There are all sorts of beautiful boats in Vancouver. But there’s probably only one Dutch canal boat made out of teak.
The Zomerland (Dutch for Summerland ) was built in 1934-35 by a famous Dutch shipbuilding company, DeVries Lentsch. It was commissioned by Herb Menten’s dad, a banker who loved to take his family boating on Lake Kaag, midway between Amsterdam and The Hague.
“It was delivered the year I was born, 1935,” said Menten, 79. “I’ve got pictures of me behind the wheel from my fourth birthday in 1939.”
Menten left the Netherlands for Canada a quarter-century ago, and the Zomerland languished in a marina owned by his son.
“My kids didn’t want it — it’s too delicate a boat to run in the Dutch canals nowadays,” said Menten, who lives in West Vancouver. “I live here, so I thought, What the hell, and shipped it here.”
Three years ago, the 41-foot (12.5-metre) long boat was placed in a special cradle and loaded onto a freighter. When it arrived, it was in fairly rough shape: after years in storage, the wood had split in parts, and was looking its age.
But it retained its charm and beauty. The Zomerland is a floating work of art, brimming with details like four female caryatid sculptures that prop up the wheelhouse. The elegant curves of the roof are enough to make a hardened sailor weak in the knees.
So Menten hired Joe Kolbus to restore it. Four thousand hours later, the restoration is entering the home stretch, although it’ll probably be another year before it s complete.
It s been a unique project.
“We had a steam-bending thing set up here [to bend the teak in the curved parts], with a burner and big tubes,” explains Kolbus, who has restored several wooden boats over the last two decades.
“It smelled great in here. All the decks on top have been redone. The entire ceiling was redone, caulked, everything.”
The North Van warehouse where the restoration is being done has all sorts of nifty parts. Up on the mezzanine is a carving of the head of a cormorant bird which will become a decorative cornice on the wheelhouse. Neath the stairs is the original loo, which came with a pump to fill it up with water.
And of course, everything is teak.
“Yes, and it is Java teak,” says Menten, who pronounces Java yaaa-vaaa.
“Indonesia was a Dutch colony before the war. They had the best teak available: it’s been watering in rivers there for years. In the olden days they called it djatti.”
“It’s a completely different teak. Look at the shine of it, it’s really unbelievable.”
The boat was state of the art, for 1935.
“It cost 11,500 Dutch guilders, which was $4,000,” Menten says. “It was a lot of money in the crisis time (of the depression) . . . my father could afford it, thank God."
Canal boats like this are built long and low to accommodate Holland’s old bridges.
“It’s built low so you can go under six-foot bridges,” Menten explains. “It’s 41 feet long and 12 feet wide, with a draught of only two feet.”
Menten’s father moved in prominent circles; three Dutch queens have been on the boat: Wilhelmina, Juliana and Beatrix.
During the Second World War, Menten’s father feared the Germans would confiscate it, so he decided to make it look like a wreck.
“A friend of my father took some plugs out and they sank it,” Menten says.
“Not completely, but up to here (he points halfway up the boat’s side). It wasn’t very deep in the boathouse. It sat there until June 1945, when we were liberated.”
Postwar, the Zomerland was fixed up and became a family staple once again. It has a flat bottom, like a grundel sailboat, and Menten’s dad would let it sit on the sand at low tide while the family fished or swam.
When the tide came in, the boat lifted and was ready to sail down Holland’s numerous lakes, rivers and canals. It had a little butane stove and fridge, and was big enough to sleep on overnight.
But it hasn’t been taken out much since a big family outing about 25 years ago. Menten moved to Canada, where he helped found Anthem Properties, which has become one of Western Canada’s most successful developers.
Now retired, he decided it was time to resurrect the boat he loved as a child, although he jokes the restoration will probably continue until I’m broke.
“It’s not a business object, it’s a hobby object,” he said. A passion. “I spent so many years on this boat, boating around, I couldn’t let it go in Holland.”
He’s had health issues in recent years and isn’t sure he’ll be able to get behind the wheel of the Zomerland once the restoration is done. But he’s just satisfied saving it.
“I think by the time it’s done I’m [too] old to boat it,” said Menten.
“So I’ll probably find a buyer, here, that is just as proud as I to have a thing like this, with such history.”
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