EUREKA – A motley crew of volunteers is fitting planks of purpleheart across a gaping hole in the hull of a slender sailboat propped up in the sand near Humboldt Bay.

After months of ripping out rotten ribs and splintered boards, a wave of enthusiasm buoys the workers as they begin the repairs.

The mission for these volunteers, all members of Veterans for Peace, transcends simple restoration.

The sailboat is the Golden Rule, a 30-foot wooden ketch that attracted international attention in 1958 when Albert Bigelow, its Quaker captain, set out from California for the Marshall Islands, where the United States was conducting atmospheric tests of nuclear bombs. A former lieutenant commander in the Navy who directed combat vessels in World War II, Bigelow and his pacifist crew were protesting nuclear weapons and war in general.

They were turned back twice by the Coast Guard before they could enter the off-limits area, but the voyage of the Golden Rule launched a surge of anti-nuclear activism and a legacy of protest boats that includes the Phoenix of Hiroshima, Everyman I, II and III, and Greenpeace's series of Rainbow Warriors.

The Veterans for Peace volunteers are committed to returning the Golden Rule to its historic role.

"She's going to be the peace boat out to confront militarism and needless war," said Fredy Champagne, a Vietnam vet turned pacifist who is coordinating the restoration project.

After dropping out of sight for more than four decades, the Golden Rule surfaced in late summer last year when Leroy Zerlang, a fifth-generation Eureka boatyard owner, raised the wreckage out of Humboldt Bay and towed it to his yard.

"I planned to get drunk and burn the SOB," Zerlang said.

But the ketch's graceful lines caught his eye. Then he began dredging up its history.

"A 30-foot wooden boat sailing in the middle of the Pacific! I fell in love with her," said Zerlang.

It was the Golden Rule's peace mission that captivated Champagne. After a year of combat in Vietnam, he retreated to the hills of Humboldt County, living as a recluse with post-traumatic stress disorder. One morning in 1988, he suddenly decided to build a hospital in Vietnam.

Since then Champagne has organized 23 teams of veterans to build dozens of medical facilities, schools and homes in Vietnam. His "people-to-people diplomacy" campaign also includes driving the Kosovo Peace Bus, which held "teach-ins" in major U.S. cities; building water systems in Iraq; and organizing a 2000 trip to Cuba for the Lost Coast Pirates Little League team.

"Waging peace has saved my life," said Champagne.

He and fellow Veterans for Peace, all members of two Eureka-area chapters, plan to have the Golden Rule in the water by next spring and in San Francisco Bay in 2013, when the city hosts the America's Cup yacht races. Sailing the modest wooden ketch among some of the world's most expensive racing boats will be a reminder of the cost of war, Champagne said.

First, however, the volunteer veterans must make her seaworthy. They have completed the tedious work of removing debris and plastic foam from the bottom of the hold to determine that the keel is in good condition despite more than a half-century of wear and tear.

Once they have restored the hull, they plan to build a new deck, said Chuck DeWitt, the restoration coordinator.

One of the two masts may need to be replaced and the Golden Rule definitely needs a new motor, he said. The recent arrival of David Peterson, a master shipwright, has quickened the pace of the restoration.

The veterans' long-term plan is to sail the ketch up and down the West Coast as a floating museum preserving the history of nonviolent protest.

Eventually the Golden Rule will call on East Coast and Great Lakes ports – "anyplace in the U.S. a boat can visit," Champagne said.

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