Raising money to educate youngsters about traditional boats and skills
Issue 21 : Nov/Dec 2001
Below center, future master mariners are underway. Model makers test their newly completed craft. At right, Barbara, owned by Robert Klemmedson, was designed by John Alden and built by Ed Fish. Construction was begun in 1928. She was launched in 1932.
About three dozen boats were on display at the Eighth Annual Master Mariners Boat Show in June at the Corinthian Yacht Club on San Francisco Bay. The Master Mariners Benevolent Association was founded in 1867 as a friendly race between crews of working ships and a way to raise money for the orphans and widows of men lost at sea. The association languished from the 1920s to the 1960s until Bill Vaughan revived the association to preserve traditional sailing craft. Craig Swayne conceived the idea of having an annual fundraiser in addition to the regatta that Bill had revived.
According to Craig, specific boats, not their caretakers, must achieve membership in the association: “To qualify to be a master mariner, the boat must be carvel-planked. No plywood hulls need apply.” The other exclusion involves racing: no boats with actively raced classes can join. “We do make some exceptions to that rule,” Craig adds, “We allow Bears, Golden Gates, and Birds because, after all, they are indigenous to San Francisco Bay.” Craig is the caretaker (as owners are known) of Black Witch, a Ralph Winslow design built in Newport Beach in 1949 of cedar, oak, and Honduras mahogany.
These days, the fundraising is aimed at educating youngsters about traditional boats and boatbuilding skills. Part of the education takes place at the show itself where youngsters build wooden models, a very popular activity during the show. Profits from the show fund trips for youngsters on the official state sailing ship, the Californian, a replica revenue cutter, and scholarships to the Arques School of Traditional Boat Building in Sausalito.
Among the boats on display were classic workboats, including the hay scow, Alma, a boat once used to haul supplies to and from San Francisco in the late 19th century. The National Maritime Park, which owns the scow, also displayed a replica of an Italian fishing boat, a brightly colored seagoing butterfly called a felucca. Italian fishermen spent several days at sea on diminutive craft of this type in pursuit of fish. The boat is deceptively simple to the eye, but is reportedly complicated to sail, as the base of the mast is moved fore and aft each time the boat tacks (see photos on Page 73).
To walk the docks at the Master Mariners boat show is to be overwhelmed by the lore and history of sailing. For someone brought up in a marina of fiberglass and plastic, the business of sailing and maintaining a wooden classic is a whole different world. The boats at the Master Mariners carry with them a three-dimensional picture of a world previously glimpsed only through the eyes of an author, perhaps Erskine Calder, working out the riddle of his North Sea sands; or Frank Mulville, crossing the Atlantic alone in his ancient gaff cutter, Iskra; or Sterling Hayden, sneaking off to the South Pacific aboard Wanderer with his children.
Michael and his wife, Layne, recently completed a trip from Santa Cruz, Calif., to Key West, Fla., in their Gemini catamaran, Miki G. Michael lived and cruised aboard a Flicka for 10 years.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
