Ex-presidential yacht being restored

ST. MICHAELS, Md. — Lyndon B. Johnson converted Franklin D. Roosevelt’s elevator to a minibar. John F. Kennedy Jr. carved a hinged opening in a bedroom door so he could receive messages in the presidential suite without being disturbed.

Richard Nixon, the president who spent by far the most time on this floating hideaway, carefully concealed a tiny camera in the main dining room.

Now the formerUSS Sequoia, the 78-year-old former presidential yacht, is moored on the Eastern Shore for a different kind of renovations.

At the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Md., apprentices are tearing into the wooden hull of the John Trumpy-designed, 104-foot motor yacht. It’s an extensive overhaul, $50,000 worth of work that museum officials say would cost far more at a commercial boatyard.

The Coast Guard will inspect the work, which is set to finish early next month. The boat must meet federal regulations now that it’s privately owned and available for charter — $10,000 for a four-hour cruise.

The goal is to keep afloat the majestic vessel, a National Historic Landmark used by every president from Herbert Hoover to Gerald Ford. Jimmy Carter sold the ship in 1977, and it went through several owners before being taken over by the Sequoia Presidential Yacht Group in Washington.

Each day for five weeks, the apprentices working under boat builder Mike Vlahovich fan out on docks and floating decks surrounding the yacht. They are prying more than 100 feet of old planking off the hull and repairing the frames underneath.

Partway through the job, new, raw wood was visible, and tourists leaning over a waist-high barrier could see through the skin of the boat to its insides. They’re not allowed on board, but a sign with color photographs tells them what’s going on.

“It’s nice they’re going to restore it, because you couldn’t build anything like that today,” said Bill Atkins, a visitor from Ringwood, N.J., who asked the boat builders what screws they were boring into the hull. Stainless steel, they answered.

“It’s not a throwaway. It’s something to be kept, to be preserved,” said his wife, Jean.

The boat builders said they had paused to look inside the grand, old yacht, but weren’t distracted from the intense work that filled their days. One wrong cut, and a precious plank — cut from Douglas firs in Oregon and shipped cross-country — would be wasted.

On a recent weekday, two workers sanded rails on the cream-colored upper deck, where Mr. Johnson liked to watch movies projected onto the smokestack.

A few yards away was the presidential bathroom, also renovated by Mr. Johnson, who didn’t like stooping in the shower and had the floor of the stall lowered three inches. He didn’t like the small knobs on the doors either, and replaced them with large handles.

Roosevelt added a fishing deck to the back of the boat, and Harry S. Truman brought the piano on board. Kennedy’s mattress is still on the bed in the presidential suite. It’s firm, to help support his bad back.

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