The old man and the Ch’i
July 2024
By Mark Barrett
It was a sunny, calm day in Buzzards Bay, the beginning of the 2023 boating season, and most of the moorings in Red Brook Harbor were occupied. I was motoring out in the inflatable to Scout, our Freedom 30, weaving through the field, when I approached a sailboat named Ch’i.
With her gaff-rigged main, tiny mizzen, long bowsprit and wide beam, she stood out among all the “plastic” boats in the harbor. She was built as a close replica of Spray, the boat Joshua Slocum sailed around the world alone in the late 1800s, becoming the first person to complete a solo circumnavigation. There are some differences, of course. Ch’i has beautiful carvings of whales on her boomkin, and she has a diesel engine and modern electronics. Except for a few details, the boats were the same.
John Burman had died in March 2023, falling victim to a tick-borne illness, at the not-so-old age of 68. His persona was so closely intertwined with his beloved sailing vessel that coming upon her for the first time since his death had a surprisingly powerful effect on me. I shut my outboard motor off and drifted silently alongside. An eerie feeling came over me. For a second, I thought John would appear on deck and give me a shout and a wave as he had so many times before.
John started building Ch’i in 1975, a few years after graduating from Barnstable High School. Intent on building a sturdy, traditional boat big enough to live on, he settled on plans by the designer Bruce Roberts, based on Slocum’s Spray. John made a deal with the owners of a day camp in Yarmouth to use space on their land in exchange for instructing campers on boatbuilding and the use of tools. The boat was built using white cedar planks over oak frames, then coated with epoxy. She was built mostly the old-fashioned way, using hand tools, although John did use a radial arm saw for heavier cutting.
About two years after he began work on the boat, John met a young woman named Diana Stinson. Diana had just started teaching an outdoor education program at the camp, and one day she wandered over with some of her students to see what this guy was building out there in the woods. When they met, John was 22 years old, Diana, 21. Soon after, she joined him on the ambitious project. Diana held many a plank, learned how to plane wood by hand, and sewed the sail panels together in the camp dining hall among other tasks. That was true love, as far as John was concerned.
The hull was finally ready for the water by April 1978, but they still needed a mast. One day John and Diana were driving to Boston on Route 3 when John noticed an exceptionally tall stand of very straight trees off the highway in Marshfield. John found out who owned the land, and they gave him permission to cut down a tree for the mainmast. When the day came, the chainsaw they brought with them jammed, but they were determined. Undeterred, they cut down the tall white pine with handsaws. With one end bolted to the back of a pickup truck, and the other riding on an improvised two-wheel dolly, they headed back to the Cape. It was classic John Burman engineering, but it made for a precarious ride home.
On launch day, they loaded the boat onto a hydraulic trailer, transported her to nearby Bass River, and slid her into the water. She floated right on her lines. From there, they moved her to Hyannis Harbor, and employed a crane to step the two masts. Once the masts were secure, they rigged her, bent on the sails, and sailed her to Nantucket Island as a shakedown cruise. All went well and Ch’i was in business.
In June 1978, John and Diana were married, on the grounds of the camp where Ch’i was built. That summer, John and Diana went to work on tiny Penikese Island, near the tip of the Elizabeth Islands chain.
They were employed at an Outward Bound-type school for juvenile delinquents, run by Marine Captain George Cadwallader. Along with helping some of the students pass their high school equivalency exams, they taught life skills such as cooking, gardening, maintenance and carpentry. John taught a course in small-boat building.
They also took students on three-week educational sailing trips aboard Ch’i. One summer they sailed with students from both the Penikese School and the Perkins School for the Blind. Diana crafted her version of braille charts out of plywood so sight-impaired students could follow their progress. After two years of living aboard, teaching kids, and sailing Ch’i around local waters, warmer waters beckoned. Diana and John decided to head south and try their luck in the Caribbean.
On Oct. 2, 1981, they left from Buzzards Bay, bound for St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. After stopping in Beaufort, N.C., to wait for a favorable weather window, they headed south for the Caribbean with a group with 14 other boats. The window, it turned out, was not so favorable. Some 300 miles offshore, they encountered a serious storm, and four boats turned back due to the high winds and seas. Ch’i, however, proved her seaworthiness and rugged build and made it through unscathed.
For nine months, John and Diana lived aboard and ran day charters on Ch’i, out of St. John. When Diana became pregnant, they decided to head back north. That summer they kept Ch’i in Provincetown, running charters between Gloucester and Stellwagen Bank in support of cetacean research. In association with the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Herb Hayes, students received course credits in marine biology for participating in these charters.
Eventually, they brought Ch’i back to Red Brook Harbor, and John went to work as a carpenter and technician at Kingman Marine. This was the beginning of a 38-year career at the Cataument boatyard. Their daughter, Meriah, was born aboard Ch’i, in the back basin at Kingman, on Oct. 2, 1982, exactly one year from the date they had set sail for the Caribbean.
John rose quickly through the ranks at Kingman Marine and eventually became partners with Ed Doherty, the owner, in a separate business venture called Marina Consultants. John and Ed traveled around the country and to Europe, showing marina owners how to convert rental slips into dockominiums, a revolutionary idea that would change the marina industry forever. In 1985, John and Diana bought a house in Sandwich, Mass., and moved from the water to the land. In 1988, they had their second child, a boy named Justin.
I first met John Burman in 2001. He had recently returned to what was now called Kingman Yacht Center as the vice president of operations and de facto yard manager under a new owner, Scott Zeien. I was applying for a job as a sailboat rigger, and John interviewed me. I had already worked in several New England boatyards and was accustomed to the gruff style of the typical boatyard manager. It was immediately evident that John did not fit that mold. Maybe it was the Birkenstock sandals he was wearing, or his long ZZ Top beard, or perhaps it was that he spoke so softly that I had to lean forward to hear what he was saying.
He asked about my experience, but mostly he posed philosophical questions that seemed to have nothing to do with the job for which I was applying. He must have liked my answers – or he’d been desperate for a rigger – because he shook my hand and said, “You can start tomorrow if you want.” And then he added, “Good luck dealing with some of the rascals we have on the crew here.”
The sandals-wearing, philosophical hippie that I first met was only one of several distinct iterations I would encounter in the 20 years I worked for and with John at Kingman. There was also John the no-nonsense, profit-driven businessman, and John the skilled tradesman and boatbuilder. As a manager, he gave his employees a lot of leeway, and he demanded results.
He was famous for saying, “That job should only take about twenty minutes.” It drove him crazy when customers interrupted jobs to shoot the breeze, or when scheduled breaks went over the allotted time. I had the feeling he was an old-school sea captain reincarnated – maybe Slocum himself – and would rather have clapped us in leg irons than deal with all the workplace-compliance regulations that seemed to increase every year. In fact, he might have wanted to keelhaul a few of us.
John commanded respect because there was no job in the marina he couldn’t or wouldn’t do himself. It was hard to whine and complain when your boss was out there on the barge pulling mooring chains in the rain or freezing cold, dressed in his old commercial foul-weather gear. According to his mother, at his memorial service, he was known since he was a little boy as somebody who could fix anything. If a mechanic, an electrician, a rigger or anybody else in the yard was unsure how to proceed with a job, they went to John, and he always had an answer. Most of the time it was the right answer.
John had favorite customers, and not just the cash cows who spent boatloads of money. He even liked some of the do-it-yourself customers, who spent the minimum, especially the sailors. He didn’t have much patience with customers who didn’t take the time to learn about their own boats. It’s safe to say that John did not hold to the slogan “the customer is always right.” If a boat owner didn’t like the way John ran the boatyard, and decided to take their business elsewhere, that was fine with him.
My first experience on Ch’i came shortly after I started working at Kingman. John invited the entire boatyard crew for an after-work sail on Buzzards Bay. I felt like I had been transported back in time as I grabbed the rope halyard and helped hoist the gaff-rigged mainsail. A large cooler on deck was full of beer, and an ample supply below of dark rum.
We sailed across Buzzards Bay toward Marion on a close reach, Ch’i plowing steadily through the heavy chop. Tacking was a slow-motion maneuver, John yelling, “Ready about! Helm’s alee,” and everybody ducking as the heavy wooden boom came shaking and sweeping low across the cabin top. Ch’i rounded up and pointed her bowsprit toward Wings Neck. We tacked several times, never gaining any ground to windward. She was no raceboat, that was for sure, but her stability and seaworthiness were indisputable.
John invited the crew out on Ch’i a couple times every year, sometimes staying out well after dark when there was a full moon. These cruises engendered great camaraderie among us. It was always an adventure finding our way back into Red Brook Harbor, through the twisting channel in the dark. Once, under full sail, Dave MacTavish lost his balance and fell over the side. Somehow, he held on with one arm, with his feet dangling in the water. When we pulled him back aboard, he was still holding his beer and had managed not to spill a drop, a feat he is proud of to this day.
Years ago, Dave and I were walking past John in the yard, and Dave asked him, “Why’d you name your boat “Channel 1,” anyway?” I don’t remember John’s response, but it was probably, “Get back to work, you two” or just a shake of his head. Ch’i is, of course, not a VHF station but rather an ancient and elemental concept of Chinese culture that, in one definition, is believed to be part of everything that exists as a life force or spiritual energy that pervades the natural world.
There were company cruises when the southwest wind was really kicking up out in Buzzards Bay, as it often did. John enjoyed those times the most. He encouraged everyone to take the helm, and he’d burst with pride when Ch’i got a bone in her teeth and surged down the faces of the waves. “We’re doing almost seven knots!” he would exclaim, as if that was really fast.
Those who didn’t feel able to drive home after those cruises were welcome to spend the night aboard. John was generous when it came to sharing Ch’i. He even allowed employees to live on board when they needed a place to stay. Many stories have been spawned aboard this distinctive boat, but since the unwritten rule is, “What happens on Ch’i stays on Ch’i,” many of them have never been told.
Just before he died, John told his family that Ch’i was his dream, and she didn’t have to be theirs, too, adding that they were free to do with her what they thought was best. Diana isn’t sure yet whether she’ll keep the boat, or whether Meriah or Justin will assume the responsibility. Of one thing Diana is certain: She would like Ch’i to continue to be a vessel dedicated to education, as she has always been.
For now, Ch’i floats peacefully in Red Brook Harbor, tugging every so often on her mooring line, waiting patiently for her next sailing adventure. Maybe it will be a trip around the world.
Frequent contributor Mark Barrett started at the bottom of the boating industry – literally – scraping, washing and painting the bottoms on all sorts of vessels. He is a yacht broker at Cape Yachts in Dartmouth, Mass., and he lives in Sandwich, on Cape Cod. Mark and his cruising partner Diana sail their 1988 Freedom 30 Scout out of Red Brook Harbor, in Buzzards Bay.
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