To say I once dreamed of being a boat builder and a writer would be an overstatement. A more apt description would be I had romanticized or fantasized about those vocations, as well as being a cowboy, policeman, fireman, professional football player, war hero...well you get the picture. So I became an engineer and worked for the US Navy as a civil service federal employee. Need I say more?

Well actually I will say more. In providing stable employment for 34 years and enabling us to raise our family in our home state of Washington, arguably the most beautiful place in the world, the Navy allowed me to work with some very talented and dedicated people whose utmost priority was the security of this country. For that opportunity I am most thankful. However, now being retired, I can once again think about some of those earlier interests. Of course, one can rule out professional football since I don’t know of any 57 year olds in the NFL, and I quit playing football in the 8th grade due to a shortage of size and ability, and an abundance of interest in self-preservation. You can dismiss most of the other vocations listed in the same way. Which then brings me to boat building and writing. The Minto, a wonderful 9'1" sailing dinghy, is providing me the opportunity to be a boat builder, and the folks at Small Craft Advisor magazine are great in allowing me to write about it.

I don’t remember the first time I saw the Minto. It could have been at Smitty’s Ranger Boat Company in Kent, or it could have been at the Seattle Boat Show. Or it might have been outside the Poulsbo Marina where I saw a guy in a Minto sailing between the anchored boats. He was just ripping around, and I thought that looked like a lot of fun.

Regardless of when I first saw the Minto, I do remember frequently taking highway 99 from Tacoma to Seattle instead of Interstate 5, just so I could get a glimpse of Ranger’s beautiful little boats in their showroom window. Even without stopping at Ranger this usually made our family a little late arriving at the in-laws, but for some time just a glimpse was enough and worth the delay. Eventually we succumbed to the Ranger allure and bought a Kent Ranger 26 in 1980 and owned it for seventeen years. We bought another in 2004, but that’s another Ranger story. Our Ranger Minto story began in 1983 when we bought a used 1972 Minto from a man in Poulsbo. It came with a spruce boom and two-piece spruce mast, and I discovered it was an absolute kick in the pants to sail. It also became my fishing boat, crabbing boat, and crawfish catching boat. When we sold the first Ellis family Kent Ranger 26, I could not bear the thought of parting with my Minto. When Fluid Motion bought out Ranger in 1999 and sold off the Minto molds, the thought of taking up the task of continuing the production of this great little boat lodged somewhere in my brain, and over the next few years festered into a complete obsession.

One of the things I like about the Minto is that it has a history. Of course everything has a history, but some are more interesting than others. The more irony it contains and the greater the coincidence it reveals, the more interesting a history becomes. The Minto history, at least the Minto we know today, began with a fishing trip to north British Columbia. It was on this fishing trip that Ed Hoppen’s friend came upon the derelict remains of the SS Minto, one of three famous steamships that plied northern British Columbian waters for over fifty years.

Who was Ed Hoppen? Actually, a question like that posed in Small Craft Advisor could be considered sacrilege. For the sake of giving due credit, Ed was the Gig Harbor boat builder who built the first Thunderbird sailboats and developed the popular kits that made that boat into one of the most successful class sailboats ever. There are still numerous Thunderbird associations throughout the world. Who was Ed’s friend? I am not sure, but in exploring the SS Minto before it was burned and scuttled, he found an old wood boat laying in the weeds that he thought would make a wonderful model for reproduction in fiberglass. He brought the boat back to Ed’s EDDON Boat Yard in Gig Harbor and from that original boat Ed made the first Minto mold.

After producing a couple hundred EDDON Mintos, Ed licensed Ranger Boats to produce it as the Ranger Minto, which they did from the early 1970s to the late 1990s. It became a very popular yacht tender and sailing dinghy in the Northwest. According to one former Ranger employee, police reported it was the dinghy most often chosen by thieves. This was considered a compliment.

So where is the coincidence and irony? The coincidence is both of the Ranger Minto molds were sold to people living in Gig Harbor where the Minto originated. One was sold to Steve Metz and Hal Palmer bought the other. When for the second time we bought a Kent Ranger 26, we came to know Steve through the Kent Ranger Sailing Association. The KRSA started as a Ranger 20 class racing organization, but since many of the members moved on to larger non-Ranger boats, the name was changed, but that is itself another Ranger story. Steve has some long range plans to produce a Barnacle Bill sailing dinghy using the Minto hull but with a different interior configuration and sail rig.

We met Hal when we came upon a beautiful red Minto on display in the window of an old industrial looking waterfront building in Gig Harbor. Hal was in retirement from his third career, and was producing the Minto on a sell-one make-one basis. The irony of the Minto story is that the old waterfront building was the former EDDON Boat Yard, so the Minto had returned to the place of its birth. And I guess you could stretch that irony a little further. By keeping the old EDDON Boat Yard occupied producing boats, while plans were being made to tear it down to build condos, the Minto contributed to the salvation of the boatyard. When the inhabitants of Gig Harbor realized the rich heritage that was going to be lost, they voted to purchase the property to be used as a park dedicated to the building of boats. Now that is a nice story. Ironic, coincidental, and perhaps fateful? I like to think so.

Now for the Rich Passage Minto story. When I first met Hal we started discussing boat building in general and one thing led to another, and before I knew it Hal had agreed to sell me his mold. In the course of making sure I could use the Minto name, I checked in with Fluid Motion/Ranger, who said it was no problem, and I contacted Guy Hoppen, Ed’s son. Guy also said it wouldn’t be a problem, but said Hal had already promised his mold to him if he ever decided to sell.

Guy wanted to keep some of the EDDON Boat Yard legacy alive in the family, and after Hal remembered making the promise it was clearly the right thing to do. So there I was, all ready to become a Minto maker and no Minto mold. Enter Steve and his generous offer to allow me to make a mold from his.

So what is a Rich Passage Minto? It is the best replication of the Ranger Minto I can produce, right down to the laminated spruce boom and mast. It has an expertly fabricated lapstrake fiberglass hull, laminate daggerboard and rudder, teak gunwales, thwarts and knees, stainless fittings, positive flotation, and a 48 sq ft bolt-roped (foot and luff) Bermuda rig Dacron sail. In short, it is a beaut.

So why a Rich Passage Minto? Because the Ranger Minto is no longer being produced and my dream is to contribute to a renewed interest in the Minto as a class. To my knowledge, the Three Tree Point Yacht Club’s annual Minto Mingle in Docton is the last event of its type still being conducted. Twenty years ago this type of event was fairly common on summer evenings in numerous northwest marinas. My hope is to help organize similar events in the region from Gig Harbor to Poulsbo. To do so there has to be a supply of boats. Having worked for most of my life in what would have to be described as a large organization, I am looking forward to keeping my organization as small as possible (that would be Mike and Patti), so I am not planning to expand my production capacity beyond about 25 boats per year. Hopefully, a renewed interest in the Minto will provide the opportunity for other small, independent builders to enter the market as well. Romantic? Certainly. Fantasy? Certainly not. •SCA•

You can get more information about Rich Passage Boats and the Minto at: http://www.richpassage.com

or call 360-769-3972 or e-mail pmellis@wavecable.com