Matthew Rhys never planned on buying an old wooden boat that would take four years, tens of thousands of dollars and quite a bit of his own manual labor to restore. But one night he was drinking whiskey and clicking through eBay, and, well, one thing led to another.
Asked if there had been a bidding war for his 1930s Wheeler Playmate — Ernest Hemingway famously owned one — Mr. Rhys laughed so hard that he did an actual spit take.
“No, and I’ll tell you very simply why. Because anyone who knows boats won’t go near a wooden boat,” he said. “And the people who I knew who do have boats, when I said, ‘I’ve bought a wooden boat,’ would say, ‘What? You idiot.’”
But Mr. Rhys and his partner, the actress Keri Russell, happen to enjoy chartering wooden boats. They even celebrated Ms. Russell’s 40th birthday aboard one. Mr. Rhys is also a big fan of the 1930s — he’s currently playing the era’s most famous attorney, Perry Mason, on HBO — as well as of Mr. Hemingway. (Mr. Rhys also loves Hemingway puns: He named his charter company Moveable Feast NYC, and its website asks, “For whom the boat tours?”)
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