DECEMBER/JANUARY 2018 21 en they went to look at the remains
of hull #18, Timid Tuna, launched in- Her condition was dire, but
Bandy and Hall ended up paying Bing-
ham $9,000; $6,500 for Butterball and
$2,500 for Timid Tuna.
Bandy justi ed the investment as a
professional education opportunity.
“Even if I had to throw it away, I’d
know how they were built,” he said.
ey shipped the two hulls to Mary-
land on a couple of low-bed trucks
with one housetop, a ying bridge, and
other extraneous materials piled on
and shrink-wrapped. Bandy credits
Bingham with meticulously saving
and storing all the parts and compo-
nents from the original boats that
would be needed for a restoration.
Because the boats had been almost
identical and would be restored side-
by-side, “Bingham made sure he gave
us one each of all the critical curves,”
Bandy said.
When the boats were unloaded at
the Bandy Boats shop in Mayo, Mary-
land, their condition became clearer.
Looking at bungs and fastenings, it
was evident that Timid Tuna had been
reframed multiple times over the
36-footers (11m) from the 1950s that
were, for all practical purposes, dere-
lict and dead a ordable. e fearless
boatbuilder in him, likely enhanced by
some post-surgery boredom and pain-
killers, spurred him to call his friend
Mark Hall, a skilled building contrac-
tor and trained boatbuilder, who lives
nearby.
“I talk to my friends about what
kind of boats they want,” Bandy said.
“Every month or so, Mark would send
me a picture—always a Rybovich.”
Hall was interested, so the two ew
to Palm Beach to meet the boats’
owner, Bob Bingham, who had been a
longtime builder at Rybovich, and in
recent years has collected and held
older models in hopes of nding new
owners for them. e rst boat they
saw was hull #12, Butterball, launched
in 1954, and fairly well preserved.
Indeed, of the four Rybovich boats he
had at the time, Bingham had started
working on this one, reframing and
refastening the hull, replacing the
transom and bulkheads, and cold-
molding a new bottom.
“It was coming out of the ashes and
Mark was enthusiastic,” Bandy said.new yard and real estate development
around it. e investor-owned Rybo-
vich quit building new boats in 2010.
Anyone looking for a Rybovich
today has two options: Call on Michael
Rybovich and his son Dusty, who are
building new custom sport shermen
in their own shop, Michael Rybovich
and Sons, in Palm Beach Gardens; or
look to the used market, where sump-
tuously re t boats are listed for mil-
lions, and only older models in need of
signi cant attention can be picked up
for south of $100,000.
e low-budget end of the second
option was the choice of Reid Bandy,
owner of Bandy Boats in Annapolis,
Maryland. An avid sport sherman
himself, Bandy owns a 53' (16.2m)
Jarrett Bay that he shes and charters,
and over the past 20 years he has
designed and built a range of smaller
custom shing boats in composites for
similarly sh-obsessed clients. He had
admired Rybovich boats from afar for
decades, never thinking he would own
one, but in 2015, while recuperating
from shoulder surgery, he was noo-
dling around online looking at sport-
shermen for sale and spotted twoRybovichRefit170-AdFINALr2.indd 21 11/3/17 9:01 AM