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Doug's love of the water was born on his fathers 36' Henry Luhrs spending summers with his family on the waters of Beverly, MA to Bar Harbor, ME. 

 

At 5 his dad put him in a new 8' foot Marblehead Butler Pram and shoved him off the beach where he grew  on the waters of Rice's Beach and Hospital Point Light House. Doug's "Little Tyke" now "Old Butler" is Doug's mooring tender today.  

 

Doug learned to sail at the Beverly Jubilee Yacht Club racing  Turnabouts, International One Tens, Two Tens, and numerous day sailors. He competed in regattas around Beverly, Manchester and Marblehead.

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At 8 Doug was confidently operating his father's 36' Henry Luhrs, "Shellback". At 10 he received his Scuba Diving certification at New England Divers from the famed Frank Sanger, acquired a 16' Lyman Islander power boat and earned money for school cleaning boat bottoms, inspecting moorings, retrieving valuables and diving for lobsters. 

 

Doug's next boat was "Harvest", a 36 foot S2 sloop purchased in Ft. Lauderdale in 1979. He often sailed Harvest between his homes in Ft. Lauderdale and Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard, stopping in Newport for a week or more while enroute seasonally

 

Doug down sized in 1994 to "Boy Howdy" a 23' Robalo C/C. With his grandson on board they pulled hundreds of fish from the waters of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.

 

In 2010 Doug moved to Newport and reinvented Boy Howdy to "Shellback" in honor to his father a term used to describe a person who has crossed the equator by boat.  Shellback was repowered in 2016 with a new 300 hp Mercury Verado. 

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