| Travels of Dursmirg Vol. 1 Chapter 2 |
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CHAPTER TWO TRAVELS OF THE DURSMIRG
Note: numbers in ( ) are footnotes. Click on number to read.
I had an idea, and like seeds, ideas can take root, sprout and grow. All that is needed is help, care and nourishment. In
life many ideas fall to the ground and are trampled before they have a chance to sprout and grow.
Many shudder at the prospect of change and the unknown and others like me run to embrace it. The challenge of an
adventure and the opportunity to test your skills and make them work are like soaring to peaks above the mountain
tops…you have to taste this to feel the exhilaration…it just has to be experienced.
So much for words and back to reality: Money(1) was a huge factor and therefore we would not wait for the perfect yacht.
We were determined to make our get-away and so set out to be very methodical in our plans.
With pencil and paper we laid out the criteria for our education(2), construction(3) of the boat and escape plans(4). That
was the easy part and that is just about as far as most people ever get.
I am not a patient person at all; the only reason that I thought that this plan was going forward was because I happen to
be incredibly stubborn.
Education was going to be a large part of our five-year plan; first we needed technical skills(5) and next boat handling
and navigation(6).
In the twin port cities of Duluth-Superior (7) we were blessed with some of the best schools to be found anywhere with the
teaching talent to back them up…all we had to do was go and soak up the knowledge. Both Jane and I were eager
students and thoroughly enjoyed the stimulant of knowledge and found its accumulation a fascinating pyramid where one
subject tended to build on the next…it wasn’t long before we truly hungered and thirsted for more and more. For five
years we were in night school three nights a week…and that was one of the most fun and rewarding aspects of the
project.
The Voc-tech or technical school(8) was like a giant toy store where we got expert instruction on a variety of fascinating
toys, and then got to play with them all…the best part was that in the process we were making parts for our getaway
dreamboat.
Most of our technical studies took place in the machine shop. There we started with the basics; cutting tools, set-up,
speeds and feeds…soon we were into the properties of metals, (9) a very important aspect of marine applications in a
salt-water environment. We had no idea of how extensive these different aspects of metalworking were and only wish that
we could have devoted more time to their studies.
Ron Grossman, our instructor, had a real talent to convey his knowledge and steered us through some of our projects
that were meant for much more advanced students, as we even cut our own gears and gained experience on a multitude
of machines. Many problems were solved as we tackled exotic metals and put together many of the hardware items that
would make our “dream-boat” go. Even though we made many of the fittings, winches, turnbuckles and gears we found it
best to purchase all the equipment that we could as time was of the essence...our objective was to go sailing, not prove
that we were a 100% hands on construction project. There was to be no chrome or flash on this rig…it was only our get-
away vehicle and had to serve its purpose.
Jane operating an engine lathe and turning one of our bronze winches at the Superior Vocational School.
1970
Jane and I soon became regulars at the Duluth Power Squadron(10), but first it was imperative to take their basic boating
course. Well, I had been in a boat from a very early age and thought that this course would only be a formality…wrong!
Yes I learned enough from this basic course to know for sure that I was very lucky indeed to have survived some of my
early learning experiences. Even with all of the time and effort that Jane and I put into our classes and studies we had a
long way to go. Only those terror filled times in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of the night with mountainous
waves crashing over and spindrift soaking every possible part of you to the bone while the screaming wind tatters and
tears can further your education. This happens when you are so tired that only the adrenaline flowing from your fear of
eminent death keeps you moving and as your vessel is self destructing…your shaking hands and blurred vision can’t be
explained properly in the text books. If this sounds bad, consider the above conditions as you approach a strange port, in
the night or in the fog. Never assume that help is a mere radio call away…time works against you and you and only you
are the one to pull yourself out of this kind of situation…out of the most beautiful full-mooned and romantic night you can
be transformed into a nightmare situation in so few seconds that the shock value has to be seen to be believed…trust
me on this one.
So, go to school, it is no joke as it has saved our lives and our property to say nothing of that of others.
The Duluth Power Squadron had many more courses than we had time to take, but for five years we were regulars.
An example is the sail course, we started with 37 students and after four semesters of study we took the final exam with
only seven students and we all passed. I will never forget Jack and Ginny Soetebier. Jack was not only a genius
international sailing champion but he put all of his knowledge to work in our sail course…we were so lucky to have him
and he made such a fantastic contribution to our knowledge base. Jane and I feel that we were extremely fortunate to
have had such mentors on our journey to our get- away.
Ed Drill was another person that gave all that he had to our education process.
I am sure that you could travel far and wide and never come up with such a collection of minds and experiences that were
willing to contribute to the public as we found there at the Duluth Power Squadron. It must have been those long cold
winters and short boating seasons…I don’t know but what ever it was, the time and place couldn’t have been better.
Navigation training was crucial. At this point and time when computerized navigational systems are so accurate and user
friendly, to say nothing of cheap it doesn’t seem hardly necessary to devote any time to this topic. Well, things were
different when we were ready to set sail. Celestial navigation was a must, and we learned how to use it and even how to
do lifeboat navigation(11), which was literally to navigate with no equipment. We learned how to use a transistor radio as
an RDF(12), or radio direction finder and a thousand other little tricks to get you to where you wanted to go. With all of
the books and all of the teachers and classes there is no substitute for the actual out to sea experience. So you see you
can go on learning, and when you think that you have it all figured out I assure you that you are at the cocky point in
your boating career of sinking and taking a trip to the bottom.
Jane in our home in Superior, Wisconsin with our new sextant. It was winter but we were still very busy with
any indoor preparations for going to sea. 1970
After all is said and done, the three basic rules of boating still hold true and they are: anything that floats will sail down
wind, the water is supposed to be on the outside and might is right.
Our master plan was taking shape and our timetable was on track. Our first two years of the five-year plan were almost
all study, planning and the beginning of our procurement process. Jane and I were so busy that we would meet for
breakfast out and go our separate ways only to meet again in the evening for school or studies. Many nights we worked
until eleven at night in my warehouse getting shipments ready to go out the next day by UPS(13). Weekends were the
same and the busier my business kept us the more money I made. My plan was to put two dollars in the bank for each
dollar spent on the boat.
We found plans for a boat that met our requirements of size and sail rig but a trunk cabin would be too confining, so we
made a major change to the hull between the water line and deck. A flush deck would just about double the useable
living space, so we decided to go with that. This design change made for a very unique vessel, and I wound up making
an inch to a foot scale model that I lofted the lines off of. A drafting machine was purchased and a few hours of intense
work produced a stack of cross sectional drawings needed for the lay out of the frames and basic shape of the vessel.
Left photo; Working at the drafting table preparing the cross-sectional drawings. Right photo; putting the
finishing touches on a one inch to a foot scale model to be used to loft the final lines of our new boat.
In the third year of the five-year plan we actually began with the first phases of construction. It seemed so strange that
much of our first labors would be put into things that would not even go with us; the reinforced cement footings, the
building cradle and the scaffolding that stood as tall as our two-story house and all was in our back yard.
This is a good time to mention the fact that we were again extremely lucky to have the most fantastic neighbors. Looking
back some thirty years now, we can more appreciate just how good we had it. John and Barb Williams and their kids were
without a doubt more than supportive and helpful. They went out of their way to put up with all of the traffic that we
generated with curiosity seekers. As our building project progressed a steady procession of cars were filing by, honking
and shouting to jockey for position to get a view of our project. Even though John worked two jobs regularly and a few
more jobs in between he still found time to have his seasonal smoked fish and home made wine parties, and we were
always included…they were remarkable neighbors indeed.
Our building cradle was thirty three feet long and ten feet wide, all constructed of twelve inch by twelve inch timbers put
together with steel drift pins…some people were even impressed with this much of our project.
Next, our steel clad keel and rudder were built. Made of quarter inch steel plate and filled with thirteen thousand, two
hundred pounds of ballast, it did look like a strange narrow canoe as some suggested when we told them that we were
building a boat.
Jane and I took time off from work. We spend a week in the new garage we had just built and equipped with a heater so
that we could bend and form all of the one inch steel tubing into frames that would be placed at two foot intervals
throughout our new ship.
1969 Jane atop the building cradle inspecting the steel clad keel
Oh, by the way!
My father died a tragic death at his own hands. That incident gave me a thought to ponder: Jane and I had been going
together for five years, she was for sure my very best friend and we had a joint plan of escape plus we were well along
on our boat project. Well, I knew what to do and all I had to do was implement it, and so I did, and here is that story:
In 1969 I was living in Superior, Wisconsin with my girl friend of five years, Jane.
I owned my own home, car and business and had been debt free for over a year.
We had been working and planning on a five-year plan to escape to another world on a boat we were in the process of
building.
I had my own wholesale business with customers in three states and I drove an average of 250 miles a day to get my
orders. Often times over roads that were so slippery with ice I could not stand on them…and that isn’t the craziest thing I
have ever done! The business was a moneymaker and I much preferred this way to make money to the alternative that
my parents thought I should be in and that was my father’s drug store.
Jane and I were a real team and worked nights and Saturdays in my warehouse preparing orders to be shipped by UPS
to my customers. Three nights a week we were in night school studying a range of subjects from seamanship, to welding,
machine tools, structural design and celestial navigation. In our spare time we studied and planned and worked on our
boat project.
We already had the building cradle for our boat finished, and Jane took a week off from work in November, and together
we formed all of the frames “ribs”, for our dreamboat.
My father, who was separated from my mother, ended his life with an overdose of diuretics on December 12th, I could
sympathize with his reasons, as he had justifiable cause for ending his life, but, if he had been more of a man, he might
have pulled himself together and lived his life to the fullest, as he was a person of the deepest feelings and very sincere
and humane.
When my father died, I had occasion to think about life and where it was going and I quickly realized that the person in
this world that meant the most to me was Jane.
My mind raced to a conclusion that the very most important thing to me was to be together with my Jane, and so I came
up with a plan, and that was to marry my Jane.
I had always joked with Jane that if she ever wanted to get married we would still stay friends, so when I asked her the
question her response was, “I suppose so”. I said, “You suppose so?”
Well, I had it all planned out, and I relayed the plans to Jane, and we were on our way to Carlton, Minnesota on Jane’s
lunch hour. It was a Monday and we made the 17-mile trip up the hill to Carlton and into the courthouse in a few minutes.
We filled out the papers and paid the $5.00 application. We were informed that we would have to wait for five days and
they gave us two large bags of groceries that were intended to be a homemaker start up kit…it was great, and we just
had to laugh as we had been together for five years.
I got Jane back to her job within an hour, and we were sure that there wasn’t a person in the world that had any idea what
we were up to…little did we know!
Now, for the rest of the story; it turns out that once a week a newspaper in Cloquet, Minnesota was published called the
“Pine Knot”. As Jane and I were filling out the application for our marriage license the reporter was there picking up all of
the information for the once a week publication that came out that very same afternoon.
At three that afternoon, Jane’s very best friend that lives in Cloquet, Judy Lahti, picked up a copy of that newspaper “The
Pine Knot”, hot off the press! Well in a minute she was on the phone to her parents that lived some eighty miles away in
Cloverland, Wisconsin to relay the good news. The plot thickens!!!
Well it turns out that in less than a couple of hours Judy’s parents were to get together with Jane’s parents for
dinner…the beans are spilled.
With no knowledge that there was anyone in the world that was on to us we made the trip back to Carlton on that cold,
clear Saturday morning. We were late leaving the house and made the trip to old Judge Nordstrom’s house that was one
block off the main street arriving five minutes late at 10:05…the sun shining brightly off the snow didn’t add any heat to
the minus ten degree day.
The judge must have been 85 years old, but he still had a sparkle in his eye and a spring in his step. Jane and I were
surprised by the offer he made to us in an in direct way, he told us that he had to send our marriage certificate to the
state office for recording but he could furnish one to us with any date on it if we thought we might want one to show the
family and friends. At first we didn’t see any point to that, but then it came to us…this wasn’t a rush wedding and so we
declined his offer.
My Jane was so pretty that day and she was so excited that she couldn’t figure out which hand to put the ring on at first.
December 20th, 1969, our wedding day
We hadn’t made any plans for the day so we drove to Duluth and went out for lunch at nice new restaurant on the
hilltop…it was so beautiful together with my wife having lunch and looking over Lake Superior, a frozen, snow covered
expanse that extended far out beyond the eastern horizon and seeing the route that we planned to take on our new,
soon to be completed, 46 foot yacht.
Because of the fact that my father had just died, we decided that it would be best to have a get-together with some
friends and celebrate our wedding, keeping it a secret. That night we had a house full and Jane cooked her own dinner.
The most incredible thing of all was that as long as we were keeping our secret the rest of the family was also keeping
the secret.
The Christmas season came and went and Jane and I were sure that we had kept our secret to ourselves.
We made plans for a nine-day honeymoon trip to Mexico City and Acapulco that would coincide with Easter Week …and I
was lucky enough to have won this all expense paid trip through one of the companies that I was doing business with.
Looking back over the years I find it very amusing that our reasoning for picking a trip to Mexico was that we thought that
we would probably never revisit the place…and today our home is in the Yucatan of Mexico…just goes to show you how
our lives have changed.
Before Jane and I took off on our trip, we both thought that it would be advisable to inform Jane’s parents that we had
indeed gotten married.
On a Sunday evening after dinner at Jane’s parent’s home, I got up and told the crowd that I had something important to
say, Jane’s father said no, that I should sit down and that he had something important to tell. Well, Ed could hardly
contain himself as he brimmed with laughter and chuckled through the story that they had kept secret from us all that
time.
PS We didn’t get married on the shortest day of the year but the longest night.
Back to the boat construction;
As soon as spring had warmed our snow-covered backyard enough we eagerly began welding our pre-formed frames in
place. This part went fast as our rudder and its bearings had been made over the frozen wintertime so to us it looked like
a boat at this point.
One reason this type of boat construction isn’t very popular is not because of cost but the tremendous amount of labor
that is consumed, as we were about to find out as we went into the next phase of our construction.
Next we fastened to the framework quarter inch high tinsel steel rods(14) at two-inch intervals with tie wire, and next
twelve-gauge hardware cloth and lastly, eight layers of chicken wire. This whole thing…and I must say “thing!” it was
taking real shape. We had the very tedious job of tying all of this mesh and rod tightly into a mat only seven eighths of an
inch thick with a special lath hanger’s wire(15). We got lots of help, but this job took weeks, working long into the night.
Over that spring and summer, our every spare moment was put into this project and we rigged floodlights so that we
wouldn’t be slowed by night.
Working from scaffolding, tying the high-tensile rods, Jane’s brother, Jim.
We went through three hundred pounds of charcoal on our rotisserie as we had a pork loin or some other huge piece of
meat cooking so that we could treat our helpers and ourselves.
Jane and I had made a time table for the project and we had decided that the plaster had to be applied no later than
August 15th because of the high probability of frost after that date and that was something that just couldn’t be tolerated
as it would have jeopardized some of the strength of the curing plaster.
To meet that deadline, we hired two professional lath tiers.(Lath tiers are the men that install mesh, “lath”, by various
means including tying with wires to form the base for plastering.) Yes, we were impressed with their speed, and we had to
conclude that you just couldn’t beat a man at his own trade. At this point in the project the mesh was so thick that it was
hard to see any more than a silhouette through the many layers and it was tied so tight that a slight tap of a hammer
anywhere on the hull produced a distinct bell ring. The two men that we hired to help were very generous and donated to
our project our propeller shaft; one and a half inch bronze and eight feet long all prepared with the necessary machine
tool work and ready to install…how can you say thanks to a gesture like that?
Inside the hull looking forward with the steel mesh almost ready to receive plaster.
Oh, by the way!
We disciplined ourselves as far as the consumption of beer went and only had it with our evening meals or after eleven
at night, when we treated all present to all that they wanted.
I often remarked that we consumed enough Leienkugels beer to float our boat while we were in the building process. It is
strange that even as a young beer drinker and in fact all of my life this Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin beer had been one of
my very favorites. In fact I liked “Leinie’s” when “Leinie’s wasn’t cool” Many long years ago the logo of the company was:
“Made with Chippewa Water from the Big Eddy Springs”, and we all used to joke; “little did they know that Big Eddy was a
horse”. I could tell a whole story on this subject, but like in Norway where my family comes from, they used to say that the
reason that the Grimsruds couldn’t be taught to swim under water was that they just couldn’t be trained to keep their
mouths shut.
Our next step was plaster. This was to be a stucco boat and the plaster was a special mix of five ingredients16 that would
in the end be non-porous and resilient. Two days and lots of helpers and that was over except for keeping the whole
thing wet for twenty-eight days so that it could cure to its hardest.
Everyone thought that we quit at this point, well we didn’t. We just went inside with our fabrication process
This is the bare hull resting on its building cradle. Note the size of the boat in relation to our house.
Again, early in the next spring we were out on the bare hull installing the things that we had made the previous winter
plus installing the bulkheads and tanks. Over the summer we started with the insulation; two inches of Styrofoam covered
with white cedar paneling.
Bulkhead installation, Tommy Williams, our neighbor boy and Jane
After all of the hatches were installed, the fitting out of the inside began, and we had the fireplace-smoke -oven ready the
day of our first snow in the fall which coincided with the last hatch cover going on. The heat felt good and over the next
winter, we found as the outside temperatures dipped well below zero that we kept warm as we burned the old scaffold
wood and a couple of trees donated by neighbors. The bilge area wasn’t insulated and therefore was coated with frost. If
a tool was laid on the floor, “sole”, of the boat it soon became impossible to touch and had to be placed on the hot
fireplace to warm up.
Jane getting the fireplace ready to fire up. Winter was headed our way and the heat from our fireplace would
become imperative.
Because of the blowing snow the frost went into the ground unevenly and soon our whole project was six inches out of
plumb fore to aft. Our cabinet fabrication and installation had to be done with projected measurements as the level was
of no further use at this point in time.
The stern of “Dursmirg” just above the snow drifts, but good and warm inside.
Snow piled high in our back yard from one of the frequent blizzards.) Note the vertical boarding ladder that
intimidated most of the “gawkers” from coming aboard. You can also see the pivoting boom crane that we
employed to bring our building materials up to the aft deck area.
We figured out that the project was one-third hull construction, one-third interior and one third rigging and sails.
The interior construction consisted of wiring, plumbing, paneling, cabinets and furniture, tanks, bulkheads, engine
installation and its associated connections and controls.
At this time we were also diligently dedicating one hundred percent of our long days to intense activities at our jobs,
school and the boat construction. Plus we had to also coordinate our bailout of houses, cars, business and personal
belongings. We decided that if our possessions wouldn’t fit on the boat we didn’t need them.
(
Freezing temperatures outside but, two inches of insulation and a big fire in the fireplace made it possible
to carry on with construction throughout the cold winter months.
Many of our plans had to be made with the seasons in mind. For example, we couldn’t begin gluing our mast together
until the outside temperature was above 70 degrees as the epoxy resin glue had to have that minimum temperature to
activate…so all was ready and when the day arrived we began the mast and spar fabrication.
Our 46 foot five hundred pound mast of Sitka spruce being fabricated in our back yard. The wood is
imported from Alaska and very expensive, but also very strong.
Even our launch date had to be coordinated to the seasons; we had to make our final departure date for example no
later than mid-August because of the ice that set in on the Erie Canal. We would have to journey some two thousand
miles and traverse thirty eight locks in our six hundred and four foot decent to the tidal water of the Hudson River…yes it
was snowing and twenty degrees when we got out of the last lock of the Erie Canal.
I think that every other day I told Jane that we weren’t possibly going to make our departure date and we would most
likely have to spend a winter in Bayfield, Wisconsin, frozen in the winter snow. With that thought in our minds we pushed
ourselves even harder...it was good we had our youth, as at an older age this schedule would have been a death
sentence.
go to chapter 3
1 Our plan was: save two dollars for every dollar invested in the boat project
2 Education consisted of home studies and formal education. Five years, three nights a week in school and an equal
amount of out of class preparation.
3 Three years until launch and at least one more year of fitting out and troubleshooting.
4 Liquidation of assets, route and destination plans all time coordinated to coincide with weather conditions and seasons
5 Technical skills: cabinet making, carpentry, drafting and blue print reading, electrical wiring, engine controls and power
take offs, plumbing, rigging, structural design, metal properties and machine tools, and welding
6 Boat handling: rules of the road, tides and currents, weather, safety and safety equipment, anchors and anchoring,
docking and mooring, sail, first aid, engines and maintenance. Navigation: dead reckoning, line of position, chart types,
chart reading, chart use, plotting, electronics…radar, RDF, sounders, plotters and positioners, celestial and the use of
the sextant and reduction tables. Lifeboat navigation.
7 Duluth-Superior harbor, the second largest tonnage port in the US*, situated at the western most end of the Saint
Lawrence Waterway on the “Great Lakes” that divide Canada and the USA
8 The state of Wisconsin provided a network of schools that specialized in a variety of subjects with degrees of up to
three years in technical crafts and skills. Night school, part time and craft for journeymen classes included. The school in
Superior, Wisconsin was the main school for the northwestern part of the state. Some years earlier I received a two year
electronic engineering degree, was elected class president, and became familiar with the full curriculum and the
instructors.
9 Handbook of CHEMESTRY AND PHYSICS; MACHINERY’S HANDBOOK (technical reference and mathematical tables
and formulas)
10 Duluth Power Squadron, part of a national organization aimed at the education of boaters. The Duluth group was one
third education and two thirds social.
11 Reference book; Bowditch-Nathaniel
12 RDF = radio direction finder
13 UPS = United Parcel Service
14 The rods had to be tied to the frames, as welding would anneal the high tensile steel or remove the springy properties.
15 A limp galvanized wire.
16 Type five Portland cement, air intrainment liquid, fly ash, crushed and graded igneous rock and water.
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