Viking-ship project meets passions of Libertyville man
On the western shore of Lake Michigan, in a warehouse at Larsen Marine in Waukegan, John Maack has been busy building a vessel.
The Skagerrat, he hopes, will be as seaworthy and fun to sail as the other pleasurecraft stored there.
But his is not sleek, shiny, fiberglass-hulled nor equipped with the latest in electronic navigational tools.
The technology for his boat, though, was once state of the art - about 1,100 years ago.
Maack is building a Viking longboat warship. The kind Scandinavians used in the Dark Ages to travel oceans and rivers, invading the British Isles, slipping into Russia, visiting Newfoundland.
It relies on much of the same boatbuilding technique as the larger Viking ships that crossed the Atlantic Ocean to North America - centuries before Christopher Columbus got credit for discovering the continent.
Why here? Why now? Why at all?
Because ...
Love of sailing. Love of woodworking. Following a spouse. Proximity to a large body of water.
Maack, 62, who lives in Libertyville, grew up in California on the Monterey Bay. As a child, he sailed with his father; in his college years, he manned a 16-foot Boston whaler fishing boat.
“It kind of gets the ocean in your blood,” he said.
But that got put on hold when he moved to Portland, Oregon, about 75 miles away from the Pacific Ocean. He spent decades raising a family with his wife, Cindy, and worked as an investment analyst and money manager.
He honed his woodworking skills building cabinets, furniture and even a Japanese-style teahouse with wood from 35 acres they owned.
Then last year, he retired, and Cindy took a job with AbbVie, a pharmaceutical firm in North Chicago. He made a deal with his wife he would get to sail again, because “Lake Michigan is the closest thing to the ocean I've been in a long while,” Maack said.
Building a Viking replica also satisfies another passion: Learning something new. He loves doing research.
“This was considered high technology of its day,” Maack said, pointing out features of the ship.
His ship is the kind that might have been used by raiding parties, rather than for hauling large amounts of cargo.
With their shallow drafts, the Vikings' crafts could sail farther inland on rivers than ships built by other Europeans. They didn't need piers for docking; they'd just pull up on a beach, grab their shields and disembark quickly. If need be, the crews could portage the ships. With their overlapping planks on the hulls, the ships flexed when ocean waves hit, rather than breaking apart. Attaching their shields to the side wasn't merely decorative, or handy storage; it helped keep water out of the ship. And they were speedy, with some attaining speeds of 6 knots.
A ship this size could hold eight people. It weighs about 700 pounds without oars and the masts, and is about 20 feet long and 6½ feet wide. It has a shallow draft, being about 3 feet deep.
It's much smaller than another noteworthy local Viking ship replica, the Viking, stored in Geneva. That 78-foot-long ship was built in 1893 and sailed from Norway to the World's Fair Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Adventurous spirit
The Vikings went vast distances, Maack said, “which is really something, given they didn't know what was out there. It is amazing what you will do when you don't know any better.”
He's making some concessions to modernity. The Vikings likely would have used pine-pitch-soaked moss to seal gaps between the planks and perhaps to coat the outside of the hull. Maack is using polyurethane sealants and caulks. He is also using more copper rivets than the Vikings would have in 800 A.D. and spacing them closer together - but he is hammering them in by hand, just like the Vikings did.
He got a lot of the oak for the body at Owl Lumber in Des Plaines.
Otherwise, “his commitment to authenticity is amazing,” said Tom Masill of Riverwoods, who has a boat at Larsen Marine and has watched this three-month project.
Maack puts in eight-hour days, five days a week, joking that his wife says it keeps him out of the pool halls.
Vikings also built ships out of cedar and pine. For the mast and cross mast, he used Douglas fir, cut from trees on his Oregon property.
Maack appreciates Larsen Marine putting up with him building his small boat alongside the modern-day vessels that dwarf it. Owner Doug Larsen, Maack says, “The guy could not be more Viking.”
The ship will be float-tested any day now, and any necessary adjustments will be made. He hopes it will be ready for a private June 18 launch in Lake Michigan at a Midsommar party, the day Scandinavians celebrate the longest day of the year.
Onward to the next
Maack already has another project in mind. He's going to build another replica. A Greek pentekontor, another type of ancient warship also powered by both sails and oarsmen.
So it's not just a desire to be a Viking that motivates Maack.
“I also just love learning about something,” he said.