Long Live Wasque

A Vineyard classic lives on in updated models from C.W. Hood.

- Steve Knauth

At first glance, they were just molds in a Rhode Island field, stored in the tall grass out back at Little Harbor Yachts in Portsmouth. Those wearing a big spray-painted X were destined for the scrap heap.

But as Chris Hood looked them over that day in 1995, one of the shapes stood out. Hood, working at his uncle Ted Hood’s complex, went to get a closer look. “It was the starboard side of a boat, and I saw it in silhouette,” he recalls. “I fell in love with the look of the boat, the beauty of the lines. Sitting out in that field, it looked a little like a half-hull stapled to the wall. I saw it and said, ‘That’s it.’ ”

Here was a boat worth building.

That was on a Sunday. “I asked my uncle about it on Monday and found that it was ready to be destroyed,” Hood says. “He told me it came with the package when he bought the Black Watch molds from C.E. Ryder. I said, ‘How about I save you the trouble? I don’t know what it is, but it’s pretty cool looking.’ I gave him $100, and that was it.”

The object turned out to be the mold for the Wasque 26, one of a trio of single-engine fishing boats that came out of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, beginning in 1969 (see Origins sidebar). Alden Yachts designed the 26, and David Thompson at Vineyard Yachts built it on the island. The 21-, 26- and 32-foot Wasque models, named after an island fishing ground, enjoyed a 16-year production run before Thompson retired and closed up shop in 1985.

The molds were dispersed; the one for the Wasque 26 had kicked around for a decade by the time Chris Hood saw it in the field, beginning its rescue, resurrection and transformation — and the birth of a fleet of modern Wasques.

Rescue