There's Nothing Like Fine Wine

It was August 1985, just after Hurricane Danny had swept through the Gulf of Mexico. Lorin Smiley and his son Max were heading into Port Fourchon at the mouth of Bayou Lafourche after a successful fishing trip. They were simply taking advantage the calm after the storm when the fish are biting well.

When something strange loomed on the horizon.

“We saw this protrusion we had never seen before. We are very familiar with the route,” Lorin said. They decided to investigate. It was the top of a mast with the tattered sail flapping in the wind. They pulled up beside it and tied on. A mast that tall—it would measure sixty-three feet—piqued their curiosity, and twenty-six-year-old Max put on his diving gear to see what was underwater.

“I could see that it was a nice boat, even though it was sitting on the Gulf floor covered with mud and filled with mud,” recalled Max. The two men decided they would try to salvage the sunken vessel.

Working from his marine workshop in Colbert Cove on Bayou Castine, on the western boundary of Fontainebleau State Park in Mandeville, Max had salvaged boats and even float planes before for others.

On a rainy morning recently, the Smiley men sat in Max’s workshop and shared their recollections of that adventure in the Gulf eighteen years ago. The younger Smiley explained the rule in maritime law regarding abandoned boats on the high seas: If after twenty-four hours, the owner has made no attempt to salvage the boat, then anyone can claim it. But the claimant is then responsible for the vessel because it is a navigational hazard.

After tagging the sunken yacht, Lorin dropped off his son on a nearby wellhead platform with a tarp and ice chest, so he could safeguard their treasure. Lorin then headed ashore to make the arrangements for a barge, pumps, hoses, lines and slings. The next morning at 6 am the barge was heading to the site.

Mud had to be sucked off the vessel to lighten its weight. Thick mud beneath the boat was also disturbed so slings could be slipped under her. Max’s vision was reduced to zero. “It was all by feel. It was chocolate soup. I might as well have closed my eyes,” he said.

The yacht was raised to the surface slowly, with stops during which more mud was sucked off. “This is the critical point,” explained Lorin. “The weight of the mud and water can split the boat if you come up too quickly.” The depth of the water was about twenty feet. 

While they were working, two men approached in a ski boat. Lorin tried to wave them off because of the danger posed by having a diver in the water. “We want to keep a five-hundred-foot safe area. I was using a bull horn to shout ‘stay back.’ ” The new arrivals were from the insurance company, but they were too late; Max and Lorin had already safely claimed the vessel that Hurricane Danny had sent to the bottom four days before.

Having called in the serial number to the Coast Guard, they discovered that their boat, the SV Fine Wine, had been sailing out of the British West Indies. It was a forty-one foot ketch built in 1982. From newspaper stories, they learned how the yacht had begun taking on water during Hurricane Danny, ending up just twelve miles southwest of Port Fourchon. The seven-man crew was plucked from danger by a Coast Guard helicopter, whose pilot was quoted saying after the rescue, “That boat is toothpicks now.”

The seven-man crew was plucked from danger by a Coast Guard helicopter, whose pilot was quoted saying after the rescue, “That boat is toothpicks now.”

The rescued vessel was towed into Port Fourchon, and then to the Smiley camp in Leeville on Bayou Lafourche. Max described the vessel as “a stinking mess, filled with battery acid, diesel fuel and shrimp and fish. The mud was packed inside, so we had to agitate it with a pressure hose for the pumps to be able to suck it out.”

During the time between rescue and full legal ownership, Lorin and Max “pickled” the engine and generator, meaning they drained out the salt water and flushed them with diesel oil to prevent the parts from “freezing” or rusting.

As the father-and-son team began to restore the vessel, people suggested they could refinish the wood interior. “You can never get the smell out of the wood,” said Max. The two men had to “grind out” the interior of the fiber glass vessel. All that was left was the hull, the deck, the masts and the two air conditioning units, which still, improbably, work.

The two men had to “grind out” the interior of the fiber glass vessel. All that was left was the hull, the deck, the masts and the two air conditioning units, which still, improbably, work.

Finally, some seven months after first sighting her in the Gulf, they brought Fine Wine to a Mandeville marina. It’s bad luck to change the name of a ship, so Fine Wine she remains, and wears a broad burgundy stripe down her hull.

“It had a fully stocked bar—lots of champagne,” said Lorin with a chuckle. The bottles were still intact. The two men were able to salvage some of the personal items, including a paycheck in a purse, and return them to the owners.

Max rewired and repainted the boat and installed Burmese teak walls, floors, cabinets, stairs, handrails, a dining table and beds. Teak is an oily wood and holds up well in marine environments.

The salvaging cost $48,000 and the Smileys spent another $50,000 over eighteen months restoring the boat. “It’s worth about $100,000 now. It would have cost less to buy a new one,” Max said with a shrug. His dad countered, “A new one today, completely rigged out, would cost $250,000.”

Fine Wine was finally ready for a trial run in Lake Pontchartrain. “I had never been on a sail boat and didn’t know how to sail,” confessed Max. “We taught ourselves to sail.” Lorin added, “It was a little hairy.” The captain dutifully noted all his observations in the first entry in the ship’s log.

The two Smiley men are now seasoned sailors, having taken several six-week-long cruises on Fine Wine over the years. The Baton Rouge natives live on the Northshore, and Max calls his yacht home. Fishing and boating have always been their favorite pastimes. Max learned to spear fish with his Dad when he was twelve.

Their tight bond has served them well; they have since ridden out two hurricanes and two tropical depressions on their ketch. Neophyte sailor at the time, Max’s girlfriend Dianne Wilson received baptism by fire when Fine Wine sailed into Hurricane Allison on the third day of a four-month cruise. Told by the weather station that the storm had dissipated, they departed Ship Island off the coast of Mississippi, bound for Belize, but met Allison.

The storm lasted fourteen hours, and for six of those they were in twenty-foot seas. “It was an ordeal,” Lorin said, in a tone that oozed understatement. But Max never admits to any fear. He and his Dad wore harnesses, as they always do when topside at night or during rough weather. Dianne stayed below deck, reporting their location to the High Seas Operator at a station in Miami on the yacht’s single sideband radio.

When she looked through the port holes, all Dianne saw were walls of green water. Only once did the ship go broadside, during which incident they lost the wind-speed meter from the top of their sixty-three-foot mast. The weather station contacted them every thirty minutes, boosting their spirits and faith that they would get through the storm.

Besides the wind-speed meter, the only loss during the storm was a bright orange “man overboard” ring with the boat’s name, but no man. It was picked up by another boat, whose passengers reported it to the Coast Guard, who then called the family and asked if they had heard from their relatives.

Exhilarating experiences far outweigh the stressful ones on Fine Wine though. One of their favorite stops is the Belize Blue Hole, a four-hundred-foot-deep circular chasm in the sea bed surrounded by walls of coral. Sailing through coral heads—tall towers of coral that jut up from the sea bed—Max uses a second pair of eyes, and sends Dianne or his Dad up the mast with a pair of binoculars to signal danger.

Father and son recall the day Dianne hooked a twelve foot blue marlin. She had no fighting chair for support, just a strap. When the fish would run, Lorin would stand behind Dianne and grab hold tight, while Max handled the boat.

When the Smileys land a bull dolphin, Lorin grills the mahi mahi on the deck barbecue. Then it’s time for a snooze in the hammock rocked by the gentle Gulf breezes—always with one eye on the horizon for other treasure, of course.