Flicka Kittiwake

Hal DeVaney kept Kittiwake at Galveston, Texas for many years. In Flicka Friends #24 (Winter 2001) he described the first time he got her beyond the Galveston jetties and out into the Gulf, making seven knots over the ground under 70 percent jib and full main in a thirteen-knot southeasterly, meeting another Galveston Flicka offshore, and finding white smoke below on the way in - the fire extinguisher had discharged itself and coated the cabin in dry powder. The same issue shows her rigged with a sheet-to-tiller self-steering arrangement.

In September 2008 Hurricane Ike sent a twelve-foot surge through her marina, lifted Kittiwake out of her slip and left her on the concrete dock at the Galveston Yacht Basin among much larger boats. DeVaney’s account in Flicka Friends #58 (Spring 2014) records that she came through with little damage beyond scratches, the outboard and the Monitor windvane essentially unscathed and only a few gallons of water below; the crane lift back into the water cost $1,800, and she motored back to her slip under her own power. Jamie White, writing in Flicka Friends #71 (Fall 2020), adds that she was left with one bent stanchion in her pushpit.

DeVaney sold her on 15 August 2019 to White and his wife Ruth Downes, and White wrote up the refit that followed in that same issue. She was hauled at PayCo Marina and Boatyard on 19 November 2019 for what became almost a month in the yard: blister repairs, epoxy primer and three coats of Interlux Brightside on the topsides, the aluminium mast stripped and repainted, seacocks and thru-hulls serviced, a corroded bronze sternpost gudgeon renewed, and afterwards renewal of her original stainless steel chainplates and complete renewal of the standing and running rigging. The old name was sanded off at the haul-out and she was re-christened Dulcinea at a ceremony on the dock in December 2019.