Lavengro by the Numbers
- Original Name: Helen
- Launched: 1926
- Designer & Builder: J.D. Covacevich
- Owner: Thomas Bayne Denègre
- Sparred Length: 63 feet
- Length on Deck: 48 feet
- Beam: 14.5 feet
- Draft: 5 feet
- Weight: 22 tons
- Sail area: 1370 square feet
- Speed under power: 6 knots
- Hull speed: 8.2 knots
The Northwest Schooner Society
The Northwest Schooner Society trains sailors, boatwrights, and educators who believe maritime traditions offer timeless wisdom for modern life. We hold that success comes through collaboration—by caring for one another, we ensure our own safety; by understanding nature, we harness its power for collective good.
Founded in 1994, NWSS provides authentic seamanship experiences aboard our schooner Lavengro and the privately owned Zodiac. Our volunteers maintain these vessels while teaching traditional sailing skills around the clock. Each spring, we partner with Schooner Zodiac to offer scholarships for high school students, teaching sail theory, navigation, environmental stewardship, teamwork, and self-confidence through hands-on maritime experience.
Beyond sailing, NWSS volunteers are restoring the historic 1906 Burrows Island Light Station near Anacortes, Washington. We operate primarily through volunteer dedication and individual donations received during Lavengro's public appearances.
The Northwest Schooner Society is a Charitable Organization a non-profit corporation in Washington State.
Websites:
Books, Seafaring yarns
In 2026, the Schooner Lavengro celebrates her 100-year anniversary! Help celebrate by making a donation, or joining us our sails or events this year!
Major hull refit completed, ensuring another 80+ years of sailing and education programs.
Unable to give the Lavengro the care she deserved, Jones and Maui Classic Charters began looking for a new home for the schooner. They found the Northwest Schooner Society, which had a strong track record for restoring old ships, and in 2000 sailed her across the Pacific to Seattle to donate her to the Society.
**In an odd case of “small world syndrome,” when she transited the Ballard Locks to her new home in Lake Union, the owner of the sailboat ahead of the Lavengro was wearing a Lavengro t-shirt from her time in Hawaii.
In the mid‑1980s, Thomas Denegre Jr. spotted a United Airlines photo of a schooner in Maui and instantly recognized it as his family’s old Helen, thanks to a unique feature: her main mast had been stepped two feet forward to accommodate the original Buffalo engine’s 17‑foot propeller shaft. That unusual mast placement still distinguishes her from the two replica Biloxi schooners—the Glenn L. Swetman and the Mike Sekul—owned by the Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum.
In 1970, Leslie and Byram Bates bought the Lavengro to sail to Hawaii via the Panama Canal, but after drifting for weeks in the doldrums with a broken engine and relying on Coast Guard supply drops, they finally reached Hawaii—where they divorced and sold the boat to Peter Jones.
Jones planned to sail to Tahiti, but less than a year later the Lavengro broke free from a faulty mooring off Maui and ran aground, tearing a huge hole in her port side. After spending a year and a half rebuilding her in a Maui boatyard, Jones and his family eventually reached Tahiti and later used the Lavengro for a Hawaii-based charter business.
Renamed "Lavengro" by owner Robert Wilson - a Romani word meaning "lover of words."
Sailed extensively in the Gulf of Mexico and up the eastern seaboard by a series of families. She eventually ended up in Connecticut, where Denegre’s son, Thomas Denegre Jr., ran across her in the mid-50s.
During World War II, the Helen was loaned to the US Coast Guard station in Biloxi, where she was used as a sail training and patrol vessel.
Originally built as the Helen in 1926, she is a 2/3rds scale yacht on the lines of the Biloxi shrimp and oyster schooners of the early 1900s. She was built in Back Bay, Biloxi, Mississippi by famed Biloxi schooner shipwright J.D. “Jackie-Jack” Covacevich, for the family of Thomas Bayne Denegre. Although the majority of the fleet were built and used for fishing operations on the Gulf, the Helen never fished commercially, instead being sailed and occasionally raced by the Denegre family on the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ponchartrain.