tollycraft[
he 40-footer backed away from the fuel dock, her diesel
engines rumbling gently. She turned an effortless circle
and then motored toward the inner harbor with the grace
and style of a model gliding the length of a runway.
The attraction was not just her easy movement, but her
appearance and dress: Perfect paint, properly-blue canvas,
polished stainless steel rails—truly she looked out-of-the-box flawless and ready for adventures at sea.
A new boat? Far from it.
Northwestern Girl is a 1972 Tollycraft tri-cabin fresh
from an overhaul, a restoration that banished every
hint of age, erased scars suffered over decades of
nautical adventure, and splurged on some touches
designers and builders didn’t consider 40 years
ago. The redo, while costly, seems to make sense
economically and it was completed without harm
to the original design by Ed Monk, an iconic Pacific
Northwest designer.
Her owners are Eddie and Leslie Clauson, who
live in Lake Forest Park, a Seattle suburb. She is an
elementary school principal and he works as a mate aboard
a container ship sailing distant seas. Their adventure with
the boat they named Northwestern Girl began several years
ago when friends invited them aboard a sister ship for
a cruise.
“We went out several times and I liked the roominess,
the two heads, and the size of the after berth,” Eddie told
me via email from the other side of the world not long after
they bought their Tolly 40. (The formal name is Tollycraft,
but throughout the boating world the nickname applies.)
T
