Joshua Vissers/Daily Mining Gazette Jack and De Chamberlain spend their winters downstate in Perry and their summers in the Hancock Marina aboard their boat, Red Jacket.

It’s easy to run into Jack Chamberlain and his wife, De, during summers in Houghton and Hancock. Jack plays accordion at the Portage Lake District Library, the Hancock Tori Market, Key Ingredient in Montezuma Park and more, and De is usually nearby.

They spend summers on their boat, a Nordic Tug 32 cruiser. It looks like a small tugboat and has a distinctive red hull that earned it the name Red Jacket.

“It’s designed for salt water or fresh water,” Jack said.

Jack and De are the second owners of Red Jacket. The wife of the original owner is the great, great, great granddaughter of the man who built the Red Jacket clipper ship, which set the speed record from New York to Liverpool and was named for the famous Senaca Indian chief. The chief had a red coat given to him by the British, so settlers called him Red Jacket.

However, rather than being outfitted like a tugboat or a clipper, the Chamberlain’s Red Jacket is has all the comforts of an RV.

“It has full accomodations for cruising,” Jack said.

The inside of the tug is broken into three sections, separated by short stairways.

In the the room directly off the back is a dining room and kitchenette complete with a stove, oven, sink, microwave, refridgerator and freezer, as well as a reverse-cycle heatpump that works as both a heater and an air conditioner.

De said it was the kind of boat that would typically be used for ‘gunkholing’, or dropping anchor in small, natural coves for days at a time.

“They throw anchor and then they live independently out on their boat,” she said.

A few steps up from the kitchenette is the bridge, complete with auto pilot and the tug-style side doors onto the deck, and in front of that is the v-berth where the couple sleeps, which also has a “head” or small bathroom.

Even though they live on it for months at a time, the Chamberlain’s don’t take the boat out as much as they used to, though.

“We sailed 28 years,” De said.

“In various sail boats,” Jack added.

Jack and De both retired from the Lansing Board of Water and Light, and while they worked there, they sailed the Great Lakes. However, on longer trips when they were trying to cover distance, they found they had to use the motor as often as the sail.

“You can’t depend on the direction of the wind much in the Great Lakes,” Jack said.

So they traded in for the Red Jacket to make cruising, with its 220 hp diesel engine, on longer trips in Lake Superior simpler after they retired.

After about 3 years of cruising the Great Lakes, they felt like they had made all the trips they wanted to, and found a slip in the Hancock marina.

“So this is where we sit,” De said.

Now, they say they only take the boat out for the occassional short pleasure cruise.

On rainy days, De stays inside and works with her sewing machine or makes rubber stamps for cards, but the inside of the boat is too small to spend every day there.

“So we do a lot of music things,” De said.

Jack grew up in Houghton and took music lessons from Margaret Andrina for 11 years.

His accordion, a 1932 L. Bonvicini Special, was made especially ornate for the 1934 World’s Fair, according to Jack. He restored it himself after purchasing it in Cleveland and it has over 5,000 parts.

On Wednesday, Jack played just outside the booths of the Hancock Tori Market on the Quincy Green.

The market is open twice a week, Wednesday and Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and carries a variety of homemade and homegrown items.

Carol Bird, the market manager, said that any vendors with handcrafted items can come display their work, “no reservations needed.”

And if shoppers are lucky, they’ll catch Jack and his accordion, too.