The Perfect Storm (2000)

"In December of ‘98, a call went out and the search started for a vessel similar to the Andrea Gail," recalls marine coordinator Doug Merrifield. "The original was an eastern rig longliner built in Panama City, Florida. In January of ‘99 we’d found a couple of candidates we liked and, in March, we finally purchased the Lady Grace, a sister ship to the Andrea Gail, out of Ocean City, Maryland."

The art department painted the Lady Grace to transform her into the Andrea Gail and the boat, with a crew of four men, set off for Los Angeles, where filming was to begin in June. When an actor’s prior commitments pushed the start of production back to July, the determination was simultaneously made to shoot that portion of the seafaring segments at the end of the film’s schedule rather than at the beginning.

So, after journeying from Maryland to Cape May, New Jersey (where she received her makeover), through the Panama Canal to Southern California, the Lady Grace had to then turn around and head back to the eastern seaboard. She docked in Gloucester and awaited the cast and crew’s arrival there in early September.

But her voyage didn’t end there.

At the end of the Gloucester portion of filming, the Lady Grace and her crew set off again for Southern California. This time, she encountered Hurricane Lenny around Cuba and had to seek harbor in the Caribbean for three days. The boat ran into more bad weather shortly after passing through the canal and had to pull up again, this time for repairs, in El Salvador. Grace and crew arrived in Dana Point Harbor approximately six weeks after they had left Gloucester. There, she worked daily, most often supporting the entire cast and crew on her decks.

The Lady Grace’s movie debut had taken her a distance of over 16,000 miles.

Finally, after finishing filming in California, the boat, now property of Warner Bros., was given a home in Southern California, where she stands ready for Hollywood’s next call.

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