Background

Calico Jack is a skipjack built by Curtis Applegarth in Oxford, Maryland, in 1963. The tiller-helmed boat was built of cedar planking on oak ribs. Beyond that, there is little we know about her.

We found her listed in a back issue of Wooden Boat Magazine, selling for $18,000. A call to the phone number in the ad reached the seller, Jefferson Clarke.

As a kid, Clarke had seen a National Geographic article in 1968 or 1969 on Skipjack Rosie Parks. He said, "That's when I knew I was going to have one of these weird boats." He eventually bought Calico Jack from Dave Peresluha for $5,000 after having her surveyed by Ken Julian. She was then in a boatyard in Lancaster, Virginia. Clarke hired a company to transport her to South Carolina, but during the loading, her hull was damaged, with popped planks and a cracked rib resulting in Clarke needing to do some initial repair work before she was fit for sailing. Once repaired, however, Clarke said that when he had the boat on Lake Hartwell, near the Georgia border, people would drive about two hours from Atlanta to see her. "She won several races," he said, "and surprised many with her speed."

In 2007, Clarke replanked her and sold her. By 2009, when we initially contacted him, though, he said that she had fallen into neglect and was on land with a broken boom and jibboom. The hull was in fair condition but was starting to show signs of separating. Clarke had been hoping to be able to buy her back and get her back up to the Chesapeake Bay where he might find someone to buy and restore her.

In 2015, we reached out to Clarke again, and he reported that she was still on the hard, her owner apparently having abandoned her. But without clear title, the boatyard was unable to sell her. Another contact with him in 2024 gave the report that she had finally been sold a few years back, but her current whereabouts are unknown.