Found In Sweden GB42 Hull No. 1
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NOT LONG AGO, WHILE WRITING ABOUT THE LAUNCHING OF THE 1,500TH 42-
foot Grand Banks, I wondered in print about the whereabouts of the
first GB42—a woody built in 1965—and expressed hope that she still
was in great shape and keeping people happy.
It turns out she is.
Named Magdalena, the first 42 built by Grand Banks in Kowloon,
Hong Kong, now is a dive charter boat operating in the Baltic Sea
off the east coast of Sweden. Her home port is Arkösund, Sweden, a
small fishing village about 80 nautical miles south of Stockholm. Her
owner is Jan Sangrud, who lives in an old lockkeeper’s house at the
Tegelbruket lock on Göta Kanal, an 1832-vintage manmade canal
that slices through Sweden to link the Baltic with the Atlantic Ocean.
During the summer season, Sangrud takes up to 10 divers on day
trips aboard Magdalena. She also is rigged to carry six divers and a
crew of two on three-day diving adventures.
The sedan-style GB was shipped to Sweden from the United States
in 1989. Her previous home port had been Galveston, Texas, and
when Sangrud first saw the yacht in 1996 in Sweden she still was
equipped with a fishing chair in the cockpit and outriggers. “The
boat was in a terrible state,” he adds.
Although Magdalena needed significant updating and repair to
prepare her for a charter career, her 370-horsepower Cummins
diesels were in good shape and capable of pushing the old yacht to
a cruising speed of 11 to 14 knots and to 19 knots at wide-open throttle.
(Obviously, a previous owner had repowered the GB; Grand
Banks was content with slower, smaller diesels in the early 1960s and
had not yet begun thinking beyond a cruise speed of 8 or 9 knots.)
“After hard negotiations with the seller, I finally bought her for a
price that reflected her state, rather than what the seller started out
wanting,” Sangrud says.
The boat was based in Malmo, Sweden, and Sangrud faced a 340-
nautical mile trip from the south tip of Sweden up its east coast. “The
existing navigation equipment was one bad compass and a small
radar that didn’t work,” he recalls. “Before we started the trip home,
I installed a GPS, a VHF radio, bought a big emergency bilge pump
and filled her with 2,800 liters of diesel fuel.”
It was late October, so there was the possibility of nasty weather.
“The boat hadn’t been to sea in a long time and I didn’t know the
boat, so I decided to sail only during daylight,” Sangrud says.
“We started on a nice, sunny day with cold weather and a calm
sea. We pushed the throttles to 2200 rpm, and Magdalena cruised at
11 knots with a big swell behind and a powerful sound from her two
big V8 engines.”
Then the GPS went blank. Troubleshooting revealed that a voltage
regulator was running wild and pushing 17 volts of DC power into
the boat’s electrical system. The GPS was dead and the VHF radio
damaged, leaving Sangrud and his volunteer crew to finish the trip
using basic navigation skills and cell phones.
The reverse-cycle cooling/heating system didn’t work. To keep
warm at night, the crew opened the engine room hatches. With the heat came the aroma of hot lube oil and diesel
fuel. But they were comfortable.
On the fourth day, they turned into Göta Kanal
and motored through two navigation locks to
Söderköping, where refurbishing began.
A Huge Job
Sangrud’s first winter of ownership was
devoted to renovation of the engine room and
electrical systems. The restoration would extend
over three winter seasons.
Although the engines were good, they were
pulled out to allow unfettered access to the
engine room. The old 12VDC and the American
standard 120VAC wiring were stripped away and
replaced with new 12-volt and European
standard 220/380VAC systems. New pumps,
valves, air conditioning and other equipment
were installed, and the engine room was
repainted.
A certified helicopter/aircraft engineer,
Sangrud did much of the work himself, laboring
almost full time during the cold Swedish
winters. He hired skilled help, however, for
conversion of the Onan generator and the
rewiring of the boat. “I also hired a good friend,
a retired boatbuilder, when it came to advanced
‘wood-pecking,’ ” Sangrud adds.
The mechanical shaft steering equipment was
replaced with a hydraulic system and coupled to
a Neco Marine 628 autopilot and joystick steering
at both helm stations.
Sangrud repaired bad wood in the deckhouse,
rebuilt the helm stations and replaced beds in
the forward stateroom with bunks for divers. The
saloon was equipped with new furniture, including
tables that would convert to berths for two.
He then loaded the lower helm station with
an impressive suite of electronics equipment: A
JRC-JMA-2254 radar with a 3.9-foot open-array
antenna, a Raytheon V850 color depth sounder
and a Raytheon 398 DGPS—as well as a Sailor
RT VHF radio and a C-Map Pro, a personalcomputer
chart-plotting system.
Magdalena received a diver’s ladder on her
swim step, and a steel plate was laid in her
cockpit to protect the teak decking from
dropped air tanks and other gear. Stainless steel
reinforcing was added to strengthen the joint
where hull planks meet the transom.
“Today, Magdalena is a popular dive chart
boat,” Sangrud says proudly. “I do the
first tour of the year in late April,
when ice normally is gone, and I end
the season in early October.
“During the winter, she rests under
a tent in a drydock. I believe it is very
important to bring an old woody
ashore and let her dry before the
mercury creeps below zero.”
While the GB42 sits in a protected
shelter, Sangrud plays—skiing and ice
skating through the long Swedish
winter.
Her History
No one knows how many owners
have enjoyed cruising aboard the first
42 Grand Banks, or when she was
named Magdalena.
Sketchy records at the U.S. Coast
Guard Vessel Documentation Center
affirm that she was built in 1965 for an owner identified as S. Stassi. John F.
Newton Jr., a son of the founder of
the company and its designated
master carpenter, signed her
carpenter’s certificate.
Stassi apparently owned the boat
into the 1970s. The Coast Guard first
documented her when Stassi sold her
in 1974. Coast Guard records indicate
she’s had several other owners,
including one who paid $75,000 for
the boat in 1977. She apparently had
other names but is identified as
Magdalena on the most current Coast
Guard documents.
Sangrud’s information indicates that
her last American home port was
Galveston and that she was carried to
Sweden on the deck of a freighter.
At my request, Sangrud crawled
into the bilges of Magdalena and
found her documentation number
carved into an engine bed timber. It
matched the Coast Guard records. Further,
Magdalena still carries her original Grand Banks
builder’s plate, which describes her as “Grand
Banks 42-1, built by Robt. Newton & Sons,
American Marine Limited, Hong Kong.”
I called Bob Phillips about Magdalena. He’s the
West Coast sales manager for Grand Banks, based
in Newport Beach, California, and has been with
GB since 1972. John Newton Jr. was his boss
when he first joined the company.
Counting on his long history with the
company, I asked if he would confirm that the
first 42 was a sedan. I said nothing else about
the boat.
“Just a minute, while I look in a file,” Phillips
replies, and in about 20 seconds he cries, “S.
Stassi. It was built for S. Stassi.”
While Magdalena is the first 42, the second 42
probably was delivered first, Phillips recalls.
Most of the early 42s were sedans, and the U.S.
Navy was among the early buyers.
We talked more about the boat, and I
mentioned she had been repowered with big
Cummins diesels. “Now I remember,” Phillips
says. “I saw that boat in Galveston maybe a
hundred years ago. She had those big engines
then.
“That’s wild. What a small world.”
Generations Strong
Boatbuilders are dreamers and optimists. It’s a
tough business, and they need to think cheerful
thoughts. But do you believe that the Newtons,
even in overdrive optimism, ever contemplated
the day when one of their oval builder’s plates
would carry four-digit hull numbers?
I heard nothing following my published requests
for information about Hull No. 1. (See
PMM December ’02.) But PassageMaker
readers were “talking” about my appeal on an
Internet message board (www.oya.com)
operated by Oxford Yacht Agency, a Grand
Banks dealer in Oxford, Maryland. One
participant knew about Sangrud’s boat and
noted that it was listed on another website,
www.gbwoodies.com, one devoted to old
Grand Banks yachts.
few electronic messages later I was in contact
with Sangrud, who worked at his computer
in the old lockkeeper’s house about 30 feet from
the canal, which then carried an 18-inch ice
cover.
Sangrud’s experience further proves what
many know: The mahogany-planked, yakalframed
GBs are tough old birds, and love,
money, time and perseverance—and probably a
wall-to-wall renovation every generation or so—
will keep them looking good and running
smoothly.
As for the boat, Sangrud is more than satisfied
with her.
“All boats are compromises,” he says. “I
consider Magdalena to be a good compromise.
I don’t like her zigzag in following seas (he’s not
the first GB owner with that complaint). But I
guess that is the nature of the lady, and there’s
nothing to be done about it.”
He’s also aware that he has the important role
of protecting and nurturing a historically
important vessel—the GB42 that was the first in
what has turned out to be the most popular line
of boats ever built.
Reprinted with permission. Copyright 2003 © Dominion Enterprises (888.487.2953) www.passagemaker.com
You are reading the text-only copy of this article. To access the article as it appeared in PassageMaker Magazine, please log in to purchase and download the PDF version of this article.