New owners of former LeRoy’s Blue Whale put business up for sale after six months of around-the-clock work

By GARRET JAROS / Lincoln Chronicle

YACHATS – The Whales Tail Diner & Yachats Pirate Pub in Yachats – which in May replaced the popular and long enduring LeRoy’s Blue Whale – is up for sale.

After six months of working long hours, six-plus days a week through a summer that some business owners say was noticeably slow, owners Crystall and Rob Morigeau have decided to call it a day.

Rumors that it was for sale started “awhile back,” Morigeau said Tuesday. But the couple, who have made many friends in the community, assured people they were good. And yet the more time that passed, the clearer it became just how hands on they would need to be to make it work.

“I knew it was going to be a lot of work,” Morigeau said. “My wife I don’t think realized how much it took to keep this thing going, so I told her I would give it my all and see what happens. And she’s noticed that I’m just dead tired and beat. I’m in here all the time.”

Morigeau has been a jack of all trades since buying the business, including working as a cook, something he had never done before and something that ramped up this week with five shifts calling in sick.

“It’s a bigger project than what we want to deal with,” he said. “If we could step back and kind of let it run itself, that would be nice. But we just can’t do that.”

The couple moved to Yachats from Polson, Mont., last year and were going through the process to buy the Underground Pub & Grub before the deal with former owner David Lothrop fell through in the 11th hour. The business eventually sold to Dennis and Jody Griffin of La Pine.

“Sadly, the Underground just kind of really hurt us,” Morigeau said. “We lost a lot of money through that. So we’ve just kind of been battling that, trying to get back to where we were.”

The real estate listing for the Whales Tail, with an asking price of $1.2 million, posted Monday. It includes the 3,023 square foot building and the quarter-acre site along U.S. Highway 101.

“We just decided let’s go ahead and throw it up for sale and see what happens,” Morigeau said. “We’ve had some friends and people in town come in and give us some ideas of maybe revamping the place to something different, which wouldn’t be a bad idea. We even thought of things like if somebody wanted to buy the building and land, then maybe lease it back to us to keep something up and running – that’s crossed our minds.”

Its previous owners, Don and Angie Lindsley of Waldport, had the business on the market for two years before it sold.

The Morigeaus secured a liquor license and added a two-seater pub – “the smallest pub on the coast” – at the north end of the restaurant with extended hours until 8 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays. But Morigeau said it never really caught on in the community.

Morigeau, who ran a screen-printing shop for 35 years and was a firefighter for 22 years, said he is not sure what is next on the horizon. But the plan is to keep the business with its 15 employees open and running while the business is for sale.

“Business has been all right,” he said. “We’re making ends meet. I mean we’re not gaining much ground. Even other business owners tell me it’s been a slow summer. We came in listening to what everyone told us to anticipate – that it would get really busy during this weekend or when this or that would happen and I would get ready for it and then it would only be half of that. It was always a little short.”

But the main reason for placing it up for sale is “We’re beat,” he reiterated. “It’s just taken way more time than we anticipated.”

• Garret Jaros covers the communities of Yachats, Waldport, south Lincoln County and natural resources issues and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com