakotas, he noticed that he had passed this same sailboat on a very large truck heading west on the highway as he traveled east. He stopped at a payphone, called me, and said, “Doug, you won’t believe it, but I just passed our yacht club friend and his sailboat headed to Montana.” So, we had a little bit of a heads-up that he was coming, and a day later, sure enough, here comes this boat on a semi-tractor and trailer through the front gates of the Lodge, and he parked it right in the middle of the road. The Lodge was closed at that time. He jumped out with his grandson, who was about 16, and said, “Let’s go hunting.” To add some color to this story, he owned a trash-hauling company, and the name of his company was plastered all over the tractor he was driving with this sailboat in tow.

In Montana, you have to plan ahead for hunting and have a license and all this stuff. He had been drinking while driving this semi, which was not good. Just to play along, we took him and his grandson up on the mountain and drove around for a while and tried to find him a deer. (The details of the hunt will remain in Lodge lure, but he did get his deer!) After a short session of hunting, he said, “I’ve got to go back and tell my friends I’ve been hunting in Montana”. So, he unhooked the semi right in the middle of the road and drove off. And there we stood with this 50’ sailboat.

One of our guests, somehow and surprisingly, recognized the boat. He said he’d actually raced on the Questa when he was a kid back in Newport, RI. He said, “You know, there’s another boat that was built to race against the Questa, called the Nor’ Easter V. If you could find it, if it’s still in existence, you would have the only two Q Class boats ever designed by Nathaniel G. Herreshoff.”

So we sent a note to our guests, and sure enough, about a year later, someone said the boat was sitting in Oak Harbor, Seattle, Washington. So, we made a trip to look at it. It looked like an almost identical match to the Questa, although it was a double-ender, meaning it was pointed at the bow and stern, whereas the Questa has a rounded stern. We started negotiating. There was an old hippie living on it. It was in the water, floating, which was good, because that meant it was sound. He had taken a chainsaw, cut the wooden mast off, and was living in it after installing a little wood stove and a stove pipe up through the cabin. The Nor’ Easter V had been hit by a freighter that caught one of its shrouds and had been damaged with a torn stern. The boat was quite a mess. I don’t recall what we paid, but it was little or nothing. We brought it to the shipyard to load it up with a big crane.

As we lowered it down onto the semi-trailer, the crane operator set the keel down, but he released his straps, and the boat fell forward and broke in half. So, the stem, the structural piece of the bow, is now broken. We had already bought the boat and had the trailer and the truck sitting there. So, we hauled it home, thinking that if nothing else, it might be good firewood. We got it back to our shop, did a rather good survey on it, and decided we would build a new stern. John felt he was capable enough and wanted a chance to restore this historical sloop. We put a new stern in it and replaced some ribs, and really, after doing quite a lot of work on it, we needed to build a new mask. John spent most of the year building a 70-foot mask out of Sitka spruce that’s hollow and tapered the full length. It is the most beautiful piece. It showcases gorgeous old, varnished wood and spectacular workmanship. The Nor’ Easter V was out of service for quite a while, so we sailed on just the Questa. And then once we got the Nor’ Easter V in service, we pulled the Questa out and kept it at the shop for about three years and replaced the deck, the cabin, and the ribs. John did a beautiful job of refurbishing it and applying over a dozen coats of varnish.

Today, Questa is undergoing some new replacement ribs, but both boats should be back in service in 2027. They are spectacular on the water with the “twin sisters” racing together as they did back in the 1930s. They will do about 12 knots at top speed in a good wind. Q-boat sailors used to call them “submarines” because they were so long and narrow. They’re 50′ long and only 8.5 ‘wide with an 8’keel (16,000 pounds of lead in the keel). When they go through the waves, they don’t go up and over; they go right through them. So, if you’re on the back deck, it’s a pretty windy and wet ride. We’ve had a lot of fun with those boats, and they’re like ducks out of water in Montana. Knowledgeable sailors can’t believe that they are looking at a Q boat in the waters of Western Montana.

The wonderful thing about it is they’re on a freshwater lake, and we pull them out every year to do about a month of maintenance on each boat, which helps preserve them.

The boats make a delightful story and a lot of fun, and it was a little bit of serendipity when we landed in Milwaukee that this all came about. The boats have been featured on the front cover of Yachting magazine, in 10-page spreads in Wooden Boat Magazine and featured in many nautical publications. It’s a blessing to have boats like these in Montana, and the fact that we’ve restored them to a better-than-new condition is icing on the cake.

Dennis Connors has a Q Class boat he restored and keeps in Europe, and it’s remarkably similar to both of these boats. Each one is a little bit different, but their handicap is the same for sailing, and we’ve raced them a lot on Flathead Lake and had great fun with the Lodge guests learning about sailing from Scott Plum and other waterfront staff.

So anyway, that’s a little backstory on the sailboats.