75 Years Of Soaring:

The Story of the San Francisco Bird Boats

by Terry Norton

In the beginning, fear turned to windward in the hearts of San Francisco Bay's yachtsmen, and the name of the fear was golf. The year was 1919-seventy-five years before Tiger Woods' nailed his first 323 yard drive in the '97 Masters. Young men, just returned from World War I, were struggling to readjust to civilian life, scuffling to survive financially in the post war depression. Interest in yachting waned as less expensive pastimes-driving to the country in a Model T Ford or swinging a nine iron—lured one time avid sailors off the Bay.

"Many half-hearted or has been yachters go around moaning and groaning that yachting ain't what it used to be, claiming that automobiling, golf or some other gol dern sport takes all of people's attention," wrote Larry Knight of the Aeolian Yacht Club at the time, "(Yachting) started with Noah and. . . (I) can't foresee the finish."

The 1919 yachting hierarchy, the Pacific Inter-Club Yacht Association, shared Knight's concerns and set sail a course of action. The PICYA formed the "S" Class Syndicate, a committee of representatives of all six Bay Area Yacht Clubs, to renew interest in yachting, racing, and inter-club competition. The Syndicate came back with historical questions: How about designing an affordable, swift, racing cruiser that can charge through the blustery, choppy conditions of the San Francisco Bay with the confidence of a freighter? A boat that can fly across the foam topped waves like, say, a bird?

Fred Brewer, a naval architect with Sausalito's Madden & Lewis Yard, drew up sketches of a small but heavy, raised deck sloop, able to handle San Francisco's notorious blowing winds and churning Bay water. Thus, seventeen years before the first automobile crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, the concept of the West Coast's first one-design Class was hatched, and a San Francisco sailing legend emerged—the San Francisco Bird Boats. The fight to win golfers back to the tack had begun.

The Flight Plan

Weaving the specific instructions of the Syndicate with the constraints of a post war economy, Brewer designed the specifications of the San Francisco "S" boat, as it was known in its planning stages. To be affordable, she had to be a small racer; to appeal to racing families, she'd need cruising accommodations for overnight trips to the Sacramento Delta and other picturesque sailing destinations near the Bay. She'd have to sail heavy~to cut through the choppy waters rather than glide over them, and fast—to catch the attention of younger sailors as they headed for the links.

Brewer's completed plans were sent to renowned yacht designer John Alden of Boston for review and revision. Alden's draftsman, Sam Crocker, drew up the recommended modifications—Alden Design #157. Because Alden's fee included an indestructible keel mold and templates for all aspects of construction, the price of building the first Bird Boat, including building tax, was held to $2610, with each subsequent cruiser costing only $1800.

To pay for the plans and construction of the first four boats, the Syndicate needed to raise $8000. In the 20's post war depression, when Sears, Roebuck and Co. sold a precut, two story house for $1640, eight thousand dollars was a staggering sum. Since cash was not exactly flowing in the PICYA's direction, the Syndicate decided to hold an old-fashioned raffle to raise the funds. Tickets, $10 apiece, were sold to members of the six Yacht Clubs of the PICYA; each ticket holder was eligible to "win" ownership of one of the first four birds.

When Alden's plans arrived, dated September 1, 1921, some of his modifications were approved, some rejected, but, the prototype of the Bird Boat was finally in architectural form and the actual construction of the historic Class could begin. Madden & Lewis Shipyards of Sausalito won the contract to build.

The Bird Boats' design was 30T¹ overall, with a 22' waterline, 78" beam, and a 5' draft. Her thin and short lead keel was 3200#, with a 408 square foot sailing rig—measurements birders less famous than John Audubon would spend their lives defending.

The Early Birds

When hull #1, the Osprey, was launched in 1922, tongues wagged. Many thought the Bird more of an ugly duckling than a graceful hawk. With a mainsail the size of Texas, and a club-footed jib more like Rhode Island, her silhouette looked lopsided to the Bay's old timers.

Yes, she was a bit short-masted (40' overall, goose neck 12" off the deck, and luff measurement of 32'), but she was not exactly the Lyle Lovett of sailing. The nay-sayers, luffing their sails at 30 knots, were silenced when the Osprey flew past them at full sail flew being the operative word.

The Osprey's lifespan, unfortunately, was shorter than a sparrow's. After winning the first Bird race on San Francisco Bay in P, she met her untimely demise only a year later. The tale sounds more like a yarn than a sob-story, but such is the foundation of seventy-five years of birdlore.

Everyone agrees that hull #1 went ashore near Bolinas, north of San Francisco, on Duxbury reef. This is where George Dies and Herbert Madden rescued her keel, salvaging it for the building of a future "R" Class sailboat. Who sailed her there is the arguable mystery.

The Osprey was stolen from her moorings in Sausalito by one of two men—either an escapee from Alcatraz, then an incarceration island but not yet a federal prison, or her owner, a mental patient who was on the lam that day from a Napa Valley hospital. Neither man was ever heard from again, fueling the beloved controversy.

By 1927, two years after the Osprey's grounding, three of the original four Birds had changed hands. Seems that after recovering from the thrill of winning the raffle, several of the new owners were unsuccessful in convincing their young wives that they really needed another sailboat. Lester Secor, owner of hull #3—named Lucky Bird for obvious reasons—wasn't as lucky at home, and had to sell his Bird prize to help pay for a baby on the way.

Just as Secor was signing over Lucky Bird, other owners were crowing about a few "imperfections" in their beloved Birds. Okay, there were design problems. The Bird Boats sailed stiff, providing sailors with a very wet, admittedly uncomfortable ride, and were not quite as fast as the young racers would have liked.

Which is why the Bird Boat Class, which had been formally adopted by the PICYC in January, 1926, voted to make modifications of Alden's design. For a fee of $100, George Wayland, a Sausalito naval architect and avid Bay sailor, drew up the Associations recommendations: delete the minimum water length of 22' and add a 24' maximum; shorten the mast by 4', and add internal ballast.

With a total displacement weight of 9000# and an amended total ballast of 4600#, this 50% or better ballast displacement ratio made the little boats cocky on the water; they sailed like shark fins against the Bay's harshest winds. In very gusty conditions (25 to 40 knots), when larger boat owners squawked and headed for their moorings, Bird owners cooed. Although the modifications were minor, and did little to improve the chided profile or lopsided rigging, Bird sailors applauded the changes.

"If the Birds had had a little more body built into them underwater in the first place," Myron Spaulding, a well-known Bay Area Bird racer and expert at yacht measuring, explains, "They wouldn't have had to add inside ballast."

Ironically, neither Alden's nor the revised plans were ever followed to the letter by any of the Bird Boat builders. Construction of the Bird Class was like Beethoven's interpretations of La Moinara by Paisiello—many variations on a theme. Each builder, armed with keel mold and templates for which he had paid a $50 deposit, interpreted the plans differently. Thus, the bird boats varied slightly in ballast and volume, with four different shaped keels used.

The Birds Take Wing

With the Osprey lost at sea, five Birds remained in the water at the end of 1927—Curlew, Betty (formerly Lucky Bird), Mavis, Skylark and Petrel— several financed privately when the raffle money ran out. In the eyes of their owners and the PICYA, they were the most bewitching vessels to hit the Bay Area since Drake's Golden Hinde in the sixteenth century. Twenty-six Birds were built, but hulls #14 and #15, Kestrel and Towhee, were never permitted to race in the class because they did not conform to specifications.

Indiana Demming oak was used for their hull frames; white oak for the floor timbers; clean, air-dried Douglas fir 1x4 tongue and grove planking for decking—all assembled with galvanized iron nails. Any sailor can tell you how that plays in salty sea air—rust and bleeding. Teak or mahogany were used for the rails; the spar was made of fir. (In an historical paradox, these very materials that made construction of the Bird Boats so inexpensive in the '20s contribute to today's costly restorations.)

Compared to her cabin, well, solitary confinement might seem roomy. There was plenty of headroom—if the sailor were six years old. Below were two bunks, room for a stove, and a doorless head alongside the companion way. Mostly the cabin was used for storage or shelter from the constant shower above. With no ports nor forward hatch, it was just plain dark. Dark, cramped, and tiny—which is why wiser sailors opted to stay on deck.

Wiser, perhaps, but wetter. When sailing a bird, the wet look has always been in. With so much ballast forward holding the bow deep into the Bay, water sloshed across the deck into the cockpit. Even the mainsail was often drenched, mostly because of a small hitch with the boom.

To be accurate, the boom should be called a broom. Hanging well over the transom of the boat (necessitating running backstays), and with only one foot of clearance off the raised deck, the boom swept many an unsuspecting sailor in the back of the head. The 20’ boom and 32’ mast above the deck created an exceptionally low 3:2 ratio. Another guarantee of a stiffer than usual sail.

Every Bird has a coaming inboard of the rail, theoretically to deter water from slopping into the cockpit. Ask any Bird sailor about its effectiveness, and creative rationalizations flow,

"The space between the coaming and the rail was the perfect place for me to nap when I was a little girl," says Lorraine Ferrarese, whose father Donald "Scotty" McLean has owned three Bird Boats. "I remember waking up and staring straight down at the water." The raised deck not only allows a skosh more headroom below, it keeps the rail above the water line in moderate angles of keel. But, with a 24' waterline on a 30" sloop, a little napper is bound to get wet on a steep tack.

The cockpit is huge for a small racer. Although the well is narrow, it comprises one third of the boat-large enough to accommodate a racing crew of four.

Yet, despite the wet, awkward sail, the midget sized accommodations, and the proliferation of boom-induged goose eggs on the noggins of San Francisco's best sailors, at the end of the 1920's, the Bird Boat Class was one of the most popular on the Bay.

More Fledglings in the Nest

By 1928, nine years after the PICYA waged war on the sport of golf, the pendulum seemed to be swinging more toward the water than the greens. The San Francisco Yachtsman in its September issue, declared the Bird Boat Class "a wonderful invention."

"(The Bird Boat Class) is bringing out young skippers and giving them a racing self-reliance which takes them happily away from the advice and remarks of the rocking chair fleet." And, thank goodness, the eighteenth hole.

In the early months of 1929, six Bird Boats—the Falcon, Alcyon, Kittiwake, Grey Goose, Oriole, Puffin—were constructed, all by well known Bay Area builders George Kneas, Nunes Brothers, United Ship Repair, and Lester Stone. The Bird Boat's praises continued to surge, as if buoyed by a high tide. When the Depression hit in October, money again ebbed, not flowed. To occupy his yard in the slow winter months, Lester Stone built two Birds on spec, Robin and Polly. Painted bright red and green respectively, these two were the first sailing vessels on San Francisco Bay to break the tradition of white paint only for sail boats.

By 1930, the Bird Class, promoted by its enthusiastic Bird Boat Association, was drawing huge crowds to the foot of Fillmore Street for each race. Avid sports fans turned out to glimpse the Birds' legendary defiance of the Bay's combination ebbing tide/westerly winds. It seemed that nothing but smooth sailing was ahead.

White had made adjustments within the allotted 408 square feet of sail to loosen the leech. The young whipper-snapper and his backers argued that sails on the existing Birds varied slightly already, and that variations in weight already penalized the Alden Birds. ("Babe" Stevens, for example, had taken cannon balls from Fort Mason on board to add inside ballast to the Grey Goose.) The old timers urged the Association to maintain the integrity of the one-design Class and disqualify White's custom mainsail. Lunch pails aside, the whipper-snapper went home with the trophy.

Saving The Birds From Extinction

By 1960, the Association was worried about the future of the Class. Loon, Cuckoo, Meadowlark, Linnet, Widgeon, Hummingbird, Boblink, Teal, and Swallow had been built in the thirties, but no new Bird Boats had been built since hull #26, Kiwi, in the early forties. Frankly, the older birds were beginning to look and act a little leaky. With $12,000 required to build a new Bird boat, Bay Area sailors were opting to buy better appointed racers for just a few additional dollars.

For the better part of the next three decades, the Birds flailed -rusting, leaking, some to the point of being "ready for the dumpster" according to Jock MacLean, co-owner of Grey Goose and current co-president of the Bird Boat Association. But in 1990, sentiment more than practicality billowed the sails of the twenty-three remaining Birds (Falcon having sunk off Angel Island in a 1989 race).

Sentimentality and old-fashioned faith. Since the Syndicate days, Bird owners, despite their differences on race days and their squabbles over mainsail dimensions, form an admiration society one ritual short of religion. Bird Boat orthodoxy, while latent through the seventies and eighties, has reemerged in the last five years. It would surprise no one in the San Francisco yachting community if Bird owners started selling flowers in airport terminals.

Which is why it is so important to today's avid Birders to save the Birds from extinction. In 1988, R.C. Keefe established the non-profit Save the Bird Foundation, which concurrent with several other restoration projects at the time, launched the current move to bring the Birds back to life. Keefe began with Polly in the early 1990's, as a small group of die-hard Bird owners dove into the difficult and expensive task of restoration.

"Honestly, an owner can easily spend $130,000 rebuilding an antique bird," Jock MacLean says, "But you have to understand the enthusiasm, the passion that the Bird Boats instill in us. We've got eight Birds sailing in races this season, with two more nearly ready to race. After seventy-five years, this is so exciting."

Considering that a new bird can be built today for about $75,000, the price tag on the love of the original Birds runs about $55,000 in overruns. Time is also money, and because of the commitment to authenticity, a complete restoration can take years, as did Polly's.

As many original materials as possible are being used, including air dried Douglas fir which takes two years to prepare. Modern building materials and techniques are utilized only when they do not violate strict Bird building specifications. For example, tongue and grove decks may be replaced with fiberglass (not canvas) covered plywood. The Douglas fir cockpits are now teak.

Original masts, backbones, and spars are being saved, as well as the original keels, although monel keel bolts are being added during restoration. Clear white oak is used to repair the frame and floors, oak or teak for renewed transoms, planking is full length, air dried, vertical grain Oregon pine fastened with stainless steel screws above the water line, and silicon bronze screws below. Gone are the galvanized nails of the 1920's.

Little by little, dollar by dollar, the Bird Boats are returning to their rightful place—as the revered, pioneering Class of San Francisco Bay sailing.

San Francisco Bay: the Bird Sanctuary

Today, the Bird's provide what Jock MacLean calls "a gentleman's day on the Bay." More interested now in preservation than trophies, Bird owners prefer to sail in the softer, morning winds than push their prized sailing Birds against typical San Francisco Bay's afternoon gusts of twenty-five knots. Babying Bird Boats may have begun, but today's sailors stand symbolically side by side the members of the "S" Class Syndicate of 75 years ago to prove that the Bird Boat is a gol dern fine boat, in a gol dern fine sport. No gimmicks, no reef points, no broaching, no storm sails, no ding of the microwave—just pure sailing. Like grandpa's day.