In fall 2017, ZISKA sat neglected for the second time in her long life, now 114 years, and she was 5,000 miles away from where she was built in northern England. ZISKA is officially a Morecambe Bay prawner, a type colloquially known as a Lancashire nobby, but she was built in 1903 as a yacht and racing boat by the Crossfield Brothers at their yard in Arn-side, Cumbria. Nobby translates as "rough wood," and ZISKA is ruggedly built like her fishing sisters, but she differs in that she was fully decked with a cabin house and cruising interior. After suffering significant damage in a 1974 storm, she was laid up and neglected until found in 1997 and brought back to sailing condition by Ashley Butler, then a 19-year-old novice boatbuilder, who sailed her to the east coast of the United States. There, she changed hands several times, eventually being trucked to Port Townsend, Washington. It was here, after she again fell into a state of neglect, that Stanford Siver purchased her and undertook her restoration.
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