A long-term dream, realized in miniature

It was 1992 and Larry Bernbeck was working as a trucker in the Lower 48 when he attended a boat show in Lake Tahoe. He remembers being struck by the variety of thoughtful details present in the small boat replicas, which included historical battleships, oil tankers and tugboats.

“Any kind of boat you possibly think of made on a miniature scale, like this one,” Bernbeck said. “There was a Navy destroyer. The guy named had four turrets in the front, four in the back, and they all lit up. It was the USS Missouri. Looked like the real thing. Took this guy about six years to build.”

Bernbeck said that when you crawled on the inside of the boat, there were shotgun rifle barrels sticking out that would move individually. The boatmaker had fabricated a drawstring where blank shotgun shells could fire off one at a time. Noting the creativity and attention to detail, Bernbeck was inspired to someday build his own, smaller version of a full-size boat.

Years before — in 1985 while fishing in Alaska — he had snapped a picture of a tugboat he was drawn to. Thirty-eight years later, that photo guided him through the process of building his boat, which he’s affectionately named “Tugster.”

The total cost of materials for the build was around $700 and Bernbeck did all the labor himself, starting on June 16, 2023. After taking about a year off from the project, he finished the build this May. Tugster is a flat-bottom boat and measures 14 feet, 10 inches.

Bernbeck’s creativity shines through in the intricate details present in Tugster. He purchased wheelbarrow tires meant to imitate the larger tires present on the tug from the photo. He built a model radio, a winch with a thin chain, a functioning horn, and even a little engine stack.

The boat is pieced together like a puzzle, Bernbeck said, with no screws and mostly nails holding it together. The exterior of the tug is made of plywood and the interior is mostly cedar, gleaming warmly in the sunlight. Small, circular porthole windows give the tug its classic look, along with two larger, blue-tinted windows that can slide open and down. A recycled lawn mower engine — discovered at the Homer Landfill and refurbished — serves as an engine for the little tug.

“You gotta use your imagination,” he said.

Bernbeck said he doesn’t intend to make another boat in the future; Tugster is his long-term dream, realized. He did say he’d be willing to talk to others about the building process. A former woodworker in Oregon, Bernbeck said he used three main tools to construct the boat: a jigsaw, a skill saw and a drill. No sealing was done to the boat, only caulking.

As far as a launch date, Bernbeck said he’s still unsure when he’ll attempt taking the wooden tug into the bay, but looks forward to using it as a “retirement toy.”

Larry Bernbeck holds out a photo he took in 1985 that inspired the building of Tugster on Thursday, June 5, 2025 in Homer, Alaska. (Chloe Pleznac/Homer News)