Here Is a College Diploma 29-Feet 6-Inches Long

A masterfully designed and built wooden boat is a work of art comparable to anything housed in the great museums of the world. But a fine wooden boat is not an artifact to be mollycoddled in a museum; it is meant to be used, to withstand the rigors of weather.

It is an amalgamation of beauty and utility and this is what gives a fine wooden boat its unique aesthetic appeal. It is at once a practical hands-on/spiritual experience to view such a boat. I’ve seen men stand awestruck before such a boat, like the schooner Californian.

The other day “Wooden Boat,” the magazine for wooden boat owners, builders and designers, arrived in the mail. On its cover was one of those experiences. I longed to see and touch the original. It was a color picture of a Lyle Hess-designed cutter, Syrinx of Brooklin, Maine. Hess, who lives and works in Fullerton, is a veteran boat designer with a sensitive eye for classical lines that seem to sing when they are translated into wood.

“The young man--an awfully nice boy--came down here about four years ago, stayed overnight and bought the plans,” Hess said. “He has done a magnificent piece of work on her. He wants to establish his own yard and when he does I’d like to send people to him.”

Hess was speaking about Tony Davis. A remarkable aspect of the building of Syrinx was that the boat represented Tony’s college education. The 29-foot 6-inch cutter was Tony’s diploma.

Mason Smith, writing of Tony’s education under master builder Arno Day, says Tony’s father, Henry, showed up in 1980 at Day’s shop on Deer Isle. Henry wanted to talk about Tony’s future. Tony had been going to college, “but that hadn’t worked out so well.” Tony had the idea he wanted to be a boatbuilder.

The end result was that Henry Davis would put up the money he would otherwise have spent on Tony’s college education, and under Day’s tutelage, Tony would build a cruising sailboat.

“Tony would learn by hands-on practice every major branch of the art of wooden boatbuilding, even including pattern-making and forging of hardware, and he would sail away onboard his diploma,” writes Smith.

So they bought a pile of white oak in Vermont. They poured the cutter’s ballast, they bolted up her keel and deadwood, they lofted her from Hess’s plans and sawed her frames. The education lasted three years.

Smith sums it up: “What a liberal education is supposed to do, after all, is to bring one along somewhat in one’s possession of a great tradition--call it the humanistic tradition of western civilization, or call it simply a culture. It seems to me the tradition that Tony Davis received through Arno, that he now lives in and will no doubt transmit, is a thing very much like that larger tradition, and it’s certainly a resonant part of it. The part . . . contains the whole: a seeker, a mentor, a boat, and then oceans of the world.”

Sailing Notes

Philip Maurer, mayor of Newport Beach, alerts boaters to the Newport Beach municipal code, in conjunction with Coast Guard regulations, that requires holding tanks on vessels with heads (toilets). In addition, Newport Harbor has been designated as a No Discharge Harbor. In plain terms this mean no waste of any description can be deposited in the harbor.

Holding tanks must be pumped out at available pump-out stations or outside the city limits, which is three miles at sea. To assist in solving the holding tank pump-out problem, the city is planning the installation of additional pump-out stations in public and private marinas. By the end of 1985 there should be at least four more pump-out stations in Newport Harbor.

Local Notice to Mariners alerts boats to the Research Vessel Western Glacier, radio call signs WYF 4937, operating in the San Pedro Channel until May 1. This vessel, performing geophysical surveys, may be towing a cable up to two miles in length. The end of the cable(s) may be marked by tail buoys. Radio contact should be made via Channel 13 when in the operating areas of research vessels for more timely information.

The current event on the rowing scene is the Orange Coast College Alumni Regatta at 9 a.m. Sunday in Newport Harbor.

Those who have been involved in OCC rowing during the last 10 years know Bruce Tice, a member of the famous four that went undefeated in 1975-76, not to mention the Western Sprint Championship. Tice, upon the retirement of Connie Johnson, has taken over the responsibilities of rigger for OCC. His skills range from woodworking to welding. The singles slings were designed and built by Tice and he’s currently rebuilding the launching docks for the shells.