Looking For Southwind/sartartia

[MIKE COLLER]

I Am Looking For Any Inforlmation On The 85ft Alden Designed Schooner Southwind. Once Named Sartartia And Owned By Cowboy Star Buck Jones. Buck Sailed Her In The 1936 Transpac Race My Mother And Father Went As Part Of The Crew (mom Was A Stowaway And Found On The 3rd Day Of The Race) Sartartia Was Sold To George Brent( Once Married To Ann Southern And He Changed The Name To Southwind And Sailed Her In The 1947 Transpac. Brent Sole Southwind To Jack H. Rumbland And He Sailed The Big Schooner To The Southseas In The Early 50's Southwind Was Last Known To Be Somewhere Near Corpus Christi Texas In 1977 Anyone With Any News Or Information ??? Thanks Mike Coller

[hbdanvers]

I Am Looking For Any Inforlmation On The 85ft Alden Designed Schooner Southwind. Once Named Sartartia And Owned By Cowboy Star Buck Jones. Buck Sailed Her In The 1936 Transpac Race My Mother And Father Went As Part Of The Crew (mom Was A Stowaway And Found On The 3rd Day Of The Race) Sartartia Was Sold To George Brent( Once Married To Ann Southern And He Changed The Name To Southwind And Sailed Her In The 1947 Transpac. Brent Sole Southwind To Jack H. Rumbland And He Sailed The Big Schooner To The Southseas In The Early 50's Southwind Was Last Known To Be Somewhere Near Corpus Christi Texas In 1977 Anyone With Any News Or Information ??? Thanks Mike Coller

Hello, Mike. I am Hollis Danvers, of New Braunfels, Tx. hbdanvers@sbcglobal.net I just read your 5-yr-old posting. Southwind was purchased either in late 1963 or early 1964 by Doyle Downey of Houston, Tx. He bought the boat, and a steel-hulled Alden named Patrician at the same time in Newport Beach. He sent both boats through the Panama Canal to Galveston, Tx. I found them there in early May, 1964. They were in the Galveston Shrimp Basin, across the jetty from the Galveston Yacht Club, which was too shallow for them. A new captain had just opened Southwind and was taking on crew. Patrician was waiting for sails from Gulfport, Ms. I hired on as deckhand at age 24. After two weeks, we took Southwind on a shakedown and publicity cruise to Aransas Pass, Tx, where Southwind was photographed for the cover of the weekly magazine supplement of the Houston Chronicle. Next we motored to Miami, and then on to New York. Southwind had carpentry and electronics upgrades at Minneford Boat Yard, in City Island. In August we sailed to Newport and joined the spectator fleet for the America's Cup Races. Hurricane Gladys closed all middle Atlantic ports for a week or so. After that, we sailed to Hamilton, Bermuda, and on to St. Thomas, USVI, and English Harbour, Antigua, where we joined the Nicholson charter fleet for the eastern Caribbean. During the winter of 1964 we sailed to St. Maarten, St. Barthelemy, Guadaloupe, Martinique, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, the Grenadines, Barbados and Greneda. In Barbados we were hauled and bottom-cleaned in the British dry-dock built in 1893. Then we sailed back up the Grenadines to Tobago Keys (St. Vincent). We had Christmas day and New Year's day in Bequia. I left Southwind New Year's eve 1964.

I saw the boat one more time, sometime in the 1970's, again in Galveston. She had become a walk-on tourist attraction up on blocks at Galveston Sea World. A storm hit Galveston, and Southwind sank in her slip. She was sold for salvage and destroyed. That's all I know. I have just finished a short story about my time aboard Southwind. It is called The Glass Factory. I am presently submitting it for magazine publication. After all the rejections come in, I will put the story in the Amazon Kindle Store, where you will find it for sale.

I wish I had better news for you, but there it is. Best wishes, Hollis

[hbdanvers]

This post is to Chuck Glazerman.
I got an email from Woodenboat Forum, showing your post to the South Wind thread, or so I thought. Looking at the Woodenboat thread today, I do not see your post. Also, I do not see my reply to your post, also posted to this thread. Apparently I don't know enough about how this forum works.

One thing I learned last night. When I replied to your post, the reply window included the quote of your post and included it in the wordcount of my post. I could not understand why my short post exceeded Woodenboat's limit of 2,000 words, until I finally thought to delete the quote. Meanwhile, I had shortened my post reply to you until there was almost nothing left of it.

I wanted to say more, and here is some of what I wanted to say. I photographed only two people on board South Wind: Richard Trescott, and you. I never got a picture of either John Cronholm or Anne Knowles Cronholm. I remember a crew mate named, I think, Bart Byers, who had curly blonde hair. But I did not get a pic of him. Also I can not think of the name of any other crew mates. I am very glad you have posted to this thread, and I look forward to an email from you, where there is no word limit. Again hbdanvers@sbcglobal.net

[cglazerman]

Hollis

I, too, recall a fellow named Bart who worked the deck. He was very keen on learning from Capt. John and would be right out there for the 4 PM sight whatever the sea state. When we ran into the full gale coming into Bermuda, I recall Bart jumping down on the anchor chain to try and tie something off while we watched from above. Think Bart was already part of the crew before I signed on at City Island for the run up to the Cup Races. I had come down from Boston for the interview and I guess I got the job because I knew just enough to be trainable in the ways of John and Ann e.g. They wanted the lines secured all the same way and not 10 different versions... Sent some pics your way. Unfortunately I don't have any with crew members.

[hbdanvers]

Chuck, your post to thread noted. Look forward to email with pics. Did you see the pics I sent you?
Hollis

[johngsandusky]

Fascinating updates. Thank you both for posting.

[cglazerman]

Yes...Its taken close to 50 years to close the loop on what, for us young guys, was an experience of a life time! Folks still try to picture me as a young, tanned, bearded deck hand aboard a classic schooner plying the Caribbean waters. The nice part of this is the memories are still with us and spark the tall tales of our many adventures working the sails, meeting interesting folks and sharing the boating life with our shipmates. Hard to beat...

[hbdanvers]

Hello, John Sandusky
Thanks for joining us in the South Wind thread. Hope you will email me.
hbdanvers@sbcglobal.net
Hollis Danvers

[cglazerman]

Good news! I've found 18 35mm color slides of the SOUTH WIND taken while she was at a Miami boat yard circa 1969. These slides were the originals from which I made some black and white prints. The nice thing is SOUTH WIND will now be available to us in full color. The blues and white of the salon and the colors of the deck do bring the memories to life. I'll take the slides into the photo shop this coming week to get them transferred to digital. Will advise.

[cglazerman]

Good news! I've found 18 35mm color slides of the SOUTH WIND taken while she was at a Miami boat yard circa 1969. These slides were the originals from which I made some black and white prints. The nice thing is SOUTH WIND will now be available to us in full color. The blues and white of the salon and the colors of the deck do bring the memories to life. I'll take the slides into the photo shop this coming week to get them transferred to digital. Will advise.

Make the date of the available slides 1966. One slide is of Captain John and his late wife Ann.

[hbdanvers]

Hi, Chuck

The fisherman staysail is a complicated rig. Halyard is on the main, sail is on stay to foremast, and sail overlaps foresail gaff, so that every time the boat comes about, the fisherman clew has to be raised above the gaff, and the sheet has to be reset to the lee of the forsail. So back and fourth, high maintenance. I guess John figured we were too inexperienced to handle it. I remember Anne explaining that the fisherman filled the huge gap above the fore gaff. The sail is enormous. It must have been a great labor to handle and set it, maybe requiring a bigger crew than we were. You can imagine how heavy it must have been in canvas, before Dacron, as our sails were. Imagine if it got wet, which it probably did, all the time!

Our South Wind was Marconi rigged on the main, something Anne and John hated, something like castration. Sartartia was gaff rigged everywhere in classic schooner rigging. With top masts, she flew topsails, another complicated thing to set. She also flew a flying jib, something we did not have. So you are sure right: we never set as much canvas as you see in the fine picture of Sartartia.


Did I send you excellent pic of Sartartia at dock in Santa Monica? Another of Mike Coller's contributions. I can't wait to see what else he has.

Regards,

Hollis

[hbdanvers]

Chuck, do you remember the Christmas dinner on Bequia? Our host, the planter, had just received his mbe medal (member of the British Empire). It was a very big deal, especially in a remote outpost like Bequia. He invited every European and American on the island, as well as on all the yachts in harbor, including of course us. He very democratically included even the deckhands. We ate outside among the coffee bushes and bougainvillea growing under cocoanut palms. One couple was from the steel-hulled schooner named Dixie, about 60-65 feet. They were Bob and Cathy Hudson. Her uncle was the president of Iceland. As a result of meeting them at the dinner, they offered me a ride up to St. Lucia, when I left South Wind. I got a wonderful picture of her holding the brilliant fuscia flowers of bougainvillea up to her face. I never saw anyone from South Wind again, except for Richard, when he passed through Houston in 1967, and that was for only about an hour. I have the feeling you were at this Christmas dinner. On the beach, a very old man had a long piece of cypress stretched over saw horses. He was in the process of rounding it into a ship's mast, for one of the island schooners. He was using a draw knife, the only one I ever saw, besides the one my father left among his tools when he died in 1972. I also have a picture of this man and his mast-in-progress.

I talked to my Boerne friend this morning. She has made it from Virginia as far as Houston. She is supposed to be at home tomorrow. I will call her again, and drive up to get the slide scanner. Then I can share these wonderful pics with you. If I can ever learn from Danny Sullivan how to satisfy the demands of Woodenboats forum, I will post pics there as well. So far, I am dead in the water.

[cglazerman]

Hollis: Took in the 35mm slides of Southwind circa 1966 for transfer to digital. They will be doing 3600dpi which they say is good enough for publication should you or some publication decide this whole adventure is worthy of a book or screen play. I'm thinking Robert Redford or Brad Pitt? It's amazing so many readers are hooked on our story of youthful adventures on the high seas recaptured some 50 years later. Ain't life great!!

[hbdanvers]

A book has been written about it. You have read it. I would love to have your pics. The only shot of South Wind I ever got was when she was lying at anchor in English Harbor. It is a beautiful pic that came out really well. Danny did a color correction on it to restore the lost yellow dye from the old slide. Presently this is the pic that you see as the cover image when you search for The Glass Factory on Amazon under H. B. Danvers. Thank you again for downloading it, and thanks for your responsiveness on this forum, and also the pics. I hope to start scanning more slides tomorrow, when my friend with the scanner returns home.

[cglazerman]

The yacht broker Northrop and Johnson out of Fort Lauderdale might have handled the contract to sell Southwind in the late 60's Northrop and Johnson has kindly agreed to look for any records pertaining to this transaction and advise. If this is our Southwind,there likely will be some photographs and possibly some survey data. Given that Southwind was destroyed in a storm which hit Galveston Tx, records like this become valuable history. The Southwind we knew had a spirit which safely carried young souls like ourselves across the far oceans and returned us to carry on with our lives. Now almost some 50 years later, we offer what reflections we can to honor the memory of this truly fine vessel.

[cglazerman]

To those with interest in the history and fate of the 85 foot Alden Schooner Southwind, Hollis Danvers, Mike Coller and myself have worked up a great deal of information about this vessel which Hollis and I crewed in 1964 in the West Indies and which Mike has a very close family interest. Looks like the Southwind or Sartartia as it was known back in the 1930-40's compiled an interesting life both as an owner's yacht doing the TransPac circuit and later in the 1960's as a charter yacht based three seasons out of English Harbor. It was during the 1964 season that Hollis and I crossed paths only to become reacquainted via this WoodenBoat's board only a few months ago. We've received some excellent pictures of Sartartia from Mike which showed the vessel in the classic pose of an Alden wooden schooner of the era. Looks just like what you'd expect to see in the movies of the day. Rich use of wood and sail. Hollis and I would have been hard pressed to set all the sail she carried given our level of blue water sailing experience. Was hard enough just to take in sail in a light breeze...

Our efforts continue to try to determine the life of Southwind post the mid 1960's. We've contacted Northrop and Johnson to see if a sale came from one of their listings for a boat which looked like Southwind. They have graciously offered to further research their records to see if we can fill in the picture.

Southwind, in the 1970's, relocated to the Galveston area where she apparently sank at her slip during a hurricane. We're getting reporting which indicates a portion of Southwind was salvaged and transported to the old Sea Arama Martine Park where her topside was exhibited to walk on guests. The former employees of the park will be hosting a reunion in the Galveston area in June 2012 and we may attend in hopes to talk to folks who worked the Southwind exhibit and who may be able to fill in more pieces as to how Southwind became a static display.

We've still have work to do trying to locate our Captain and other crew members. Would be great if we could locate artifacts from Southwind after all these years and as a fitting end to the story, if we could find an actual piece of the boat which we could take out to blue water and give a proper tribute to this classic sailboat. Stories of Southwind in the Caribbean during the 1960's appear in Hollis' The Glass Factory available on Amazon if interested.

[cglazerman]

A Galveston, TX resident familiar with the SeaArama Marine Park operations sent us the following:

"(Southwind) was a fine vessel. I never got to sail on her but did a lot of sailing in Galveston and the gulf coast. I really don't know much more. She was moored on the north wall of the Galveston Yacht basin which was not really set up for mooring. No vertical members , just a concrete Walkway. 4th of July brought a brutal squall with 100 MPH North winds and Southwind was dashed against the apron. She sank in that spot and was raised a short time later and moved to sea arama." (We're following up to determine in which year this occurred.)

A further recollection received: "Southwind took a severe beating from 100 mph winds and sank next to the north wall at the Galveston Yacht basis. The boat was raised and taken to the Sea Arama park. She was irreparably damaged and despite efforts at restoration, Southwind apparently met it's demise from the termite population of Galveston. She was dismantled and trashed"

Would be of interest if someone viewing the site had first hand knowledge of this Galveston storm at the Yacht basis and had actual pictures of the aftermath.

[hbdanvers]

I have some images of the ketch I went down to see at Port Mansfield last week. These were made with a digital camera and are already on my hard drive. Also, I have some interesting images of a sailboat race from St. Thomas to Virgin Gorda and Mosquito Island. This took place on the long Thanksgiving weekend of 1965. It is one of my happiest memories. The beautiful girl who is now my wife accompanied me, together with my boss of that year and his wife, aboard a disreputable old sloop that my boss rented through an old friend of his who owned a vacation agency and charter service known as Blue Water Cruises. I even have one picture of her at Hull Bay in St. Thomas in 1967. The week after the race, that old sloop sank in St. Thomas. The roll of film for that 1965 holiday was left in the glove compartment of my old car for a long time. It baked, and the film turned dark purple. For fifty years I have lamented over this tragedy. Now the digitized images are almost entirely corrected and look quite good. Of course the subject matter is indescribably wonderful, much like the 1964 regatta out of English Harbour.


If you like, I will get these two subjects, and any others in which you indicate an interest, to you by one means or another. I would like to wait for a resolution of what happened to my first cd before deciding how to send you these other images. If my cd is judged finally to be lost, I probably will not send another one by the post office. Possibly UPS, or even email, though the latter would take a long time to implement.


My inactivity regarding South Wind's end is the result of the fact that I am uncomfortable thinking about her neglect and destruction. Seeing the motor-sailor-refit that was done to her in the early sixties was bad enough. We all regretted seeing such a beautiful yacht bastardized by the awful deck cabin. It was clearly done to accomodate lazy people who had little knowledge or interest in operating a sailboat. They should have found a power boat to take care of them, with fluorescent lights and chrome, and cutesie interior decor. I was sensitive to what I regarded as desecration of that fine Alden yacht, and longed to see her with proper cockpit, deck cabin and teak decks. I am particularly grateful for Mike Coller's excellent history and images of Sartartia.

I hope you will not think me weak for my attitude about South Wind. My experience aboard her was a thrilling, fantastic adventure for a boy who knew little about sailing, and brought little in the way of service beyond enthusiasm. It pained me to see her corrupted. John and Anne expressed the same displeasure openly and frequently. My adventure was immensely enlarged by my living in St. Thomas in 1965 and again in the years 1967-70. Seeing all these pictures from those years reminds me of how very much that was lucky and wonderful was allowed to me. Especially my beautiful and marvellous girlfriend, with whom I have been married for over 46 years. At the same time, I am saddened to recall how poorly I grasped the marvel of my Island adventure. Then as now, I did not make much of a go of it, but rather stumbled along like a fool.

This sort of thinking and talk is mere rambling. But it is of a piece with my preferred ignorance of South Wind's unhappy ending. I guess we should be thankful that Sea-arama made use of her remains after the sinking and virtual destruction in her slip during the hurricane. It is an afterlife granted to few condemned ships. I think of the resurrection of the memories of Titanic in the same sort of way. My observations in The Glass Factory express the best in me, in the way of recognition and appreciation for those wonderful years. Please allow me to say to you directly that you have added a lot to my perception and recollection of South Wind, along with Mike Coller and Danny Sullivan. I sincerely hope that this occasion in 2011-12 of finding each other in the Woodenboat forum is not a goodbye, but a hello.

As for the scanning project, it will occupy me for months, though the South Wind portion of it is completed. I am very happy you found my only picture of you to be pleasing. It is the way I feel about my only picture of the ship herself, the one at anchor in English Harbour.

I will be in touch pretty soon with the images of the ketch, and the 1965 sailboat race up Sir Francis Drake Channel to Mosquito Island. Incidentally, my elder daughter Dorothy and her husband Brad have recently visited St. John and are to return this Memorial Day. Brad participated in an ocean swim meet, starting somewhere like Cinnamon Bay and terminating in Caneel Bay at the resort. He and Dorothy even spent a couple of nights there, something I never had the money to do. This year, they will be staying with their two children in the camping tents at Cinnamon Bay, no doubt enjoying the snorkeling trail in Trunk Bay that is part of the Virgin Islands National Park, as are the camp grounds. Kirsten and I spent a weekend there in 1965, just before the yacht race up the Channel. It remains among my most profound memories.

Thanks again for your many contributions to these memories.

[cglazerman]

The Galveston, Texas Monthly, June 2012 posted a story by Ms. Kathleen Maca on the old Sea-Arama Marine water park which became the final resting place of the Southwind back in the 1970's. In part, the story mentions "One of the few static displays at Sea-Arama was the 103-foot (sic) Errol Flynn-esque Southwind schooner, which was permanantly moored at the park. Built in the 1930's, the Southwind had an exciting history of trips and races around the world before arriving in Galveston in the early 1960's. Sadly, after taking years of beatings from hurricanes and tropical storms, the Southwind finally met its demise due to the diligent work of termites. She was dismantled and partially salvaged to places unknown."

We have confirmed the passing of our Captain, John R. Cronholm back in 2005. His former spouse and our First Mate, Ann Knowls passed away in 2001. They both sailed aboard Irving Johnson's "Yankee" on a global circumnavigation in 1961-62.

There is the slight chance a former Sea-Arama employee attending their upcoming June reunion in Galveston might be able to pass on information regarding the disposition of the boat's remains. Would be nice to retrieve something as a lasting memory.

Thanks to all who have shared our interest in this story.