The Ballad of Teal

Seattle’s vibrant working waterfront is home to an array of vessels. It is the port-of-call for a great deal of the North Pacific fishing fleet, made famous on Deadliest Catch, U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers and workboats for just about any maritime need. Seamlessly blended in among the working craft in the city’s

Ballard district, even a landlubber’s gaze will be drawn to Teal, a charismatic, 78-foot motoryacht with a tale to tell.

“We’re the latest in a long line of caretakers,” says Amado Shuck, a retired crane operator and deck engineer with 25 years in the operating engineers union. “I started commercial fishing in the late ’80s in Alaska and was enamored with it. [I] went on to get a license and become a towboat captain.”

Teal is immaculate and is as seaworthy a coastal cruiser as when she was first pressed into service in Alaska for the Bureau of Fisheries (now known as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). Seattle marine architects H.C. Hanson and L.E. Coolidge designed her. The Kruse and Banks Shipbuilding Company built her in 1927 from Douglas fir at North Bend in Coos Bay, Ore.

The time Teal spent in service solidified her regional reputation, Shuck says: “There’s a number of these old boats around that people will call a forestry boat or a fishing wildlife boat. They delivered the mail and were part of the revenue service.” Harold L. Ickes, who was President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of the interior, was aboard at some point, Shuck adds.

After Teal’s working life ended, she was often seen in the Juneau region being used as a private yacht. The good times ended in the late 1970s, when the exhaust stack was left uncovered during an extended absence. Rainwater intruded into the original power plant—a big, slow-turning, 180-hp Washington-Estep. The rainwater froze, cracking the cylinder and leaving Teal dead in the water. 

The boat ended up being a liveaboard home because it couldn’t go anywhere, Shuck says. She was sold to several buyers before an enterprising soul acquired her for $20,000 and had her towed to Port Hadlock, Wash., in 1980. Along with Lisa Haug, Shuck acquired Teal in 2021, having fallen for her early in his maritime career when she was on the dock in Port Hadlock.

“It looked like a wonderful tugboat, unique that it has these portlights in the deckhouse. Pretty noticeable when you get in tune with that. But it also looked pretty rough,” he says. “It was just neat to look at the boat.”

Shuck’s maritime jobs took him up and down the Olympic Peninsula, and whenever he could spare a stop, he’d swing over to Port Hadlock to check in on Teal. He evolved into a full-blown secret admirer, watching the replanking and other restoration efforts into the early aughts. In 2021, he saw the boat while vacationing in Friday Harbor. She had a “for sale” sign in her deckhouse. After a series of visits on board and consultations with his Haug, the dotted line was signed.

Summer 2021 was spent on Puget Sound, getting Teal dialed in. She was already thoroughly modernized for passagemaking with a Cummins 855 engine, bow thruster, watermaker, full-size stove, refrigerator, 17-cubic-foot freezer, washer, dryer, 12-volt battery bank and 110-volt lighting. On her aft deck, Shuck added a full enclosure for more roaming time during inclement weather.

Performance-wise, Teal can’t be pushed beyond 8.5 knots, but Shuck thinks he can do better: “I have a sense that we could put some pitch in the wheel and get a couple more knots.” He says Teal cruised at 10 to 12 knots with the original engine.

He also replaced some of Teal’s wood, which dated to restoration efforts after the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. Lumber from the area around the volcano had the natural oils and resins effectively boiled out of it, creating a generation of wood with poor endurance properties. This bum wood is now gone from the vessel.

A special moment for Shuck was when former owner Buzz Callahan, who lived aboard Teal in Alaska, contacted him. He had raised two daughters aboard, and the three of them wanted to visit for Callahan’s 92nd birthday.

“They came out and spent the day looking at the boat and talking about all the times they had aboard,” he says.

Nowadays, Teal is back in Alaskan waters, but for leisure. In 2022, Shuck took her on an 84-day trip up the Inside Passage and back with friends and family, visiting Ketchikan, Revillagigedo Island and Misty Fjords. 

“We left in the middle of May and returned in the middle of August,” he says. “It was phenomenal.”

He tells tales of glaciers, humpback whales, a black wolf on the beach, and “lots of sea otters. They’re just so cute. We had some great brown bear sightings, followed mom and two babies on the beach, maybe 200 feet away. They didn’t care about us at all.”

What made the trip truly special was the people Teal seemed to bring together, he adds.

“You take this boat to Southeast Alaska,” he says, “and everybody comes and talks to you because they know it.”

This article was originally published in the July/August 2024 issue.