An Ohio couple brings life back to Oscar Lay’s historic Lyman boat.
Lay Brothers Fishery and Lyman Boat Works both opened for business in the late 1800s, growing into powerhouse companies that, more than a half-century ago, had an immense impact on the Great Lakes maritime industry and well beyond.
But history likes its little tricks, and last year another tiny but important connection was made between Lay and Lyman when the restoration of a 1939 Lyman 24-foot custom runabout with an all-weather hardtop began.
One more boat in us
“Lyman is a brand that must be preserved,” says Bob Grimm about Lyman Boat Works, which first began building wood vessels in Cleveland in 1875 before moving to Sandusky in 1929.
Grimm, who grew up in Oak Harbor, Ohio — and who had at one time been a shop teacher before earning his doctorate, working as a human resources consultant and then teaching at the Indiana University Kelly School of Business for 21 years — has a penchant for historic boats.
This is why, several years ago, Grimm called Dwight Davis, owner of Classic Marine in Vickery, Ohio.
“I told Dwight that my wife Cindy and I thought we had one more boat in us,” says Grimm, noting that not only had he taught Davis and his two brothers in his high school shop classes but he and Cindy had worked with Davis in restoring another Lyman, a 1954 18 Islander that Bob named Miss Cindy Lynn.
“Giving the boat that name was the smartest move I’ve ever made,” says Grimm about choosing his wife’s name to put on the transom.
The restored Lyman was a winner in other ways. Last year, Miss Cindy Lynn won a Gold Class Award at the 2023 Antique & Classic Boat Society Vintage Boat Week held in Bay Harbor, Michigan.
While Davis was born into an intergenerational boat-building family, the Grimms came to it in a different way. When Grimm was highly stressed by his consulting job, his father had a solution. When many of us are overwhelmed with work we might opt for a vacation, but Grimm’s father thought restoring a 14-foot metal Larson with oak gunnels and trim was just the ticket for his son.
He was right.
A yearlong search
Now Bob and Cindy were ready for another project.
“I didn’t want to own the boat, I just wanted to work on one,” Grimm says, “and I knew exactly the type of boat I wanted. It had to have historic value, have a connection to the Lake Erie Islands, and a museum had to be interested in it.”
The Maritime Museum of Sandusky was all for it, so that wasn’t a problem. But where was the perfect boat?
That proved to be more elusive as Grimm and Davis discovered when embarking upon a yearlong search, one that encompassed scouring the Eastern Seaboard and into the Ozarks in hopes of finding a boat meeting Grimm’s specifications.
They needn’t have gone so far afield. The boat they wanted was practically in their backyard — more specifically, in a garage at Jockett’s Marina in North Toledo where it had been stored for more than 40 years.
“I knew Bill Jockett had a lot of boats, but I didn’t know this was here until we went to his place and saw it,” Davis says about their find.
Jockett and his late father, who together owned Jockett Marina, a 60-boat marina on Ottawa River near where it flows into Lake Erie, purchased the boat in the 1980s and then tucked it away, with future good intentions.
“I always planned on getting around to restoring the boat, but we have a lot of boats here, including other Lymans,” says Jockett, whose grandfather founded the marina, originally named Bill’s Boats, in 1929. “I’m glad it’s in good hands.”
“Lyman is not only an important piece of Sandusky maritime history but of boat building in the United States,” says Grimm. “It was one of the premier boat builders in the country.”
Lyman wood cruisers and sailboats plied the waters throughout the United States and Canada. According to Davis, because of the meticulous process Lyman craftspeople put into building every boat before World War II they manufactured only 100 every year.
“So, there aren’t that many pre-war Lymans around,” he says.
Above image: The boat with its hull coatings removed at Classic Marine, an antique and classic restoration business in Vickery, Ohio.
Boat transom being removed by Isaac Zimmerman and Dwight Davis of Classic Marine.
Isaac Zimmerman of Classic Marine shapes the reconstructed knee and stem to fit the original bronze stem band.
Jim Glotfelty (left) assists former boat owner Bill Jockett while Dave Park (right) guides the removal of the all- weather hardtop.
Dwight Davis showcasing the boat’s forward- facing stern seat. The boat’s seating capacity totals 10 adults.
Cindy Lynn Grimm holding the Gold Award presented at the ACBS International Boat Show in Bay Harbor, Michigan in September 2023 for the 1954 18 Lyman Islander that Cindy, Bob and Dwight Davis of Classic Marine restored.
Two worlds collide
But the boat in Jockett’s garage was even more unique.
In one of those serendipitous twists that make history so fascinating, in 1869 — six years before Lyman first opened — 20-year-old John Lay Sr. started a commercial fishing business in Sandusky. Asking his brothers to join him, they formed Lay Brothers Fisheries, which grew into one of the largest fisheries in the world. The company was in the forefront of freezing and shipping fish filets throughout the country using a new technology — refrigerated railroad cars. Suddenly fish was accessible in places where there were few if any bodies of water and in households where no one owned a fishing pole. Plus, home cooks no longer had to clean their own fish. It was, to say, a winning combination, and business boomed.
In some ways it seems natural that somehow these two major Sandusky companies that more or less owned the waters of Sandusky Bay and Lake Erie should somehow be connected. That occurred in 1939, when John Lay’s son, Oscar, vice president of Lay Brothers Fisheries, purchased a top-of-the-line Lyman cruiser. Was it the same boat as the one discovered at Jockett’s Marina? Molly Sampson, the president of the Maritime Museum of Sandusky, did some deep diving into old records.
“She found a bill of sale showing that the boat had been bought by Oscar Lay,” says Grimm. “And that its original name was Gull.”
A period-correct restoration
“Lyman was known for the high quality of its lapstrake, clinker-built craftsmanship designed to handle the chop of Lake Erie,” says Grimm.
“When this boat is finished, it will be a floating sculpture,” says Davis, who tends to wax lyrically when talking about boat restorations.
Making the discovery even more unique, Lyman manufactured only nine runabouts like Gull. And one of only three Lyman custom runabout built as a limited edition between 1937 to 1940, including Gull, are still known to be in existence.
The Lays owned a fleet of fishing boats, but Grimm says they believe Gull was used for recreation.
“Because it’s pre-war, it’s a window to the past,” says Davis. “But opening that window requires a period-correct restoration.”
Indeed, restoring the past has its challenges. Gull, with its lapstrake hull and clinker- built with solid mahogany planks, was assembled using thousands of screws and pieces of wood and adorned with 100 pieces of chrome. Replacement parts aren’t available at the local hardware store.
“To make it historically accurate, we do things like use slotted screws instead of Phillips or Reed & Prince,” says Davis. “All the wiring has a cotton sheeting, so it looks like 1939 wiring.”
And, of course, all that marvelous wood that makes the boat so stunning had to be painstakingly taken apart piece by piece and repaired whenever possible.
At this stage in reconstruction, the Grimms are spending five hours a day and sometimes up to 25 hours a week just sanding.
“We enjoy working on the boat and watching it all come together,” says Cindy, noting they are halfway through the projection and are scheduled for completion next summer.
When it is finished, according to the Maritime Museum of Sandusky’s website, Gull will serve as an ambassador to the City of Sandusky and represent the rich legacy of Great Lakes historic boat-building. Beyond that, it will once again cut a swath through the water, taking visitors out on Sandusky Bay with a nod to where Lay Brothers Fisheries was once in business.
“It’s a period that’s so under-represented,” Sampson says in the first of a series of professionally produced videos following the restoration process that can be accessed at sanduskymaritime.org/gull.
It is also history returning to its origins.
