If there is a Bermuda boat that can truly be called 'lucky' it is the aptly named Bermuda sloop Shamrock.

Since it was built in the 1870s, it has been brought back from the brink of extinction time and time again.

It is possibly the only original Bermuda sloop still left on the water.

Thirty-five years ago, the Shamrock's previous owner, Joffre Pitman, found the hulk of the Shamrock in the bushes. Over five or six years he fixed her up, but unfortunately she later fell into severe disrepair again. Last year, Mr. Pitman sold the boat to his friend, Hubert Watlington, for the lofty sum of $10.

Several months later, after much money had flowed under the bridge, the boat was once again in top condition. It is now moored off of Point Shares in Pembroke. On Monday, The Royal Gazette reporter Jessie Moniz and photographer Chris Burville went out with Mr. Watlington to have a look at Shamrock.

"I decided to do it because I think it is a really important part of Bermuda maritime history," said Mr. Watlington. He owns the Sail On shop, and has been sailing all his life.

"I knew the boat well and Joffre had let me sail it. I wouldn't have undertaken a restoration project like this for any other boat. She needed to be saved. I didn't know anyone else who would do it."

In the old days, there were hundreds of Bermuda sloops around the Island, that were used primarily inshore as transportation.

"Before the roads were any good they ran freight around the Island," Mr. Watlington said. "As the roads got better they went out of commission or were turned into fishing boats. Shamrock was probably originally built for fishing, because the roads by 1870 were probably pretty good, and she wouldn't have been needed as transportation, necessarily."

Mr. Watlington started working on Shamrock on January 5, 2006 and was finished on May 7.

"I had some woodworking guys saying this was going to take years," said Mr. Watlington. "I said 'no, this is not going to take years, because I do not have the patience to go with it for that long'. To have it work out within such a short time, and as well as it did, I think is an achievement." When Mr. Watlington first bought the boat, he did not have any carpentry skills, so he enlisted the help of a number of local and overseas experts. He brought in a young talented shipwright, Manuel Palomo, from New England to help. The two worked side by side on the boat.

"I found him through the Internet," said Mr. Watlington. "He was brilliant. We did a lot in a short space of time. I told him let's build it strong and fast. I said 'let's get the work done'.

"We went at it hard over the course of four months. We replaced a lot of stuff. We replaced the stern. The mast was all rotted out. We had to do a lot of work. It has an all new interior including combing, knees and a new garboard plank."

(A garboard plank is the first wale laid next to the keel of a wooden ship. The wale would be a heavy plank extending along the side of a wooden ship.)

Bermuda sloops like Shamrock would have originally been constructed from cedar which was readily available in the 1800s. Sadly, there are very few boats left in Bermuda that have an all cedar hull.

Shamrock was rebuilt using a combination of woods including cedar and longleaf yellow pine.

"I wanted to make her as traditional as possible in the refit," said Mr. Watlington. "One of the toughest things was to get the cedar. We put in new knees in cedar. Two people were instrumental in giving me cedar for her interior, Tommy Outerbridge and Henry Cox. Both of those people were extremely helpful. Another person who really helped was Kevin Horsfield. He was very good at supplying all kinds of weird and wonderful woods. He is second in command of the boat, really."

Local boat builder Anson Nash once told Mr. Watlington to 'give the boat what it wants'. He didn't understand what that meant at the time, but he learned.

"We had some amazing things happen," said Mr. Watlington. "We have some interesting stories where the universe connected to give the boat what it wanted.

For example, we got a piece of wood that was 100-year-old long leaf yellow pine. It was 23 feet long, 12 inches wide. Two people couldn't pick up this piece of wood. The boat is 25 feet give or take a few inches. We had to scarf (add on) a few feet of wood. Then we had to mow it down length wise down to two-inch stock. Then we had to take all the screws and old nails on it. Then we had to clean it all up."

Part of this process involved putting the wood into a steam box to make it pliable. When it was workable it was clamped and screwed to the boat. After weeks of work on this process, catastrophe struck. Wood on the port side snapped lengthwise.

"We burst into tears," he said. "We said a few bad words, then said 'now what are we going to do?' Three days later I was telling a friend about the problem."

Mr. Watlington said the friend just happened to have a piece of 25-foot long Douglas fir. Amazingly, the piece of wood fit down to a quarter of an inch.

When the refurbishment was almost completed, the next step was to place Shamrock into the water again. After being on dry land for so long her boards had shrunk leaving gaping, quarter inch seams. Once in the water for a time, the wood would swell again, sealing the cracks, hopefully.

"We didn't know how the seams would close down," said Mr. Watlington. "We caulked the ones that were tight enough. Then we put her overboard with some big buoys on her to hold her up, because the cracks were a quarter inch.

"A knowledgeable friend of mine, Tim Patton, said she would be fine in 48 hours, but the shipwrights didn't really think so. They thought she would take a week or so. Tim was right. Within 48 hours all the seams had shut down. Tim bailed her out, and she was floating. Then we had to haul her out again and finish the caulking."

Then, it was a scramble to take her out for her first sail, before Mr. Palomo had to go back to the United States.

"We put the sails on and went for a sail," said Mr. Watlington. "We had a very good day. Manny and I were very pleased that everything worked out so well and we got all the pieces ready.

"I have been sailing all my life in all kinds of stuff, but Shamrock is about the funkiest boat I have ever sailed. People get on it and they are pretty amazed. One thing that stands out is the size of rig compared to the size of boat. She only draws four feet (she needs four feet of water to sail in). They built her to get over the reef. They put pretty big rigs on her for speed. They would go out and get their fish and they would want to get them back to market so they would try to have a faster boat."

Mr. Watlington said he and his friends and family raced the boat a bit during the summer, but it is hard to rate her. Boats like Shamrock would be the predecessors to the Bermuda fitted dinghy used for racing today.

"I don't like sailing her over 20 knots because she gets a little wild," he said. "She is not really great in rougher weather. You can reef her down a bit, but at winds under 15 knots she is lovely to sail."