Donald Thibeault Jr., Restorer of Wooden Boats, Dies at 70

BY TOM RECCHIO MAR 13, 2024 Provincetown Independent

Wooden boat restorer Donald Andrew Thibeault, Jr., who learned his skills at Flyer’s Boatyard in Provincetown, died at his home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. on Feb. 23, 2024. He had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in early January; he and his wife, Kathleen, spent his last 45 days with “deepening closeness,” she said. Don was 70.

Don learned boat building as a teenager and nearly 50 years later worked for Moores Marine on the restoration of John F. Kennedy’s presidential yacht Honey Fitz in West Palm Beach.

The son of Donald Andrew Thibeault and Marie Allene (Smith) Thibeault, Don was born on Sept. 9, 1953 in Coudersport, Pa. He grew up on various farms where his father worked, one being an experimental high-altitude truck farm that grew peaches and potatoes in industrial quantities. Don learned to farm by helping his father grow food for the family. A love for the land, and later the sea, never left him. Read more…..