�If it sells up there, great. I planned on bringing it to Toronto Nov. 1,� van Wissen said by phone Saturday. �And if it doesn't sell, it's still a great boat and I'll make some use of it in the future,� the 37-year-old said. �There's been some interest in the add already.� Wissen, who used to deliver boats to their owners back and forth across the Atlantic, didn't know where Owen Sound was when he signed up for the Georgian College program. He knew nothing about Russel Brothers boats and brought his boat it to Owen Sound not knowing it was made here, he said. It was simply a convenient place to work on while going to school here, he said. He said he and his wife, Eliza, the boat's legal owner who's also an avid sailor, have taken the Bluefin across the harbour to the old Russel Brothers factory site for picnics on that overgrown, vacant east harbourfront site.

And Wissen has been overwhelmed with the interest shown in the vessel since its been here. People have come up to him to say a family member who worked at Russel's may have even helped built that boat. �I was really surprised that the boat sat in Goderich on land for 10 years. No one even mentioned it. And then I bring it to Owen Sound and I've been told a hundred times that I should restore it to its original condition or I should use it for charter trips outside the rail museum,� he said. �One city councillor said he would support me if I wanted to restore it and I could have a berth outside the city rail museum and do trips on it and stuff. And I said, well, if the boat's so important, how come nobody else looked into it in the last 10 years?�

The Ontario government used it last, as a research vessel to hunt for shipwrecks. It was stripped and sat rusting on land for 10 years before it was sold to someone who then sold it to van Wissen last fall. Most of its working life it was a commercial fishing boat in Northern Ontario. �I could tell right away that it was an incredibly well built vessel. It was far better built and far stronger than any other boat you can get, recreational vessel of that size,� van Wissen said. The engine seemed in great shape, lots of wiring had been replaced and �so even though it was all rusty and covered in wasps nests and obviously left out in the elements for 10 years, I could see that it was actually a very good boat,� he said. This boat was to be turned into a recreational vessel and van Wissen started doing so with some of his classmate friends. But a personal commitment arose which limits his free time, he said, which led to the decision to sell.

Bluefin was named �Annie Mac� at the shipyard before it was renamed Bluefin by its first owner, a commercial fisherman named Angus (Buddy) McLeod, according to a 1988 article about the vessel which van Wissen shared for this story. Based on interviews with Buddy's �wife and fishing partner,� Edna, the article said the vessel was delivered by rail from Owen Sound to Nipagon in March 1938 and was used as a fishing boat for years, modified with a �turtleback� to cover the deck. That deck cover has since been removed. In the late 1960s the Bluefin was sold to his friend Harold Dampier who moved the boat to Lake Superior. By 1980 his cousin, Randy Dampier, fished with it in Lake Superior. �By this time, Bluefin had established her reputation as a tough, economical little sea boat,� the article said. �But that was not the only reputation that she had acquired. With her old-style, narrow, deep hull and fine lines she tended to roll a bit. Harold once told me, 'she'll never drown you but she'll beat your brains out.'� The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources bought the Bluefin in 1985 under its Fisheries Buyout Program. The vessel, next owned by the Ontario Ministry of Culture and Communications, was then used to hunt shipwrecks as a research vessel, captained by Peter Engelbert, who wrote the 1988 in the marine heritage newsletter, Save Our Shipwrecks.