KETCHIKAN — The Cassiopeia is a boat grand enough for a cowboy hat.
The 72-foot, custom-built Davidson sailboat has been an eye-catcher in Casey Moran Harbor this summer. It’s owned by Ketchikan urologist Gary Schoenrock and his wife, Carolyn.
Talking to the Ketchikan Daily News aboard the Cassiopeia on a Friday in August, Schoenrock said he’s the second owner of the vessel, which even at low tide has a mast that competes with Knob Hill above the tunnel for the Ketchikan skyline.
Inside, the 23-year-old composite sailboat — made with a combination of epoxy, Kevlar and foam — is surprisingly roomy for a vessel designed with the America’s Cup in mind.
It’s because the Seattle banker who commissioned the vessel from New Zealand builder Davidson Yachts, and who eventually sold it to Schoenrock, had a son.
That son liked cowboy hats, and he wanted to wear his hat inside the Cassiopeia.
“That’s why the ceilings are so high, but if you look from the outside, the lines … are good,” Schoenrock. “It doesn’t look like it’s too bulky.”
Though the boat has a “generous” amount of room for a 72-foot sailboat, he said, it still can get along at more than 20 knots.
It also can survive 40-foot drops.
“It’s extremely tough, although the outer skins can be fragile,” Schoenrock said. “But the boat itself, we’ve been in hurricanes and fallen off of 40-foot waves and nothing happens to it.”
Years ago, the Cassiopeia caught a Japanese typhoon while Schoenrock was sailing from Kauai, Hawaii, to Homer.
“We had like 55-knot winds and 40-foot waves for about five days,” he said.
The fall from crest to nadir was “like you’re falling out of a window four stories,” he said. “The whole boat just shudders and you think it’s going to break in half. That was an experience I don’t want to repeat.”
The mostly retired doctor has fond memories of sailing on clear nights.
“The stars and the moon — and you have running lights on usually, so as you’re going through waves there’s green and red coming back on each side,” he said. “To me, it’s almost psychedelic.”
The Cassiopeia has a draft of just more than 13 feet. While a close fit to older America’s Cup boats, its interior is designed for comfort.
The vessel was built in Christchurch, New Zealand, and is equipped a 135 horsepower single engine and a carbon fiber mast rising almost 100 feet.
“Out in the ocean with good wind we could do 18 knots for days on end,” Schoenrock said.
The Ketchikan doctor has worked in a few areas in the United States and owned a practice in Soldotna, but now works one week a month for the Ketchikan Medical Center.
