A 36-foot motorized lifeboat that spent the 1950s rescuing wrecked ship crews returned to its home at the Coast Guard Lifeboat Station near Chimney Rock on Wednesday, following months of repairs and a brief voyage from San Francisco that began Tuesday. A two-man crew steered the small white boat into Drake’s Bay ahead of schedule from Fort Baker’s Horseshoe Cove just before noon Wednesday, where they waited for the tide to come in before a mechanized carriage drew it into the station. The boat will remain there under stewardship of the National Park Service, with occasional jaunts out into the bay to keep her ship-shape. “She’s sea-worthy,” said John Muir, the curator for small craft at the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, who was one of eight captains during the boat’s two-day trip. “Everything’s solid, well-made. Just needs a couple few more coats of paint.” Built in 1953, Motor Lifeboat 36542 was the Coast Guard’s first standard motor-propelled lifeboat and remained active at Point Reyes National Seashore and Bodega Bay until 1976. Equipped with fast-latching hatches, the boat was designed right itself safely if it flipped over in rough seas. Starting in 1982, the park service stored the boat at the station until 2013, when a shipwright completed exterior repairs and hauled it to the Coast Guard station in San Francisco’s Hyde Street Pier. By 2015, the boat had received a new four-cylinder, 130-horse-power Detroit diesel engine—the same kind that originally powered her—and was ready to disembark. In all, the park service spent around $45,000 for repairs from internal funding for maintaining historical resources, according to the Point Reyes National Seashore’s chief of integrated resources, Gordon White. “It’s a really significant historical artifact,” said Mr. White, who also took a stint at the helm on Tuesday. “It’s memorializing a lot of heroic actions that took place out here.”
Historic rescue boat returns to Point Reyes
