Here’s a pipe dream if ever there was one: A man who’s never built a big boat orders plans for a 50-footer.
No wonder some looked on with dubious curiosity when Rob Smith showed up with a pile of wood at the Everett Marine Co-op boatyard. That was July of 2005.
By the time Smith and his nephew, Albert Van Rooyen, had finished and flipped their craft’s hull, the dream was starting to look like the real thing.
Smith knew what he was doing. A craftsman and onetime owner of Old Monastery Woodworks in Everett, he’s about to launch the first product of Thain Boats. The boat-building venture – Smith’s middle name is Thain – was created to support his far greater dream.
The 49-year-old South Africa native is founder of the Agathos Foundation. Rooted firmly in Smith’s Christian faith, the nonprofit organization shelters children orphaned by AIDS in southern Africa.
When I met Smith in 2003, Agathos, which translates to “good” in Greek, was little more than a noble vision. “I’ve stepped out on the plank,” he said back then. “The money to start comes from ourselves.”
Like the flat-bottomed sharpie-style trawler rising from the Everett boatyard, Agathos is now real. And Smith’s vision is growing.
By 2005, the foundation was operating a four-acre Agathos village on leased land near Ladysmith, South Africa. With support from churches and private donors, the foundation now houses and nurtures about 1,500 orphans and elderly people at four villages in Tanzania, Zambia and South Africa.
Smith leaves next month for Africa, where he goes several times each year. The foundation’s One Church One Village initiative encourages churches to adopt villages, with a goal of fostering self-sustaining communities.
Before leaving, there’s that boat to finish.
Crafted from marine plywood and mahogany, the vessel dubbed “Annie” after Smith’s mother is nearly done. Sanding, painting and galley work are left to do before the 50-foot boat with a 13-foot beam and 2-foot draft is launched next week into Everett’s harbor.
That leaves time for sea trials before its first voyage to Seattle. Smith plans to take the boat, powered by a 120-horsepower Perkins diesel engine, through the Ballard locks and Lake Washington Ship Canal.
It will be on display June 30 to July 4 at the Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival, an annual event at the Center for Wooden Boats. Smith once took top honors in the festival’s Quick &Daring contest – builders have just one day to make a small boat and race it.
At this year’s festival, he’ll be all business. His boat is up for sale. At least 10 percent of the proceeds will go toward Agathos efforts in Africa. “And it will feed me, so I can give more time,” he said.
Smith considers his asking price of $240,000 a relative bargain, given that new fiberglass boats of similar size can range from $500,000 to $1 million. Built from blueprints purchased for $950 from noted Florida boat designer Reuel Parker, his boat “is a reminder of yesteryear,” Smith said.
“It’s like buying a Ford Mustang now to remind you of the ’60s,” he said.
After putting two years of toil into their boat, Smith and 27-year-old Van Rooyen are reluctant to part with it quickly. “Someone may see it and say, ‘Build me one,’” said Smith, who hopes to build another boat, a 32-footer.
With as many as 12 million AIDS orphans in Africa, Smith’s passion remains with the global cause. A pastor’s son raised during the era of apartheid, South Africa’s former system of racial segregation, he belongs to Seattle’s Mars Hill Church. It’s part of the One Church One Village campaign.
Most donor churches are in Africa. There, Smith said, he goes “a city at a time,” asking pastors to “look at your city and what you are doing.”
Called to save the least fortunate, Smith said boat-building “is the way I rest.”
“If I get discouraged, all it takes is one day in a village with the kids,” he said.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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