Flathead Lake Lodge

This is a history of the sailboats of the ranch. We have two very historic sailing stoops, racing sloops from 1928-1929. The Nor’Easter is 1928 and the Questa of 1929. And these were early prototype boats for the America’s Cup. They’re 51 feet, six inches and beautiful mahogany boats that were raced extensively on the east coast.

And the Nor’Easter is quite a famous boat and that holds the greatest race record of any inland water sailing boat in the US where one of the Chicago-Macconac raced five times. And the Questa was JP Morgan’s boat that he was trying to build the fastest race boat in the world at the time. And it created the Q-Class, which was a class that was very popular. And it’s been revived in Europe today and they still race Q-boats.

But they were Nathaniel Greene Herreshoff (1848-1939) designs. And Herreshoff was one of the more famous, if not the most famous sailboat designers over the years.

But we had always had a sailboat at the Ranch, and I was looking and looking for a replacement boat from our original 28-foot sloop. And I felt that everything that was out there was just another fiberglass boat. And our guests are very accomplished sailors. Many of them sail all around the world have their own yachts. And I felt if they came to Montana and just sailed a 20 or 30 or 40-foot fiberglass sailboat, it wouldn’t be of much interest to them.

So there was a little bit of serendipity and a little bit of a lengthy story about how we got into the Questa to that was the first of the two sailboats.

And our manager of 30 years, Kevin, lived in Wisconsin. And I was a pilot and I was in the summer came about. And I asked Kevin if he wanted to join me and would fly back to his hometown to see his folks and I could build up some flying time.

So anyway, we flew back to the Midwest and went up in Milwaukee one night at the Yacht Club. And we went down to look at the boats and a gentleman in the Yacht Club found out that we were from Montana. And I think he hung out with the Yacht Club quite often, particularly at the bar. And quite a lot to drink when we met him.

And he started telling us about his sailboat that was parked out front in one of the slips. And he went on and on and he just wouldn’t let us leave unless he took us sailing. Well, it was dark and he wanted to take us sailing. And so we were coming up to go along.

And we got in this boat, which was a gorgeous boat. But it was in great need of repair. So we went out and sailed for a little bit and he came back in and he said, “I’m going to sell you my boat.”

And we had no interest in buying his boat. But he just went on and on that he was going to sell us his boat. And he would bring it to Montana for us if we would take him on a deer hunt. And he was stuck on going for a deer hunt.

So anyway, we left flew back home and didn’t think much more about it. But about every month on the payphone from the Yacht Club, you could hear all the borrowed noise in the background. He would call and again, have a little bit too much to drink. And he would 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.

And Kevin, our manager went home over the holidays. And as he’s driving back home on the freeway, he noticed that he passed this sailboat. And he called me and he said, Doug, you won’t believe it, I just passed that sailboat headed to Montana.

So we had a little bit of heads up that he was coming and a day later, sure enough, here comes this boat on a semi into the front gates of the lodge and he parked it right in the middle of the road. And we were closed at that time. And he jumps out with his grandson, who was about 16 and said, “let’s go hunting.”

And in Montana, you have to plan ahead for hunting and have a license and all this stuff. And he had been drunk driving in this semi, which was not good. So anyway, we took him and his grandson up on the mountain and drove around for the 3030 and tried to find him a deer.

But after a short look about for hunting, he said, “I’ve got to go back and tell my friends I’ve been hunting in Montana.” So he hooked the semi up right in the middle of the road and drove off.

And there we sat with this boat, we paid him $11,000 for it. And it was on a semi-trailer and was 51 feet long. And gorgeous lines, it looked like a piece of sculpture. If you look at a 12 meter hall, it’s just a little bit miniature of the 72 foot 12 meter.

We sailed it every year, but we we’d pull it out the wintertime work on all winter and then put it back in the water.

And one of our guests knew the boat. He said he’d actually raced on the Questa of when he was a kid back in in Newport. And he said, you know, there’s another boat that was built to race against the Questa of the I recall. It was called the Nor’Easter.

And if you could find the Nor’Easter, if it’s still in existence, you would have the only two Herreshoff sloops.

So we sent a note out to our guests and sure enough, about a year later, somebody said that boat was sitting at Oak Harbor in Seattle.

So we went out and looked at it. I’m sure it out there was it looked like a almost identical batch to the Questaa out there. And it was a double under it, meaning it was at a point on the bow and the stern where the Questa I had a rounded stern.

So we negotiated and there was an old hippie living on it. It was in the water floating, which was good, because that meant it was sound. But he had taken a chainsaw and cut the mast off, a wood mast. He was living in it and had a little stove and a stove pipe up through the cabin.

And he had been hit by a freighter and caught one of his shrouds and had damaged and tore the stern off it. So the boat was quite a mess.

So anyway, I don’t recall what we paid for that, but it was little or nothing. And we brought it to the shipyard to load it up with a big crane. And as he lowered it down onto the semi-trailer, he got the keel down, but he released his traps and the boat fell forward and broke it in half.

So the stern, which is the main part of the boat, is broken.

And anyway, we we’d bought the boat and we had the trailer and the truck and everything. So we hold it home, thinking it might be firewood.

And we got it back and did a pretty good survey on it, thought, well, we’ll put in a stern in it and John felt he was capable to do that. So we put a new stern in it and replaced some ribs and really did quite a lot of work on it.

And we need to build a mast. So John spent most of a year building a 70-foot mast out of Sitka spruce that that’s hollow and it’s tapered the full 60 feet,  I think it’s 68 feet roughly. Most beautiful piece, it’s gorgeous, old, varnished and spectacular workmanship.

So anyway, that boat was out of service for a while we use the Questa. And then once we got the Nor’Easter serviced, we pulled the Questa out and kept it at the shop for about three years and replaced the deck of the cabin and the ribs and did a beautiful job of refreshing it and painting it in varnish.

So both the boats went back into service and they’re spectacular on the water, with them both racing together like they did back in the 1930s. They’ll get up and do about 12 knots in a good wind and they used to call them submarines because they’re so long and narrow. They’re 50 feet and 8.5 feet wide with a 8 foot keel and they got 26,000 pounds of lead in the keel.

And when they go through the waves they don’t go up and over they go right through them. So if you’re on the deck it’s a pretty windy wet ride.

We’ve had a lot of fun with those boats and they’re like ducks out of water in Montana. People can’t believe that they are looking at a sloop in the waters of Montana.

But the great thing about it is they’re on a freshwater lake and we pull them out every year. So we do about a month of maintenance on each boat each year which makes them beautiful for preservation.

And that’s it’s been a good 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 front cover of Yachting magazine, 10-page spreads in wooden boat magazine and featured in many, many, many magazines to have a boat like this in Montana.

And the fact that we’ve restored them. Dennis Connors has one that he restored that is in Europe and it’s very similar to both these boats. Each one was a little bit different but their handicap was the same for sailing and we’ve raised it a lot on Flathead Lake and had a lot of great fun with it.

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