CAPE MAY, N.J. — It had been decades since saltwater touched the hull of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Motor Lifeboat CG-36538.
After more than eight years of hard work by dozens of volunteers, thousands of dollars and countless hours of labor, seeing this lifeboat once again resting in Cape May waters was gratifying, Ed Melega said Saturday morning.
Melega, president of the Cape May Maritime Museum, and a half-dozen other members sat on the pier outside the Lobster House restaurant showing off the restored CG-36538 to anyone who wished to read about its history, donate and even board the boat to get a first-hand look at the helm, engine room and rescue quarters.
“It was a feat accomplished that was stifling at the beginning,” said Melega, 66, of Cape May, who served in the Coast Guard for 24 years.
This type of boat was the last wood-hulled coastal lifeboat developed by the Coast Guard and was the first to use laminated wood.
The CG-36538 was built in a Baltimore shipyard in Curtis Bay in 1952. It served at the Atlantic Beach Station in New York and at the Ocean City Station about 30 miles north of Cape May. The same style of boat was depicted in the 2016 Disney film “The Finest Hours.”
During its time through 1966 at the Great Harbor Inlet Station in Upper Township, the boat was used primarily for winter rescues and winter assistance calls. It was decommissioned in 1972.
The 36-foot lifeboat consisted of a helm at the stern with an engine room underneath. Though the original diesel engine is no longer there, the new one powering the lifeboat is nearly identical.
On the other side of the engine room is a small deck that leads to the rescue quarters, where 12 people can comfortably fit. In “The Finest Hours,” 32 people crammed onto the boat during the retelling of a February 1952 rescue off the coast of Massachusetts.
The Cape May Marine Museum, a nonprofit 501©(3) organization that has several historical markers around the Cape May area, purchased the boat from a Yorktown, Virginia, marina for $1 in 2012, and restoration work began at the end of 2016. Wayne Adams, the last master chief of the CG-36538 in 1972, kept it stored in his Lower Township backyard until restoration work began.
In 2017, the museum received $108,000 in federal grant money to go toward the project. Along with more than $50,000 in donations over the years plus the value of volunteer work hours, Melega estimated nearly $200,000 went into this project.
Melega was fascinated most by the boat’s simplicity. There was no radar or any of the cushy amenities modern Coast Guard boats now have.
“This boat just had [a] radio and it had a compass to get where they were going,” Melega said.
Labors of Love
A sign once hung on the lifeboat while museum volunteers worked on it.
It read: “Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the Ark. Professionals built the Titanic.”
“That, to me, was the epitome of the effort,” said Christopher Hein, 68, the museum’s vice president.
Hein, a Navy veteran who lives in Cape May, joined the museum’s board about six years ago when work on the lifeboat was underway. One of his jobs was to pull out each and every one of the 5,000 screws that held the hull together. He had to sand out the wooden plugs that covered the screws before carefully removing the screw because they would easily strip.
“I got all of those out and then how to put a dowel rod in (the holes) before putting in a new screw. ... I did that for about a year and half,” Hein said. “It was mindless stuff, and nobody else wanted to do it because it was so monotonous. But it was interesting. It became a challenge trying to get each screw out.”
Other challenging tasks included the replacement of the planks on the side of the boat. Each one had to be cut to fit perfectly in order to keep water out. Sometimes, a new problem would arise and several hours of work needed to be undone in order to fix that problem.
Kyle Cooper, 42, of North Carolina, whose father, Scott, worked on the lifeboat, would get regular updates on how the lifeboat was coming along. He brought his children Kara, 7, and Kamryn, 5, to the Lobster House on Saturday to see the work their grandfather put into the vessel.
“We watched the project progress over the last five years,” Cooper said. “It’s really neat to see what it was to now. It’s really impressive to see how everybody got together to make it happen.”
One of the most trying tasks was forming new ribbing for the engine room. Even after months of trying to form green oak into the proper shape for the compartment, it just wouldn’t stay once the clamps came off the wood.
A volunteer who lives near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, had the idea of seeing how the Amish get their wood to maintain their shape, since they make wheels the same way. The person they spoke to offered to make the ribs for $7 a piece.
“That was the best $7 we ever spent,” Hein said.
‘Not Done Yet’
The CG-36538 isn’t perfect, nor will she ever be.
Because of a wooden hull, water still seeps in. The museum has pumps in the boat handling that while in the water.
But she floats well and will continue to be on display at various points in the county, Melega and Hein said.
The lifeboat is being harbored at Cape May Marina until next month when it will be taken out of the water for the winter. It will be stored at Eckels Diesel in Rio Grande until the spring.
Melega was grateful for all the volunteers and the long list of local businesses and organizations that either helped out or allowed the museum to store the lifeboat while they worked on it.
“Without the support of the volunteers, the community and donations (this wouldn’t be possible),” Melega said. “... They all helped over the course of this restoration, and a lot of it was on donation and time.”
The museum will continue to show it off as well as put more work into the restoration process. One of the next projects will be a new canopy over the helm and the installation of bronze on the rub rails. Both projects will cost several thousands dollars.
“This is just the step of the process,” Hein said. “A lot of people think this is the culmination of getting this back in the water. But we have to keep maintaining it. It’s not done yet.”
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