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.
No comments:
Post a Comment