'People's boat' community message board

Vessel was washed into marsh by Hurricane Hugo in 1989

Kristen Hankla
The Post and Courier

Erika Perry (left) recently painted the boat for Ashley Jo Slagel.

Kristen Hankla
The Post and Courier

Charlotte Hacker (right) and Shannon Reilly spray paint the boat on Folly Road last week to commemorate their high school graduation.

Kristen Hankla
The Post and Courier

Shannon Reilly paints over a candidate's message left over from last week's election to add her own.

The marsh grass glows yellow green as the sun sinks behind the old boat's stern. Fiddler crabs dip into dark holes as flip-flopped feet shuffle around it.

The two graffiti artists don't spend long on their project — commemorating their high school graduation with purple spray paint. They know it won't be long before another message obscures theirs.

After all, this is "the people's boat."

For nearly 20 years, the vessel has sat by Folly Road, acting as a message board for anyone who wants to use it.

It has celebrated birthdays, professed love, memorialized the dead. It has proposed marriage and congratulated new parents. It has campaigned for candidates and advertised public hearings.

One October, the 40-foot-long boat was painted pink, to remind people of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Exactly one year ago, it was painted black, with the names of nine firefighters written in white.

Ask locals if any boat art sticks out in their minds, and they'll likely tell you about the whales.

"The best one I've ever seen was a gorgeous painting of a whale," said William Hampton of Folly Beach. "It looked like something that could come out of a gallery."

The painting was so well-liked, it stayed more than a week (a long time for this community message board), and stirred debate among residents, some of whom thought it should not be painted over.

Clearly it was. A boatload of messages has followed.

One of the most recent was painted by Erika Perry in the night.

It took her about five minutes to roll white latex paint over the boat's port side, and another 10 minutes to spray the red words, "Ashley Jo, Want to be my Girlfriend?"

The next day she drove to the boat with Ashley Jo Slagel, who said yes.

Perry's tips for writing a successful message: "Put a date on it. That way, what you create doesn't get destroyed in the same day. Most people are going to be a little courteous about it."

Also, she adds, "Make it bright and pretty."

The James Island resident called the city of Folly Beach beforehand to find out the rules of painting the boat and if there was a fee.

It's a call City Hall is accustomed to, and those who answer the phone will ask that you simply pick up your trash and not paint profanity. But Folly Beach has no jurisdiction over the boat.

Land adjacent to the boat was recently annexed into the city, but the boat rests in the road right of way maintained by the state Department of Transportation, said Aaron Pope, the city's zoning administrator.

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control also has kept an eye on the boat since part of it sits in the marsh.

In 1999, the agency removed at least 1,000 pounds of paint cans and other trash from in and around the boat. It talked about moving the boat since further debris left by boat artists could harm the marsh.

That's when Hampton, the owner of a landscaping business, offered to maintain the boat and surrounding area. His company did so for two or three years, until the boat became too dangerous to climb in, Hampton said.

Now, the hull has been covered, keeping trash out and adding another, though less visible, canvas for painting.

The city has been informally maintaining the boat, Pope said.

For some, the nameless boat is a reminder of a name that changed their lives: Hugo.

The 1989 hurricane transported the boat to its current location, facing east. No one knows where it came from, but it's said to be a World War II lifeboat.

"Right where she sits is where she sat since September '89," said Vernon Knox, the former mayor of Folly Beach.

He recalls seeing the boat next to the road when he returned home after the storm. It's lucky the boat wasn't in the road, or it could have been carted away, he said.

"It wasn't there two weeks before somebody started painting it," Knox said.

Now coated in layer upon layer of paint, the brightly colored boat somehow fits here. The messages change almost as often as the tides, but the boat has become a comforting constant.

"Elkton Seniors 2008," the work of the flip-flopped girls, is gone by the time the sun sets again, and the boat celebrates a "Folly family reunion."

Reach Kristen Hankla at 937-5548 or khankla@postandcourier.com.