North Shore Boatbuilding

In 1963, my parents went to the boat show (I think it was in the Cow Palace in San Francisco), and my dad bought a boat.  It was a kit, made in England, for a 13'3" sailboat called an Enterprise.  A few weeks later, the kit was delivered to the agent for the western US, a guy called Sam Guild, at a place called North Shore Boatbuilding.

Guild rhymes with Mild, it's not pronounced like guild or gild.    He was from Maine and my parents were from Massachusetts--they had surprisingly much in common, in addition to being New Englanders.  I found Sam's obituary: he passed away in 2009 at 80, having moved back to Maine after less than a decade in California. 

 North Shore Boatbuilding was about 2.3 miles north of Marshall, on Tomales Bay.   Marshall is a tiny town, which only has a population of 400 if you count the numerous dwellings along the shore of the bay there.   We went there to pick up the Enterprise kit.   It was just exactly 100 miles by road from our home in Cupertino.

Over the next few months, my dad built it in the garage.  I helped--A lot I thought, but as I was only 8, probably less than I thought at the time.  It was very interesting and I did learn a lot.   The kit had fairly complete instructions but Dad read a lot of books and other things.  After a few months working on it constantly, nights and weekends, it was ready to sail.  We took it to a lake near home and he and a friend went for a sail.  I was taken out for a sail but was not allowed to help.   A few weeks later, he took me out and did allow me to help (trim the jib) and I figured it out quickly.  Barely a year later, I was given the opportunity to sail in a boat by myself (an El Toro) and I was able to do it.  Not long after that, I took formal sailing lessons at one of the local yacht clubs (Sequoia YC in Redwood City), and learned a lot more stuff.

There were about 10 Enterprise class boats in the Bay area by 1965 or so, all built from kits that Sam Guild had imported from England.  Sam had a good facility, not just for building boats but also for sailing them, and several of the boatowners lived up north, making Sams place a central location, so Sam hosted an Enterprise Regatta every month or so for a couple of years.  I was still too little, so mostly my Mom crewed for my Dad, and my sister and I found stuff to do around North Shore Boatbuilding. I tried fishing several times, and never once caught anything.  But I explored a lot.

 The pier is still there.  It's just south of "The Inn on Tomales Bay".  I can't tell if Sam and Ann's house is still there because the trees have grown up (it's been 60 years...).  There were trees near the water back then, but there was a clearing about 300 feet wide between the road and that grove, which is now all covered by mature trees.   The roadbed for the North Pacific Coast narrow gauge railroad was still discernable in the 60s, even though the tracks had been torn out during the Depression, 25 years earlier.

Sam's obituary mentions an 11 foot dinghy that the Guilds carried around on their camper.   I remember that boat well: it was a "Gull" class, which looked a lot like an Enterprise but smaller.  The Guilds carried it on the back of their Volkswagen pickup truck.   They'd brought it down to Redwood City one time on the back of that, and when heading home, had apparently forgotten to tie it down.   We were following, towing the Enterprise on a trailer.  I saw the Gull take off skyward, and it flew moderately well, coming down for a pretty good landing on its hull.  It suffered surprisingly little damage.

 

This is about half the bay area Enterprise fleet in around 1965.  I think the photo was taken by my dad, but I'm not sure where it was taken.  It's not Tomales Bay, Sausalito, or Redwood City, which I'm quite familiar with.  The boat my dad built is 9606.  Disappointingly, I don't have any pictures of Enterprises on Tomales bay or of North Shore Boatbuilding as it was in the 1960s.

 

Ranking the Presidents of my Lifetime

I find it difficult to choose here between my top 3, so in order of their term:

Eisenhower got many things right, a few wrong.  He supported the Warren court.  He supported civil rights and the overturning of Brown vs Board.   He supported the Coup against Mossadegh in Iran, which has led to 73 years (so far) of bad relations with Iran.

Kennedy.  He was successful mainly because he was Martyred and his successor, LBJ, was masterful at exploiting it.  The worst thing he actually did was Bay of Pigs.  The best was the Cuban Missile Crisis, the space program, and advocacy of what would eventually be the Civil Rights Act.

Obama.  The best president that managed to serve full term.   PPACA was his best thing.  He served in the face of the most hostile congress since the civil war.

Biden was a better president in most respects than Obama, but he had one monumental failure that destroys him: He held on too long and left the field open to Trump.

Carter could have been a great president but for three things:

1: he had the bad luck of running against Reagan, who lied and cheated to make him seem bad

2: He had some foibles on the Iran Hostage crisis.  Mostly not his fault, but he gambled more than he should have

3: His relations with congress were not the best.

4: (totally not his fault) The holdover from Nixon's OPEC policy and the Iran crisis led to high inflation.  His Federal Reserve Chair (Volcker) cured the problem, but too late for it to do Carter any political good

Clinton: a pretty good president, but he did a lot of stupid stuff that left him open to the Gingrich congress.   Lewinsky and Iraq were /totally/ the doings of the Rs. 

LBJ was actually quite a good president, if you get down to it.  Unfortunately, Goldwater's tactic wound up destroying him in the end.   Johnson understood that expanding VietNam was a huge mistake and that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was nothing, but Goldwater managed to inflate it to something that Johnson could not pretend to ignore.  The Great Society, Voting Rights Act, Medicare, etc., were really good things.   He would be at the top of this list without VietNam.

Ford: The least bad GOP president.   He had the luck to serve in Nixon's wake and looked wonderful by comparison.   He did very little, and was convincingly (and rightly) defeated by Carter.

Bush41: Perhaps the most competent R since Nixon, but mostly a promoter of Evil.  His alignment with the Oil industry being his worst problem.  Clinton mopped the floor with him in '92.  GOP'ers will tell you that Clinton only won because Perot stole votes from Clinton, but the numbers tell a quite different story. 

Nixon.  Corrupt but somewhat competent.  Screwed up LBJ's peace settlement with VietNam to undermine him (and his successor Humphrey)  in the '68 election.  Understood environmental issues better than many of his successors.  Watergate.

Bush43: Incompetent and Corrupt. Knew he was out of his depth, so he hired crooked people to do most of his thinking for him.  Reacted exactly wrong when the CIA told him that Bin Laden was determined to attack again.   September 11 was his least terrible failing.  Invading Afghanistan was a huge mistake.  Invading Iraq before he'd finished with Afghanistan was a disaster. 

Reagan. Trump would have been impossible without Reagan's opening us to corruption.  Reagan was incompetent, corrupt, did lots of stupid stuff (e.g.: he sent soldiers to Beirut, despite repeated warnings.  A truck bomb killed hundreds of them.   So one week later, he invaded Grenada.)  Iran Contra.  There are lots and lots of these.  He had enormous personal charisma, which for those of us with functioning BS meters, is a disqualifier.

Trump.  Incompetent, Immensely Corrupt, Stupid, remained in power by threatening people.   Before Trump, it was a contest between Reagan, Buchanan and Harding who was our very worst president.  Trump takes the prize in a landslide.  He may have destroyed the United States.  It's remotely possible he will destroy life on earth.