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Katrinka Finkelsplatt limps out of the harbor

Charlie Clayton. Photo by Chapin Day

Who is this man and why is he smiling? And what is that slimy thing behind him?

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The smiley guy is Charlie Clayton, a houseboat resident on Seattle’s Lake Union. A man who dreams of learning to sail.

And, as of two weeks ago, that slimy thing was the deck of his new yacht: A once costly, successful and proud sailboat reduced now to filthy and decrepit. A racing sloop bearing the intriguing name “Katrinka Finkelsplatt” on her stern.

(Sorry, sensitive folks, most boats bear that pronoun, and it’s pretty much inevitably if named “Katrinka.”)

At a simple dockside title-signing on a gray, chilly morning, Charlie took possession of the 43-year-old, 27-foot, sail- and diesel-powered Katrinka for the rock bottom price of — wait for it — $1.

The sailing yacht Katrinka Finkelsplatt in Gig Harbor. Photo by Chapin Day

Happy seller, happy buyer

Meet the seller, Kim Cofer, a woman who also once dreamed of learning to sail.

Kim Cofer signs off on the sale of the Katrinka, netting $1 in the process. Photo by Chapin Day

Ink scarcely dry, Katrinka motored out of Gig Harbor on Nov. 23 — for perhaps the last time?

One of the oldest and most-repeated jokes about boat ownership is this: The happiest two days in a boat owner’s life are the day he or she buys a boat and the day he or she sells it.

So, two happy people so far: Charlie and Kim.

Not the most popular boat in the harbor

And what they did that Sunday morning, in the presence of a few onlookers gathered on the Jerisich Public Dock adjacent to the Skansie Netshed, will bring happiness to others as well: local police, environmental activists and waterfront residents and property owners.

They tire of seeing the long-neglected Katrinka and others like her — often graceful at a distance but sometimes disgusting closer up — bob at anchor in their views or break free of anchor and drift untended onto their properties.

For them, Katrinka has been about as popular as Aunt Edith’s kale and liver casserole.

For at least the last two years, folks charged with enforcing marine laws in South Puget Sound and Gig Harbor have become familiar with Katrinka.

So has Joel Messing, a dedicated volunteer guardian of Gig Harbor moorage rules. (We’ll get back to him, his photo drone and his computer database of potential cheaters, shortly.)

Overstaying her welcome

Katrinka’s most recent brush with the law made it into a Nov. 17 Gig Harbor Police Blotter item.  A vigilant patrol officer detailed his weeks-long case based on Katrinka’s illegal encampment and apparent abandonment at Jerisich Dock.

State and city codes, which regulate the pay-to-stay-overnight dock, allow no more the three overnight stays in any 10-day period. An offending vessel may be declared a public nuisance and law enforcement can lock it to the dock for staying 10 nights. (After 30 consecutive days on the dock, the code allows the city to seize and sell the boat.)

The gist of the police officer’s report: After no response to repeatedly leaving parking ticket-like citations in zip-tied baggies attached to the boat’s life-lines, he cable-locked the boat to the dock. State and city law authorize such action.

Infractions left with the Katrinka for overstaying its welcome at Jerisich Dock. Photo by Chapin Day

The officer, who first ticketed the boat on Nov. 2, also stepped up efforts to find Katrinka’s owner. He eventually reached her by phone and told her of the situation. In his report, the officer writes: “She advised she wasn’t aware of the infractions.”

Signage at Jerisich Dock. Photo by Chapin Day

What? How so? Well for one thing, the owner told Gig Harbor Now, she hasn’t been sailing on Katrinka since an initial voyage two years ago made her violently seasick. Also, she said, she didn’t leave it at the Jerisich Dock.

Katrinka and the Mystic Misfits

Cofer, who identifies herself as “The Kimstigator” in online postings, says she instigated a plan about two years ago with a loose-knit group of friends she calls The Mystic Misfits. (Note: Not associated with the Mystic Misfits Society.)

After moving to Gig Harbor about six years ago from Arizona, Cofer gradually chatted up her Misfits with her dream: Wouldn’t it be fun to learn how to sail?

By 2023, she laid down her $1 for Katrinka, ostensibly buying on behalf of her fun-loving friends but with her name on the title.

For his part, the colleague she bought it from was a family man with young children and — ah, you guessed it — sailing dreams.

He told Gig Harbor Now he bought Katrinka for a token $50 from its prior owners and used it for three years. He hung on to it for two more admittedly neglectful years before selling it Cofer. It spent those five years in a slip in Port Orchard.

Cofer had an immediate problem after buying it, one shared by any first-time boat owner around the sound’s over-stuffed marinas. Where to put it? Moreover, given her personal vomit-ous reaction to sailing, who would take over managing the boat?

A friend with a boat

Stepping up, Mystic Misfit Larry Anderson.

“I was caretaker,” he told Gig Harbor Now.

At first, Anderson said, the boat tied up at a dock owned by “a friend of a friend” of Cofer’s just inside the Gig Harbor spit. Since then, he told Gig Harbor Now, “I’ve moved that boat so many times.”

It became a familiar site “riding on the hook” in Gig Harbor, near Anderson Island, and other local waters. He’s also had to retrieve it when it broke loose.

“I’ve had to pay for two anchors,” he lamented.

He was the one who left it moored to the Jerisish Public Dock, something he says he did on the understanding that it would soon be picked by a new owner.

Police removed the restraining cable after Cofer paid about $200 in moorage and fines and arranged for the title signing and departure.

Katrinka departed Gig Harbor at 10:21 a.m. Nov. 23.

She carried just the new owner and one volunteer crew, an inexperienced boater culled from the folks on the dock that morning.

Katrinka leaves the harbor, perhaps for the last time. Photo by Chapin Day

Not Messing around

Ironically, Joel Messing*, a retired Army nurse who rose to the rank of colonel and significant past commands, did not witness Katrina’s exit from Gig Harbor. But he does recognize her, and delights in her departure.

Why? He’s got evidence.

Joel Messing. Photo by Chapin Day

With a just a few clicks on his computer’s photo-illustrated spreadsheet, he was quickly able to inform us that Katrinka, among other infractions, had spent two stretches of more than 30 consecutive days during 2024 anchored in the harbor.

For the last several years, he has made it his unpaid duty and avocation to keep the Katrinkas of the world at bay, or at least out of the harbor.

From his waterfront home near the Randall Street public boat ramp, Messing has a near end-to-end view of the harbor. In recent years, his view has expanded with the use of his drone-mounted camera.

Any arrival in the harbor of a suspect boat is enough to make this drone man fly.

A former licensed pilot of full-sized planes, he now regularly guides his foam-float equipped, lightweight and relatively simple remote-control aircraft to chronicle, in pictures and data, boat activities he sees.

Joel Messing uses a drone to monitor potentially problematic vessels that enter Gig Harbor. Photo by Chapin Day

Keeping the harbor clean

Himself the owner of a sleek, well-kept yacht docked near his home, Messing admits to some bias about what constitutes a suspect. In general, he says, bad looks, dirt, disorderly cluttered decks, and a lack of ship-shapeness initially grab his attention and start his counting of how long a craft sticks around

He doesn’t want them to overstay their welcome, set up housekeeping afloat or be abandoned.

When he and his wife moved to Gig Harbor in 1997, he recalls the harbor as filled with derelict boats; divided down the middle between city and county law enforcement jurisdictions; and visited from time to time with burbling, odiferous upwellings within its waters when the city sewer system overflowed.

These days, derelict and/or abandoned boats are rarer; the city has legal control over most of the harbor’s marine activities; and a sewer outflow extension pipe finished a decade or so ago sends the mess out of the harbor into deeper waters, stemming the local stinks.

Despite all the upgrades, enough mariners still are ignorant of — or hostile to, or indifferent to — the docking and anchoring laws to reward Messing’s vigilance almost daily. So what does he do with his observations when a boat moves from suspect to potential violator?

Often, he calls the police or reaches out to them in other ways.

He’s not the only local who does so, but he’s probably the best known for the thoroughness and supportability of his reports.

‘The drone guy’

“Is he the drone guy?” That was Gig Harbor Police Patrol Sgt. Gary Dahm’s response when Gig Harbor Now mentioned Messing’s name while reporting this story.

Dahm said officers routinely patrol the public dock and harbor, but he encouraged the efforts of Messing and others concerned about maintaining the harbor. The time-limiting and other regulations are intended, he said, to provide “fair access” to public moorage.

“See stuff,” he said, “call us.”

While Messing welcomes the departure of Katrinka, he’s not running short of “stuff.”

When Gig Harbor Now visited him recently, he was taking aerial pictures and running the clock on at least five boats. Some were recreational craft, others commercial fishermen, also subject to the limiting laws.

Joel Messing gestures toward a possibly suspicious boat. Photo by Chapin Day

Not ready for racing

While other craft may continue to challenge Gig Harbor’s rules, Katrinka’s new owner doubts he will ever bring her back here.

“No. I think she’s home,” Clayton answered promptly when we asked whether he anticipates voyaging south this far.

Home is his Lake Union’s houseboat’s float.

He noted that he’s learned that much of the boat’s earlier history was in and around Seattle. It regularly raced in Lake Union’s casual, fun-loving Duck Dodge races and other more formal regattas.

Clayton and Katrinka are a ways away from rejoining the racing circuit.

Even the short trip north from Gig Harbor was hardly a Bon Voyage.

The diesel failed. A volunteer escort sailboat provided an additional crew member and a tow to outside the Ballard Locks.

From there, a paid tow company took Katrinka through the locks to her new home.

An expensive $1

Since then he’s learned something about the costs of a $1 boat.

Cleaning, replacing broken or outdated gear, more cleaning, new running lights, new fuel gauge, more cleaning.

“Every day I’ve been working on it,” he told us this weekend.

One other thing: He’s still never sailed Katrinka.

He has finished some online sailing courses.

“I’ll learn how to sail by sailing her,” he enthuses, adding, “It’ll be great!”

(Writer’s note: Fair winds, Charlie Clayton. Fair winds, “Katrinka Finkelsplatt.”)

* Gig Harbor Now has been unable to link his name origin to Water Rat’s oft-quoted classic line from “Wind In the Willows:  “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing — absolutely nothing — so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”