Camel Finds Water

Filmmaker Trevor Gordon restored an old Paragon Nokaio that washed up on a beach, and now cruises it to remote surfing destinations.

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British Columbia’s coastal weather is famously maddening. It’s an idyllic green coast where the temperate rainforests of Vancouver Island meet the deep blue Pacific. But it’s a seascape that can only really be enjoyed between poundings of low pressure systems sliding southeast from the Gulf of Alaska.

When Trevor Gordon and his first mate/surf buddy, Tosh Clements, trailered their rebuilt classic fishing boat, The Camel, up through the Pacific Northwest to Canada for its maiden voyage, the weather gave them every kind of snot known to mariners. It was less than ideal, considering they were filming for a quirky mini surf doc.

In its former life, the vessel had sunk in the waters off Gordon’s native Santa Barbara. He fully rebuilt and rehabbed the skeleton. “I was paranoid about sinking it twice,” Gordon admits with a laugh. “That would have just been so ironic and horrible for the film.”

But The Camel got lucky with a break in the weather. In search of a storied wave, they launched out of the harbor town of Tofino, motoring to an offshore island. Anchoring in a tiny cove on the leeward side, they hiked through old growth forest on a trail covered in wolf tracks to a bluff facing the swell. There they found a perfect head-high beach break.

It had all the elements of a great surf adventure story—the weather, the pilgrimage, the scenic backdrop and the score—without another person in sight.

Growing up, Gordon’s family always had sailboats. As a kid, they would spend much of their time off fishing and exploring the Islands of the Central California Coast.

“I don’t think we ever flew anywhere or traveled too far on family trips. We just took the boat out,” he remembers. Today, his father lives on an Offshore 56, just a few slips down from Gordon and his wife.

As Gordon got older he bought himself a Catalina 36 and lived aboard, avoiding the skyrocketing rent in Santa Barbara. But there was another boat in his family, a Radon 24, designed for California fishermen in the ’60s. Mostly surfers, they would motor out to the western side of the Channel Islands in the calm of the morning and dive for abalone and urchins. The wind picked up every afternoon, but the Radon was designed with a heavy belly for the down swell return with the weather.

When Gordon was about 17, he had become knowledgeable enough to take this boat out on his own, fishing, diving and exploring the waters off Santa Barbara for surf. “I just fell in love with that boat,” he recalls. And the seed was planted.

In that time Gordon also developed into quite the surfer, making his mark in the Southwest Conference of the National Scholastic Surfing Association. But surf competition isn’t the most interesting aspect of wave-riding for some, and Gordon became more enamored with different kinds of boards and ways to ride waves.

Over a decade ago, he became friends with the Malloys, three brothers from Central California, while surfing spots around Rincon. Between the influence of Dan Malloy and some friends at Patagonia, Gordon was invited to become an ambassador for the brand. Well-established in the outdoor game, Patagonia was building a different kind of team, less focused on competitive results and more tuned into alternative surfcraft, culture and sustainability. Gordon’s surf style and mariner background was a great addition to the Patagonia story.

At that time, Patagonia was playing a role in the dawn of a new era in pro surfing, marketing ambassadors as multi-faceted individuals over surf clips and competitive results.

“I got to know Chris Malloy and do some fun trips with him and then filmmaker Chris Burkard (“Under An Arctic Sky”). I was so stoked to travel. I had worked at a fish market and was going to city college, but this was enough income for me at the time to allow me to do the things I had dreamed of. That led to doing some films and projects producing content. I worked with filmmakers and photographers and carved this little path that I didn’t see coming.”

That’s what led to the opportunity with The Camel. Gordon had already built some campers, but now he wanted to start from nothing and have a boat that was as ready for adventure as he is.

The boat’s story is something of legend. It was a Paragon Nokaio, known to some as a “Maui Cruiser,” originally built in Hawaii. To the best of Gordon’s knowledge, a boatbuilder from Seattle had obtained the mold and produced them out of Washington before selling the mold in the early ’80s to another builder in Santa Barbara. Rumor has it that four boats were made during that time before the mold literally broke. One of the four was built for an urchin diver who sold it to a fisherman. It reminded Gordon a lot of that Radon 24 from his youth.

Five years ago, the boat was anchored off one of the nearby islands when a wave broke over it and washed it onto the beach.

Unceremoniously dragged from the water, the wreckage had been sitting on a friend’s abalone farm for years when Gordon came across it. “It didn’t have any stringers or structure. The transom had been ripped off. It was just basically a shell,” Gordon recalls.

He went to work, replacing the transom with marine plywood, adding a foot to the length and rebuilding the gunwales, which were missing a foot forward of the transom, with simple molds. Next, he began redesigning by what he could read from the shadows of the existing hull. He built stringers and calculated the size and placement of the cabin.

Gordon pokes fun at his own abilities. He made up for lack of experience with patience, motivation and a lot of YouTube videos. “I rented a little piece of land right in the canyon at Rincon from a friend. His family owns thousands of acres so they gave me a little piece by the road. I got an RV tent and a generator and set up a janky little workshop zone for the summer months and hoped it didn’t rain.”

Gordon used West System Epoxy, explaining that the company has helpful online tutorials and manuals on how to use the products. “It’s a really high quality, strong, light resin,” he adds.

He spent the summer of 2018 building, glassing, sanding and painting. He outfitted it with a 2005 Yamaha 150-hp outboard and continues to rebuild parts of the engine.

“When we finished, we just literally plopped the boat in the water in Santa Barbara, ran it around for a few days and trailered it right up to Vancouver Island.” He and Clements made a pit stop in San Francisco, where sign painter Jeff Canham officially brushed the name, The Camel.

“I’ve been going to Canada every fall and winter since 2007, so that was where I wanted to do our first trip. We went to the north of Tofino. I had done some boat trips, some sailing trips and had all these zones I wanted to go to. There are waves up there that just don’t get crowded. The weather wouldn’t let us get to all the places I wanted to go but surfing, anchoring and fishing up there is just crazy cool.”

It was eye-opening, a throwback to the tradition of the surfing mariners of the West Coast. And it opened up a world of possibilities for adventure. He’s been making local missions to secret surf spots and up the Gaviota Coast of California. Most recently he did an overnighter to the offshore islands, night diving for lobster with his brother. Summer trips targeted Catalina, and he would like to do a follow-up to the first film with a jaunt down to Baja. The Camel is good for about a 150-mile range.

“There’s something just so satisfying about bobbing around in the ocean on a boat you’ve resurrected from the ground up, knowing every nook and cranny as it hurls you forward on epic little adventures. It’s knowing the vessel’s story from beginning to end,” says Gordon. “Boats are funny that way; superstitions and folklore add to the depth of the experience.”

This article originally appeared in Outboard magazine.

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Source: https://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/voyaging/camel-finds-water