My name is Edwin Landis, but people in the sailing community know me as Eddie and
I have my captain's license now so I guess I can be Captain Eddie. This is the
schooner Pterodactyl 42-foot JR Benford design concrete haul everything else is wood.
I always liked boats and built my first boat at about eight but it wasn't
a shape, but it was a sort of, it was square. No adults told me anything about
it. I was just building it and I thought that wood floated so it would float. I didn't
know about displacement or any of that. I built the thing. The neighborhood was like
"Eddie's going to launch his boat", put it on my back and took it down to
the river. My mother made me a little bag of lunch and there were other and the
neighbors were down there and everything and I said, "okay I'm gonna take it out a
little ways to come back and then I'll give everybody rides." And I stepped in it
and instantly went right to the bottom and I'm up to my knees or so in the
water standing by. It didn't even hesitate. It just went *bloop*. That was my
first boat and my second boat I could bail if I had another kid with me I
could bail fast enough to keep it afloat and then I took it home and wrapped an
old shower curtain around it and it didn't leak any more it was great so I
was always into boats, loved boats, and building shacks and stuff. Things I
could get inside of and everything and I always liked to draw stuff. When I was a
real little kid I drew a bird. When I was trying to think, "how do I make it look
like it's flying?" and I managed to figure out how to make the wings up and
make it look sort of three-dimensional and since then I always thought of as a
challenge to do it right. That's when I realized that
that was my real calling and I went to art school. It's kind of funny I
built my house, all my easels, my paint box, the boat, everything I built and I draw
up first. Like some things I've maybe drawn 50 pictures before I come up with a
way that would really work.
This is a schooner rig with a midships cockpit
after the cockpit the deck comes up a little bit and continues back to the
stern, that's a quarterdeck. This boat has a quarterdeck and we're on the
quarterdeck right now. These particular lines are lazy Jack's. I just put these
on it. They're easy to put on but when you lower the sail it catches it you
don't have it falling all over. It's saved so much work. I actually had a
temporary hatch over this where the skylight is for years and years even
though I've made the framer for the skylight I never finished it so that's
only been there for three years really makes it different because you
know it's pretty dark down below. These, I just put these rat lines. My daughter
says I say ratlins, but I didn't learn boating from being with real boaters I
did it from books or just myself so I don't use all the terms and everything
but I've got this generator recently and now I can work my power tools everything
right out here on my mooring. We have to take it off when we start taking people
for rides. This year we're gearing up to actually take people for rides, Scooner
Pterodactyl Charters LLC. We're not totally ready yet obviously but that's
what we're going to do. This is the mainmast. On schooner the bigger mast this
aft these masts are Sitka Spruce. Most people have Douglas Fir, very strong
but Sitka Spruce is just as strong but way lighter.
And that's the fore mast there. I have my air-cooled diesel engine instead of
having like regular yachts I have a stack like fish boats. Like I said I like
work boats and tugs and all that. The engine room's right underneath here so I got
this little light. Every steel fitting everything is just homemade.
This is my old steering wheel and actually I need a new one now finally. It's got like a
chain in there it's all stuff that I made so it's a little crude. This is very
very Drakish. I have a hydraulic drive it can creep when I went in neutral I
have to put this thing down so you don't think you're, you put it in neutral
and then you're doing something all of a sudden it's in gear gone full bore so I had to
put this thing on there. This is another example of real Drakeism. With the
air-cooled engine it has to have good cool air going in. I think in the catalog
those bronze air scoops worth hundreds of dollars.
I just went to Lowe's and got some PVC. Tommy Drake build his own boats. He was a
retired sailing ship captain. They call him The Lone Sea Rover and he didn't set
records, he just sailed and he built his boats, everything: design and build them.
They're fairly crude in some ways but functional good boats and I named my
club after Tommy Drake. That whole attitude with making it seaworthy
functional, use what you got, and go out there. The Tommy Drake, the
lifetime Commodore. You make your own version, you can use a sock, underwear, whatever
you want. TDC right on there, put it on your
starboard where you put your Yacht Club Burgi. Okay! You're in.
Make your burn seat and whatever. It's the Drake attitude and if something is
Drakeish well, it's functional and unpretentious and if you think like that
you're a Draker. Captain Tommy the Lone Sea Rover is my biggest hero.
The mainsheet for this sail comes here and goes up down and then you can
control that right here and for the fore stay sail and the main sheets right here
so when you tack the jib sheet goes on each side here so you don't really have
to go up there unless something's tangled up which happens all the time.
I've single handed a lot. You just have to run back and forth but it's doable. By
having a Schooner Rig with four working sails and I can put two other sails up
it divides the square footage in so no sail has to be so big that it's
unmanageable and there's no winches you notice. When you see Popeye the cartoon
you know and he has those oversized forearms there's a reason for that.
Sailors are always gripping and pulling, at least the old-fashioned ones, unbelievably
big forearms. I have this hundred pound fisherman anchor it's unwieldy but
it holds. I have metal cable from my anchor. This is a 6-ton logging winch
that I got secondhand. It's real old. If you put the crank it didn't, I didn't, I had
to make my own crank it didn't come with one. Six of these cranks turns the drum
once but if you put it over here it's something like 32 cranks and this is a
6-ton winch and if you put it on that one you can actually crank six tons I
got it fouled on some big thing underwater and I'm cranking and the
bow's going down and down and I'm just cranking away and I forget what it was
some big thing finally came up. This is the fore staysail then I have the jib
and then I also have a flying jib so there's three headsails if I want to have em.
Started building I guess it was 73. I was with my brother
Davi my wife at the time Victoria and schoolmate of my brother Davies Don
and my brother in law, we built the boat shed first
that took over a month probably although I had built lots of boats as a kid I
didn't really know even how to read boat prints or any of that.
I sent my money in, a tube of blueprints comes in the mail with all the lines and
details and stuff but no instructions whatsoever.
I had to bone up. I had to get every book I could find and first it meant it was
new. A year later in March it was ready for plastering. You can build the boat your
armature your steel armature it's perfect as you want but if you don't
have it plastered right you're screwed. Nobody's building them now has a bad
reputation and no not much resale value because a lot of people did such a poor
job building them but there were lots of goers and this boat was plastered in
74 and here it is still working fine. I'm happy with it.
This is the galley.
This is an old Washington Stove Works Neptune 15a and it's got an oven. In hot
weather you can't do it. I got this alcohol stove and I made these gimbals
you can buy a gimbal sink for a hundred bucks so when the boat's tilted
the stuff on the stove stays level. For meals we've used, eat burgoo, which is
what Tristan Jones called the one pot thing you just whatever you have and we
just have a pressure cooker.
Lift it up so it won't slide out when the boat heals but see, won't come out
but then you lift it and you got it. I had a interval water tank and I, I don't
know, I didn't like the idea of it so I took it out and the foot pump here
for the water but I have to make a new one and obviously this
fitting is just made out of copper pipe. That's Drake-ish and that I like too. You can see all
these bottles here and think, "boy he drinks a lot of liquor", no, they're water
from my well. Just drinking water. I just I like the well water you know spoiled. The
table you can pull the pin and make it go down and you got a double berth there
but I couldn't get pipes that fit really snug so I'm gonna have to pad out the
one pipe see, but hey it's been this way forever
and I like it so you can go back in there. This is recycled wood too, fir. This is the
typical thing, when it's really hot we have all the utensils holding the port
lights open and up here which is catch all right now is the fo'c'sle. It's got a
double berth for a couple. It would be pretty intimate then a single berth over
here and I have ground tackle down under there rope and storage up there. I lost
the little thing for that but this is a...
she's not working now but this was the ship alert and I used to have a knot
meter there was a little L tube with a cork in it and you stuck it in the water
and there was calibrations on the tube and wherever the cork came to it
would tell you how fast you're going six knots or whatever.
I don't know what happened to that. I don't know if they have those anymore.
Watch your head here people have really gotten a bad rude awakening from that.
this is the head, the bathroom. This is new too it's a composting toilet. You put
this peat moss in it you have to crank this put it in there and crank it 15 times
that's your flushing. It's legal that's that's a legal thing.
I welded this
thing up out of pipe 40 years ago and it's still around too and it heats it up really well.
Got to have musical instruments when there's no wind. That's what you use to call the wind.
Storage you know instead of having hinges I made them like the old America
Flyer wagons from when I was a kid. The double berth is really really nice. I did
my own steering too and it's quite crude. Cables go through tubes underneath and
it comes in here and I just made this emergency tiller.
There's the wrench right there that you bolt it down with and you can get it on
there and I'm gonna have a rope in here and it's going to go the pulleys here
and here and go up so I can control it from up above
and this is black locust that's strong. So let's see, there's two
three four somebody could sleep on each of these
they're six the galley table could go down and eight and then three more up
so actually you could sleep 11 people but that would be really tight
and who wants to have to lower the galley table and bring it up you know?
You want to go get a midnight snack there's somebody in there laying on the table
down so that's not so cool. This is the chart table you know the charts and
stuff are in here. My sextant nobody used that I actually used this going to
Hawaii not on this boat another but there was a
other person who was the main navigator had a real sextant but I was pretty
accurate with this thing. I don't remember how we're doing it, now everybody's got
satellite navigation for position works great. My father-in-law gave me this for
birthday or Christmas something awhile ago, couple years ago, finally put it in you
know the whole thing Roger over now all that. I had never had any of that before
you just sort of think hope they see you or whatever and
whatever they want, you can't talk to anybody it's like, "I see you over there."
Um pretty cool, I really like this design because I got my own shop and
here's the engine. Another uncommon thing an air cooled
doats diesel from Germany 1980 and I got the Spencer fluid power hydraulic system
and I got my vice and my complete shop here for doing everything.
Say we go to Port Townsend come back takes maybe 10 days, it feels like
you really did a real experience. Time is way different with a really good wind
really good wind up we can probably go about 8 knots. It's just a different
perspective and it's helpful.
And just start if you could boil it down that's that's it. Just try. Just start. You
can not have your exact plan for the rest of your life and never start
you just have to start and that's my that's the way I have done everything and
that would be my advice...go for it.