A 'presidential' job for a Belfast boatyard
Photo / PETER VAN ALLEN
The USS Sequoia, the former presidential yacht, sits outside French & Webb in Belfast, where it will undergo a four-year restoration.
The presidential yacht USS Sequoia has a storied history.
John F. Kennedy celebrated his 46th — and final — birthday on the yacht. Richard Nixon played the onboard piano, with the lights off and a bottle of scotch handy, just days before resigning. Lyndon Johnson used it to entertain and unwind, screening movies like “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” for friends and colleagues.
Now the 104-foot Sequoia, which was launched in 1925, is in Belfast and faces another milestone: what’s expected to be a 3- to 4-year restoration, which will get it ready with plenty of time for its centennial year.
“It’s a national treasure, a shared piece of Americana … It’s like Camp David on the water,” Todd French, whose firm French & Webb has been hired to do the restoration, told Mainebiz.
In all, the Sequoia served nine presidents, from Herbert Hoover, who liked to fish from the decks, to Jimmy Carter, who sold it off in the early 1970s as an austerity measure. The Sequoia is owned by Equator Capital Group, which bought the yacht for $7.8 million after a six-year legal battle. The yacht had been on land in a Virginia boatyard throughout the legal wrangling. A pack of raccoons was living on board.
Equator Capital hired French & Webb earlier this year.
The Sequoia was moved by barge up the East Coast, arriving in Belfast on Oct. 22. It was an all-day project getting the boat from the barge to the parking lot to the French & Webb headquarters. Its arrival attracted several hundred people (there were estimates of up to 2,000 people). French brought in the Belfast High School marching band to play “Hail to the Chief.”
“People were there till 9:30 p.m.,” French says. “There was so much good feeling.”
The Sequoia now sits on oversized house-moving equipment in the parking lot adjacent to French & Webb, on the waterfront in Belfast. It’s already attracting a lot of attention.
In its prominent spot in Belfast, people with connections to the Navy or the Sequoia itself are regularly stopping by for a visit, French said.
“We had someone stop by who went on board as a Coast Guard cadet in 1952,” he said. “The stories resonate — and we want to honor those stories."
A long process
French & Webb workers will cover it plastic this winter and then build a more permanent shed-like structure over it this winter. Eventually, there will be a mezzanine, or catwalk, where visitors will be able to observe the restoration. There will also be photos and exhibits.
The immediate task has been to do a full audit of the condition.
“The superstructure and the presidential cabin are in fairly good shape. There’s a lot of original stuff. But the hull is not in good condition. It’s been out of the water for six years,” French said. “It is definitely going to be a thorough restoration.”
There’s plenty of photographic and archival information to go on. The Sequoia was designed by a well-known yacht designer at the time, John Trumpy, and built in Camden, N.J., at the John H. Mathis & Co. Shipyard.
The boatyard is doing 3D scans and 3D models. It is researching the plans, with the Trumpy family helping.
By next summer, French hopes to have a crew of workers in place — specialists in all phases of boat building. Right now, French & Webb has 11 employees — a number that fluctuates as high as 30, depending on the projects lined up. With the Sequoia restoration, French estimates the firm will need 35 to 40 skilled workers.
“A lot of people want to work on this,” French said. “We’re attracting a dynamic caliber of worker.”
The boatyard will need specialists in hull building, mechanical systems and joinery, to name just a few specialties.
“We’ll blend in older and younger workers,” French said. For the younger workers, in particular, “it will really put a stamp on their careers.”
French & Webb is also gathering an enormous amount of material for the rebuild. The hull reconstruction alone calls for longleaf yellow pine, and French said they found a trove of old-growth yellow pine in Georgia that had blown down in recent hurricanes. Fittingly for the presidential yacht, some of the pine comes from land once visited by Dwight Eisenhower. A sawmill in Georgia has already milled 50,000 board feet of the yellow pine, which is now air drying.
“We’re trying to find sustainable materials,” French said. “We’re trying to take a more cutting edge approach.”
He said they are also exploring ways to outfit the yacht with electric power. It now has two Detroit Diesel engines.
Relationship building
Much like the politicians who once walked the decks, French said before French & Webb could get hired the firm had to build a relationship.
“A lot of people were circling the owner. We built some trust, and we built the relationship over years,” he said.
French & Webb, which was founded in 1996, recently completed restoration of a 1916 Herreshoff yacht. “We’re known for high-end joinery and high-end restorations,” French said. The firm has also been building furniture and hot tubs for “mega yachts” of 250 feet in length and larger.
The firm relies primarily on what French calls soft marketing: building connections, networking and creative solutions.
For the rebuild, French & Webb considered other sites, including Cambridge, Md.; Annapolis, Md.; Mystic, Conn.; Washington, D.C.; and sites in Florida.
French said Belfast turned out to be a good fit, particularly with the wealth of boat builders in Maine.
“The stars aligned. French & Webb has been doing a lot of projects around the country, but things opened up here. The city [of Belfast] was instrumental in making it happen,” offering the parking lot adjacent to the firm’s workshop. With the site set up for visitors, French & Webb expects the Sequoia to attract visitors, especially in the summer.
The Sequoia fits especially well with the firm’s expertise in historic restorations.
“It exudes soul and history,” said French. “This is way more than a boat.”
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I live in Belfast and I think we all feel like WE were chosen. The community is excited to be able to watch the restoration of this iconic yacht .
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