Wanderbird's decks

[johnw]

I've been told that the German group that bought Wanderbird is planning to rip off her fir decks and replace them with Oregon Pine. The reason this seems odd to me is that in reading about the masting of 19th century ships, I've noticed they were usually masted with Oregon Pine, which is known in the U.S. as Douglas Fir. Old growth Douglas Fir makes good decks, but it's hard to find. If they rip those old decks off and try to buy whatever is sold as 'Oregon Pine' in Europe these days, the results might not be good. I told the fellow who ran the boat that pushed Wanderbird over to Lake Union Drydock to tell the German skipper. Haven't heard how the news went over.

[Dave Fleming]

Funny that 'der skipper' didn't consult with RGM about such things????

[Bob Cleek]

Time flies and I can't remember when exactly, but the last time I walked Wanderbird's decks they looked just fine. Ya neva know, I guess. Maybe her new owners have more money than brains. Not to hurt anybody's feelin's but, yea, Warwick Tompkins did take her around the Horn and write a couple of good books about her and Sterling Hayden did plot to overthrow the guvmint along with his alleged Commie cronies what he turned coat on, and she has continued to get a lot of press, but, sheesh! Nice boat, but really just another big old schooner that Sommers and his buddies did a great job restoring. If she needs that much work, somebody must have really let her go to pot in a very few short years.

[Dave Fleming]

Cleekster, we have GOT to get together this Thanksgiving!

[RGM]

Funny this should come up. As of 4:30 PM we have removed both masts from the Elbe (Ex-Wander Bird). Over the next day and a half all of the booms, both masts and all of the rigging will be secured on her deck. Nice of the folks at the Center For Wooden Boats to have helped with the "Wander Bird" as much as they did. They did a great job assisting the owners rep, Joachim Kaiser. He is very thankful. Technically and legally she is now the "Elbe". She flies the German flag and the name Wander Bird will no longer be found on her stern. Harold Sommers (long time previous owner) flew up from San Francisco to meet Mr. Kaiser, tell him a few things about the boat and to see her off. Harold will be here thru Friday and will probably be on hand when we load the Elbe on board the Hamburg bound freighter. I appologize for not taking pictures while we un-stepped her masts. We were just so damned busy that a camera wasn't a good fit. I promise to get some of the rest of the job and make them available. Regarding the replacement of her decks with Oregon Pine, it's true. They looked serviceable to me but apparently the new owners think otherwise. They are old, weathered and have well fit graving pieces scattered everywhere. Looks perfect to me. Oh well. I couldn't resist teasing Joachim Kaiser a little when he told me about the Oregon Pine. I told him that this is the part of the world that it comes from and that no one here calls it Oregon Pine. Anyway, I'm going to introduce him to a good source of air dried Doug Fir so that he might be able to line up a decent purchase with out being bent over the anchor winch. I'll post again soon and I promise to take pictures.

[Bayboat]

Mr. Cleek: What was the connection between Sterling Hayden and Wander Bird?

[Bob Cleek]

Tell the new owner he'd be crazy to try to buy "Oregon pine" in Europe when he could grab all he needed within spitting distance of where she sits right now. Time's a wastin! They could snag a bunch of old growth Doug fir and stuff the 'Bird full of it below, more than enough to plank her decks, before she's loaded as deck cargo. Leave it off the bill of lading and the shippers and customs would never be the wiser. She's got that huge pilot boat great cabin. Set the table aside and start running it down the companionway hatch and stacking it up. I figure they'd be able to get at least 20 or 25 ft lengths in there easy! LOL

Yea, Dave, we gotta do it. All my old time sailing buddies are either dead or turned into bar stool skippers. I don't have the energy I once did myself. Getting the boat ready to sail again, though. Maybe even by Thanksgiving, if I can dodge the "honey-do" jobs long enough. Funny thing, nostalgia. It gets ya to thinking. There was this lapse in the continuum back in the late sixties, early seventies. As you well know first hand, the bottom dropped out of the maritime industry, big ships and little boats alike. The old timers held on somewhat, but they never passed on the trade and with it the lifestyle, because nobody wanted to learn a craft that had no future. (Well, maybe almost nobody... there were a very few of us nuts that had some weed-induced romantic notion of carrying on family traditions.) Now, the game is getting hot again, particularly with wooden pleasure boats. Everybody is hankering for skilled woodbutchers, riggers, corkers and so on. Most who can do it at all are kids who have taught themselves, some even by reading back issues of WB. I only know one old timer boatbuilder left alive now who actually served a West Coast apprenticeship. I used to know of whole boatyards full of them. You'd think that when a guy like Lester Stone or Myron Spaulding passed on, there'd be somebody to take the torch from him on his deathbed and make a smooth transition. Instead, there's just a few interested kids who found the old burned out torch and are trying to figure out how to light it again. You can always build replica wooden boats and ships, but I don't know if we can ever recapture the lifestyle and culture that used to be the waterfront. I don't know that you can even smell coffee roasting on the Embarcadero anymore, unless it's coming from a Starbuck's. You damn sure can't find copra or a cargo of hides! The Eagle Cafe is now an overpriced tourist trap.

Ah, Sterling Hayden. Well, the guy was a legend in his own time and this is hearsay, but, as the story goes... After Wanderbird settled down in Sausalito at Herb Madden's harbor downtown, maybe in the mid-fifties or so, she was pretty tired. Tompkins had pretty much used her up and she was probably a "beater" to start with, the German pilots having retired her before he got her. She just sat and started (or already was) rotting away. Her spars (as the story goes) became a hazard they were so shot and so they just chopped them off at the stump. Didn't pull them or anything. That's how I remember first seeing her. They had built a deckhouse sort of tar paper shack on her stern and she was basically a houseboat like a lot of other derelicts down there back then. Now the story is that there were a bunch of good, hard working types you find around the docks, and they used to hang out on her and party back when. They were all of a mind to support the working stiff, but not above letting a rich guy hang with them if he could talk the talk, which Hayden could, because he was originally a schooner hand from decent seafaring stock. So this crew would drink and talk politics and of course, being good members of the ILWU and the Seamen's Union of the Pacific, or at least eligible for membership if they paid their dues, they were a little left of center, if ya' get my drift. Back then, that made you a target for a bunch of Unamerican bullies who used to jack people up in kangaroo court hearings and demand to know if, "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" Most answered like any good sailor might when some punk got in his face. Others, Sterling Hayden and Ronald Reagan among them, started flapping their jibs... Now unlike Ronnie, Sterling felt absolutely terrible about it. We're talking a real "Fisher King Wound" kind of feeling. A man brought low by a moment of weakness and fear... a "Profile of Cowardice" rather than courage. Carried that cross around with him the rest of his life, even though most all of his friends forgave him for it, or at least acted like they did when I saw them together. That's the way the story goes, but I wasn't there so I can't swear to it.

[Dave Fleming]

Well said Cleekster, Well said...
If ya wasn't there, put a zipper on yer lipper.
Ya folla?

[Bayboat]

Yep, Dave, in this case the lip ought to be zipped. I doubt that there was all that roistering aboard the Wander Bird while she was laid up at Madden's. Warwick built that shack to give his family with two young kids more space while they all lived aboard. He was a pretty straight-laced guy, and his allowing such goings on in his home just doesn't ring true. I sailed in and out of Sausalito a lot in those days, and although Sterling and his gang partied a lot I never was aware it was aboard Wander Bird. Sterling had his own boat(s)for partying, and I suspect that was where the roistering took place. Or in bars, with which Sausalito was well endowed. During the unamerican activities committee days he was called up because of his Hollywood connections as an actor, not because he was in a hotbed of reds in Sausalito.

[Dave Fleming]

Bay, them's comments were NOT directed at the Cleekster but at those that made and still make up stories about those times.
In other words, if ya weren't there zip the lip.
Too much of that stuff is already in the air about too many things.

I was not there. I came on the scene vicariously in the 1960's when Harold already had the vessel and the piece bye piece restoration was underway. It was my understanding that Harold bought it from some people other than Thompkins, true?

Hayden when in town, usually to see his dentist, would be a frequent visitor aboard the 'bird'.
I never wanted nor was I included in the drinking bouts that did go on at night up the pier at the bar. But from what little I gleaned, Hayden was less than happy with his life, God Help Him. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to read between the lines of VOYAGE to get a sense of what he might have been feeling those last years.
Now on a similar note, recall the ferry boat on the mud down towards the old Marin Ship site? Was there not a cafe or diner or similar on board that was open till the wee hours and served a killer breakfast? Or am I just dreaming in my dotage?

[Bob Cleek]

Nope, you're not dreaming, Dave. That was Juanita's Galley on the old Charles Van Damm, run by Juanita Munson, a lady who revelled in her own ill repute. LOL Quite a character. Everybody knew her. As I remember, there was a fire and everything got destroyed. She then opened another place similar to it in Benica. It also was destroyed by a fire. Then she opened another place in Glen Ellen in Sonoma and... yea, I think it burned down, too. Juanita's was always having fires.

Juanita's places were always full of characters and she was the biggest character of them all. She must have weighed 300 pounds if she was an ounce and most of that was topside. She used to enjoy picking out some Casper Milktoast guy and come up behind him when he was eating and lay one boob on one shoulder and the other on the other side of the guy and then kiss him on the head. Her places always had chickens and goats and monkeys running all over the place. Her place in Glen Ellen had a big upstairs bedroom she tricked out with a huge Victorian bed and she'd hold court up there like Mae West... demanded all her customers come upstairs and say hello before they left. If you complained about Juanita's food, you were likely to end up wearing it, but then, nobody ever complained about Juanita's food except the health department, which was always shutting her down. Don't know what happened to her. I guess she died. (The foregoing is true and correct to the best of my recollection. I WAS there! LOL)

I DID say I was relating scuttlebutt... not fact about Hayden and Wanderbird. Repeatedly. (I wouldn't have said anything, but that he's dead and Wanderbird's sold off to nobody I know.) Still and all, I don't remember ever getting the impression that Tompkins had Wanderbird during the times in question. My sense of it was she was sold by him long before Hal Sommers saved her. Warwick was around there during those times, but I don't think he had the boat then. His son, Commodore, is still working on boats in Sausalito, or was a few years ago.

[Dave Fleming]

Ah Cleekster ye have had me holding my breath all day
Juanita's that's the name. The rest I take your word for at least in the Sausalito setting. I was ahem, a bit full of the Myers bye the time I would be taken, escorted, led to Juanita's, if ya folla?

The place in Glen Ellen, I think I was there too!
I have a hazy memory of a Tequila afternoon and night at some dive that gave the impression of a 1900's bordello on the Barbary Coast but instead of crimps it was Hells Angels in attendance.
A bit north of the Mental Hospital on a country intersection comes to mind.
Dearest SWIMPAL had to come and get me for I was waaaaay to far gone to drive that evening.
Mea Cupia Mea Culpia.
About the food well...I think there was lots of it as to the taste, quality etc., I have no comment for obvious reasons.

On the Wanderbird/Hayden side of things.
I too am of the belief that Thomkins was way out of the picture when Harold bought the 'bird'.
Something about 'alternative lifestyles' types owning it, sticks in my mind. The shack on deck was to the best of my recollection the first thing to go over the side after Harold and Anna Lisa took possession.

As far as left of center thinking in those days.
Hell Bezerkeley has been in the middle of that for donkeys years nothing new there and Warwick was connected with the Univ. was he not?
Hayden had a life, his own life as much as a person could who was seemingly thrust upon the public stage without an apprenticeship.
One day some kid on the mast of a Gloucester Schooner the next married to Madeline Carrol a big movie star and then WW II and the OSS and then back to La La Land aka Hollywood and on from there.
Me, I say let the man be, he is dead but let his writings speak for him and for me they SHOUT.
Good stuff there, or so says I.

[ 08-23-2002, 03:02 PM: Message edited by: Dave Fleming ]

[martin schulz]

Well - actually I am historically not firm enough to know weather they used "Oregon Pine" back then 1881 at Stülcken in Hamburg.

But I know that the Elbe 3 now called Atalanta has German Oak as planks as well as for the Deck.

Last week I actually met the Atalanta . we were both hasting to get into the Wismar (a pretty nice city in former East-Germany, located at the Baltic) harbour. They were there before the storm broke loose and we decided to tie up alongside because neither of us could see farther than 2 meter. But the crew was very much desinteressted in other Gaff-rigged Boats and vanished from the Atalanta right away - but not without telling us that their ship was on a private locked pier and we should have to go elsewhere to stay.

Well - I don't know. when I heard that the Wander Bird will come back to Germany I was delighted by the idea that perhaps the Elbe 5 and the Elbe 3 could race against each other. And now - the Atalanta ex Elbe 3 lies in the Baltic and the Elbe 5 ex Wander Bird might even ly in Hamburg (at the Elbe - ending in the North Sea) and might even become a museumship that will never be sailed (thats what someone sugested in this forum).