Marquette – An administrative change by the keeper of the National Register of Historic Places in Washington, DC, is cause for excitement in Michigan as the historic designation of what has become Marquette’s flagship, Coaster II, is transferred from the state of Washington to Michigan.
Bob Christensen, Michigan’s coordinator of the National Register of Historic Places, said: “Washington and Maine’s loss is our gain. While not part of Michigan’s and the Great Lakes’ own, long maritime history, Coaster II offers the opportunity for people to experience the blue waters of the Great Lakes on a historic sailing vessel.”
The two-masted schooner is a New England product, designed by master boat and yacht designer Murray Peterson of Marblehead, Massachusetts, and built in 1933 at the Goudy and Stevens boatyard at East Boothbay, Maine. Coaster II was designed as a scaled-down replica of New England nineteenth-century coastal fishing schooners but with modifications so that, as Peterson stated, “she could sail with the best of the yachts that we were seeing near Boston.” The schooner was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 when it was docked in Everett, Washington. By 2007, Coaster II had been relocated to Maine and was deteriorating. It was then that carpenter Niko Economides purchased the vessel. He and his son set about restoring Coaster II, and they eventually sailed it down the Atlantic seaboard, up the Hudson River, through the Erie Canal, and into the Great Lakes to a new home port in Marquette Harbor in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In 2009 Economides and his family began offering charters.
Michigan has more than 1600 listings in the National Register of Historic Places.
The State Historic Preservation Review Board considers nominations to the register three times per year. The review board forwards nominations to the keeper of the National Register, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. The State Historic Preservation Office coordinates the National Register Program in Michigan . For information on the National Register of Historic Places and other programs of the State Historic Preservation Office, visit www.michigan.gov/shpo or call (517) 373-1630.
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