Mystic — Among its many projects, the shipyard at Mystic Seaport Museum has built a replica of the Amistad and restored the whaling ship Charles W. Morgan, steamship Sabino and the Mayflower II.

Now it's planning to restore its first seafood restaurant.

The 142-foot-long fishing schooner Sherman Zwicker, which now operates as the Grand Banks oyster bar on the Hudson River in New York City, arrived at the museum this fall with plans for a multiyear restoration.

Plans call for the shipyard to work on the 77-year-old boat each winter and then have it return in April to its berth at Pier 25 in Hudson River Park so it can operate during the summer and fall. Much of the work will occur below the waterline.

"We've had amazing run so far with all kinds of accolades and awards, but it's time to do some significant maintenance so it can last another 20 to 30 years," said Alex Pincus, who acquired the boat in 2014 with his brother Miles, made some modifications and opened the restaurant.

Pincus, who owns a marina and a boat restoration business with his brother, said having the work done at Mystic Seaport makes sense. 

"It's the best place to go. They have the most experience when it comes to wooden ships," he said.

The brothers also own four other restaurants including Pilot, a 1924 schooner/oyster bar docked at Brooklyn Bridge Park. 

Pincus said the Sherman Zwicker was built in 1942 in Nova Scotia using the same plans as its famous sister ship, the racing ship and fishing vessel Bluenose. 

It spent 20 years fishing for cod on the Grand Banks, hence the oyster bar name. It also would sail to South America carrying a cargo of salt-cured fish, returning with a hold full of salt. It then was sold to a local fisherman, who ran it for five years before it fell into disrepair. 

In 1969, a captain from Maine then restored the ship as a traveling museum vessel that attended tall ship festivals and visited ports along the East Coast. For almost 30 years, it was docked each summer at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, Maine.

In 2014, the Sherman Zwicker was gifted to the to the Maritime Foundation, a nonprofit group established by the Pincus brothers to generate funds to support maritime conservation, education and preservation. Since then it has raised more than $100,000 "to preserve at-risk historic vessels, to restore healthy rivers, and to develop oyster habitats in New York Harbor," according to the Grand Banks website, grandbanks.nyc. 

Chris Gasiorek, Mystic Seaport's vice president of watercraft preservation and programs, said one of the major benefits of the project is that it will allow the museum shipyard to retain the team of skilled shipwrights it had assembled for the soon-to-be-completed restoration of the Mayflower II and serve as a bridge to the restoration of the museum's own L.A. Dunton fishing schooner in 2021.

Without the Sherman Zwicker project, he said the museum would have had to let most or all of those workers go. 

Gasiorek said the Sherman Zwicker is the longest ship the museum has hauled out of the water and required the shipyard to construct a special cradle for it. He said initial work will repair leaks in the hull, but having the ship out of the water also will allow the shipyard staff to survey the vessel to see exactly what work has to be done.

Gasiorek said the project will make the Sherman Zwicker a stronger, safer vessel, as it needs to withstand waves and boat wakes in the Hudson River.

He added the museum hopes to also perform upcoming work on the Pilot, pilotbrooklyn.com, the Pincus brothers' other floating restaurant.

j.wojtas@theday.com