For La Center’s Phil Kinsella, the 80-foot-long Navy boat sitting on property in La Center is both a source of pride and pain.
His son, Tom Kinsella, restored the Mark V Special Operations Craft before his passing in April 2023. The La Center native, who worked as a tug boat and dredge operator, took on the project after his employer, Alaska Marine Excavation, challenged him to restore the former Navy boat.
“He was always good at taking on things that were difficult to do,” Phil Kinsella said of his son, adding that Tom always believed that he could accomplish anything. “He was always very mechanically inclined and could solve any mechanical problem — quite amazing actually.”
One of those problems was moving the boat from its previous location in Little Creek, Virginia to La Center.
First, Tom Kinsella secured permits to move the boat in each of the states through which it traveled on its route west. The actual trip from Virginia to La Center took around six to seven weeks.
Once the US Navy boat reached its new post-service base in the Highland area near La Center, Tom restored the vessel with the help of others, including a crew member from the U.S. Navy Special Boat Team-20, which owned the boat before it was retired from service. The U.S. Special Warfare Command used the Mark V Special Operations Craft from 1995 to 2013. The U.S. Navy Special Boat Team-20 was a frontline unit in Iraqi Freedom in 2003 and continues to serve in the war on terrorism, Warboats.org states.
“The commander at the [Navy] Seal base said that [Tom] would never make it happen and my son just looked at him and said, ‘watch me,’ ” Phil Kinsella, Tom’s father, said. “My son [was] a real can-do individual.”
After being stripped down to nearly just a shell, the crew needed to make the watercraft seaworthy once again. The project included fixing the two 2,285 horsepower engines, adding radar, radios and a number of other items to make the boat legal to meet United States Coast Guard standards
Tom Kinsella met the challenge before his death but did not live to see the restored boat reach its final destination of Alaska, where it will be used as a veteran fishing retreat, Phil Kinsella said.
Currently, however, the boat’s voyage is stalled but is slated to resume its journey via the Columbia River this month or in April.
Phil Kinsella added he looks forward to seeing his son’s work come to fruition when it reaches water once again, as it will mark the successful conclusion of his son’s final project.
“When you think about it, the only way I could explain it — there’s an empty, helpless feeling you get because you can’t get him back and you never see him again unless it’s in heaven,” Phil Kinsella said.
