If Stuart Vorpahl didn’t know better, he would say his boat is cursed. Since last winter, Vorpahl, a 70-year-old Springs fisherman, has tried to give away Polly and Ruth his 40-foot trawler. Of the 30 requests that have come in for his vessel, potential owners have been scratched off the list one by one due to illness, calamity and freakish acts of God.
Above: Bonacer Stuart Vorpahl above his 40-foot trawler Polly and Ruth.
“This thing is voodoo,” Vorpahl joked. “Most people say ‘Stuart, you are not supposed to get rid of this boat.’”
Vorpahl placed an advertisement in WoodenBoat Magazine last year. He listed the sale price at one dollar, and admitted that his vessel required a new engine. The draw for many, however, was the fact this was one of the few commercial watercrafts designed by noted ship builder Sam Crocker.
The first prospect was a family from Florida. They planned to fly out to the boat’s mooring at Three Mile Harbor in Springs, but ended up finding a ship in the Bahamas they liked better. Vorpahl moved on to a commercial fisherman from Maine. This up coast angler wished to transform the watercraft into a lobster carrier. As the deal was about to be inked, the lobsterman had a recurrence of staph infection and was hospitalized for months.
“He was broken hearted,” Vorpahl recalled.
A science teacher from Pennsylvania stopped by Springs with his family to take a peek at the innards of the vessel. He fell in love with the 14-tons of wood and aquatic mechanics but couldn’t afford the $3,000 shipping costs.
Vorpahl was then contacted by a music professor from South Carolina, and it was at this point that what had seemed like a relatively painless transaction acquired bizarre undertones. The teacher planned to drive to the East End, transport the trawler to a yacht yard in Greenport and then steam it back to South Carolina.
But as the professor was driving from Colorado, he was caught in a tornado on the interstate in Oklahoma. Vorpahl says the man remembers his van being lifted above an overpass bridge, when he lost consciousness. He woke up to the sounds of sirens and emergency workers cutting him out of the car.
“It damn near killed him,” Vorpahl remarked. “He spent one month in the hospital.”
Perhaps, higher powers are meddling in Vorpahl’s affairs. Vorpahl, a true Bonacker, is a bit like his weathered boat. The exterior might be worn and the deck might display a hodgepodge of patched together tools, but the foundation is rock solid even after 60 years of use.
Vorpahl has fished in East End waters since he was a boy with his father, who started what is now known as Stuart’s Seafood Market in Amagansett.
“Fishing is the only thing I’ve done,” Vorpahl explained. “Some seasons I would make a living. Some seasons I would be poorer than a crow without feathers.”
Once the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) instituted permits and fees for commercial fishing, Vorpahl transformed into an activist and political renegade. He has been arrested four times dating back to 1991 for fishing without a license. Each time the case has been dismissed. Despite pressure at the state, county and town level, Vorpahl refused to purchase a commercial fishing permit. Vorpahl maintains that the Dongan Patents of December 1686 prohibits the state from limiting or controlling access to and ability to fish the East End water bodies.
“The DEC put me out of business,” Vorpahl lamented. “[At this point] if I put a net in the water I will immediately be arrested and prosecuted.”
Last year, Vorpahl lost his commercial docking privileges, which provided the impetus to give away his trawler.
With a heavy heart, but sly sense of humor, Vorpahl could be found this Tuesday afternoon sanding down the rough edges of his deck in anticipation of its potential new owner. A Manhattan-based fish broker is poised to take possession of the boat.
That is if the unexpected doesn’t get in the way again.
on Jul 23, 2010