Bay People
Kate Chaney Can’t Sit Still
S
ome people aren’t meant for a life indoors. Of course, they have to give it a try. That’s where the money is, and nobody stays young
forever. Which is how Kate Chaney came to be sitting in an office on Kent Island two years ago, all alone, staring at a computer, trying to gin up sales for Edgewater Boats, a high-quality line she had no qualms about selling. The problem wasn’t the product. It was the sitting. And being indoors. It’s good they didn’t have surveillance videos, because they’d have caught her hitting the floor every hour or so for sit-ups, jumping jacks, and pushups, just to stay sane. “I’m an active person,” she says. “I can’t be sedentary.” Before long she gave in and went back to being who she’s been for 15 years since moving back to Annapolis after college: Gelcoat Kate, the ponytail blonde with the Tacoma pickup full of space-age potions, the only full-time specialist in the mysteries of fiberglass finish work in town. “There are other people who do gelcoat, but they do other stuff too—fiberglass, painting, general maintenance, whatever they can,” she says. “I decided to do one thing and do it well.” So if you have a fiberglass boat around Annapolis and scratch it, as you will if you ever leave the dock, better call Kate. I
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caught up with her last month, working on a million-dollar Lagoon catamaran at the docks at Bert Jabin’s Yacht Yard, where she does most of her work. The boat was new but got scratched in delivery. Her job was to make the scratches go away. She’s been at it long enough now that she can chat freely while mixing, grinding, spraying, and sanding, and gave up much of her life story without breaking stride. This was an easy job, she said. She didn’t have to match the color—just use official Lagoon white, which is the same as Beneteau white. The hard jobs are the ones where you have to match color on an older boat with a faded hide. A few years ago I ran Maurice Lethbridge’s old Shamrock into the swim platform of Jeff Goldring’s Pequod and had to make a call to Kate. When she was done and I went down to pay, I found her wet with sweat and frazzled with worry. The color, she said, didn’t match to perfection. “Where,” I asked, staring at where the damage used to be, “is the repair?” Kate is a Chaney, from the old South County family. Chaney sand and gravel helped build our cities, and her uncle owns Herrington Harbour, the massive marina complex in Deale. I always assumed she was from privileged background, but it turns out her dad, Calvert, worked oysters in Shady Side before going into business pumping out septic tanks. “I used to love to go to work with him, sitting up in the front of the truck. I didn’t care about the smell; I was working with my dad.” Oddly, she liked boats as a kid but not sailboats. A neighbor lady drowned when her small sailboat capsized right off the Chaney home, and it gave Kate, then seven, nightmares. She didn’t see a sailboat she trusted until she was in her 20s, when she was invited to sail on a 70-footer, which she reckoned wouldn’t flip. She joined the sailboat racing crowd in 2001, when someone asked if she’d tow a Mumm 30 to Newport for a regatta.
“They gave me a Ford F-350 dually to tow it with. I’d never driven a trailer before. I just prayed I wouldn’t have to back up!” She became a regular tow driver and got asked to race for the obvious reasons: she’s light, athletic, strong, and cute. “You’d be at a party, and a guy looks you over and goes, ‘What do you weigh?’” First she was rail meat and then learned the bow, pit, and sewer. These days you’ll see her hopping around Stray Dog, the fastest boat in the Annapolis YC Wednesday Night Series. The gelcoat gig started about the same time, in 2001, when she was fixing up yachts with Joe Young while waiting for a job opening in geology, her field of study at the University of Delaware. He taught her enough that Garth Hichens, who owned Annapolis Yacht Sales (AYS), hired her to do warranty work on the Beneteaus he was selling like hotcakes. Joe gave his blessing, and the institution called Gelcoat Kate was born. She still does a lot of work for AYS, as well as doing independent jobs, and she still will sell you an Edgewater if you’re in the market. Just don’t expect her to sit at a desk and wait for your call. # spinsheet.com September 2016 47