Seasonal North Beach resident Sandy McWilliams, 67, is not making things up when he says he is selling one of the two sailboats that appeared in “What Lies Beneath,” a 2000 thriller that features a couple, played by Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer, that is rattled by voices and eerie occurrences at their lakeside home in Vermont. The Tofinou 7, a 23-foot shoal draft sailing sloop, which McWilliams obtained in 2010 out of Shelter Island in New York, was originally purchased by DreamWorks, Bob Rodgers, broker/owner of Rodgers Yacht Sales in Connecticut, who closed the deal on both, told The SandPaper in a phone conversation.
 |
| Photo via Sandy McWilliams Sandy McWilliams enjoys a day on the boat, which was once owned by DreamWorks. |
“It was definitely one of the ones in the movie,” Rodgers said. DreamWorks “sold it back to us two years after they finished the movie. They were painted a flat, matte black so that they didn’t reflect in the filmmaking, so that’s the tip-off. They’re the only two boats that are done in that manner.”
Rodgers said he originally took a new boat to the movie audition in Burlington, Vt.
“The guy who flew in the big jet got off and he went straight to the Tofinou, and said, ‘This is it,’” he recounted.
The company initially wanted to charter the boat, but Rodgers said he knew doing so would be difficult considering the hefty fees and damage that usually accumulates during filmmaking. Instead, he talked personnel into buying two of them, and a mock-up was used for the accident scene, he noted.
“It worked out great,” Rodgers said. “The boats were in great shape. They came back just fine on trailers.”
McWilliams, who taught himself how to sail in 2009 after reading a handful of books and purchasing a 14-foot Areys Pond Cape Cod catboat, bought one of the boats, already handled by a couple of previous owners, from Rodgers when he decided he wanted to upgrade. The other boat is still in Vermont, Rodgers said.
“We don’t know any better, so we say our boat is the one that was in the scene with Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer,” McWilliams said, laughing.
He claims he bought the boat because it is great for the Surf City, Harvey Cedars and Loveladies areas “because it can operate in shallow water.”
“It can operate in 20 inches of water, which is pretty low for a sailboat,” McWilliams emphasized.
However, he said the boat’s back story definitely helped motivate him to purchase it.
“I don’t think it was the full reason (I bought it), but it helps,” he said. “It’s a nice little piece of information.”
Of course, McWilliams also hopes the boat’s history will now help him with his sale.
“I don’t think it’ll hurt,” he said. “... It’s just an interesting fact about the boat.”
Because of the extra work he put into it, including the installation of a new teak deck among other fixes, McWilliams’ asking price is the same as the amount he purchased the sloop for – $45,000.
“It was kind of a clunky boat when we got it. We’ve done a big upgrade over the four years,” McWilliams said. “It’s an upper-end boat; it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s teak and mahogany; it’s got a fiberglass hull. We get compliments every time we sail it, either in the lagoon or out on the bay, or just at the dock. Having a boat in Harvey Cedars with a teak deck is very rare because they’re very expensive.
“We sailed it more than 80 times, so we sailed it a lot. But it’s in much better shape now than when I got it,” he added.
The boat, which has been professionally maintained by Wood’s Boat Service in Barnegat Light, is currently trailered in McWilliams’ father-in-law’s garage on the north end of Long Beach Island.
McWilliams plans to sell the boat before acquiring another one, an Alerion 26, which he has already purchased from Rodgers.
“I took (sailing) up because I can’t go to the beach every day. ... Now I’m upgrading again,” McWilliams said. “I guess I get comfortable, and I live on the oceanfront in North Beach, and I see these boats that are kind of modest in size, under 30 feet, I see them out there in the ocean, and I think, ‘I’d like to do that.’ So that’s what I’m trying to do.”
The new boat is “a little bigger, a little faster and comes with more creature comforts,” he added. “We’ll have to sail this one north of Loveladies, where the deeper water is. With the new boat we’ll be able to sail in the ocean.”
Of course, the new, upgraded sailboat also has history. It is an updated replica of a personal boat built in 1912 by Nathanael Herreshoff, a renowned naval architect.
“If they’re not pretty and have a story, I don’t buy them,” McWilliams said. “I think it’s the beauty of the workmanship. It’s a boat, not a piece of jewelry, but it looks like jewelry. It shines, and it’s just elegant in its design and the lines of it. This boat and the old boat, they’re both kind of the same ilk.”
— Kelley Anne Essinger
This article was published in The SandPaper.
This article was published in The SandPaper.
No comments:
Post a Comment