Dorjun

This year Dorjun celebrates her 120th birthday! Dorjun was designed and built by Fred C. Beebe at Greenport in Long Island in 1905, originally as a surfboat for the U. S. Lifesaving Services in Coos Bay, Oregon. Following her service, she was purchased by Amos Burg, a remarkable adventurer and photographer. Burg had Dorjun refitted in 1933 for a daring expedition to Cape Horn, where he and crewmate Roy Pepper underwent a perilous passage through the Strait of Magellan for several months, taking the first color photographs of the land and its Indigenous people, which were featured in the December 1937 issue of National Geographic.

During the 1948 Vanport Flood, Dorjun was heavily damaged and remained stranded on a mudbank until 1950, when she was rescued by Burg and carefully stored by Dr. Andrew Yunker until 1988. Yunker then sold Dorjun to son-in-law Bruce Garman, who brought Dorjun to Louchard’s Boat Shop in Port Townsend for a full restoration and redesign by Ed Louchard and Steve Chapin. She was relaunched during a beautiful ceremony at the Wooden Boat Festival on September 11th of 1992. In 1996, Garman donated Dorjun to the Wooden Boat Foundation. She then spent three decades serving as a beloved educational vessel for the Northwest Maritime Center’s summer youth programs. On May 25th of 2023, I was overjoyed to adopt Dorjun, who feels like home to me, and with whom I look forward to a lifetime of adventures.

When you step aboard Dorjun, you feel her soul. She is joyful, confident, unique and (despite her 120 years of age) youthful! Amos Burg cared so deeply about exploring the natural world, connecting with people and following his passions — and Dorjun has inspired confidence, a sense of peace and oneness with the natural world, and a love for adventure in so many young people, including myself. I am excited to have brought together a volunteer crew of incredible young people, and over the past 2 years, we have worked hundreds of hours to restore Dorjun. We added rivets to her hull, scraped both paint and varnish, and laughed our way through late-night scuffing sessions. We all have learned so many skills during the process, such as varnishing, how to deal with stripped fasteners, and how to properly use different paints! I plan to repeat this each year so that Dorjun will continue to do what she does best: inspiring young people to build skills, confidence and a soulful connection to the sea. I plan to voyage with her through the San Juan Islands and into British Columbia, and my hope is that Dorjun and her crew will participate in the Race to Alaska and the WA360 in the coming years.