Save a Piece of Maritime History
Donation protected
Emergency, vessel in distress...
An irreplaceable piece of maritime history, and one of San Francisco's finest historical wooden vessels, needs immediate financial and logistical assistance to save her, bring her to safe harbor and berthage, to then begin the funding of a complete restoration.
Built by legendary Bay Area yacht builder Lester Stone as his personal yacht in 1914 and is one of only two surviving yachts in the Bay from the era. She is now the only N-Class yacht left in existence.
Pronto II was sailed in the regattas of the magnificent 1915 San Francisco Panama Exposition in what is now the Marina District. This is a taste of the aesthetic era of the 1915 Panama Expo:
Designed by Frank and Lester Stone in 1914 at their yard in Oakland, the sloop Pronto II is built with the lines and beauty that almost completely disappeared after the First World War. 50ft in length and just under 20 tons, drawing just over 6 feet, she was Lester Stone's personal boat, and is one of the few boats that he designed and built together with his father, as a graduation gift. She represents a particular high water mark in sailboat design.
Original architectural drawings and photos of Pronto II are preserved at the San Francisco National Maritime Museum, Historic Documents Department, in San Francisco.
Here's Pronto II when she was built, before she went in the water the first time. Stone Boat Yard, Oakland, 1914:
Pronto II under sail in the 1920's:
Original architectural drawings and photos of Pronto II are preserved at the San Francisco National Maritime Museum, Historic Documents Department, in San Francisco.
Pronto II's sail plan from Stone Boatyard:
Glass plate negatives from the SF Maritime Research Center at Fort Mason, San Francisco:
I purchased her sunk in Autumn of 2018 to save her from destruction from old couple who had bought her sunk 30 years prior and restored her against all the naysayers. I was not in a strong financial position to purchase such a project, but she would have been salvaged and crushed within a day.
She was floated the old fashioned way by a crew of skilled members of the Anchor Out community in Richardson's Bay, who we sometimes informally call the Boat Savers.
Here's a picture I took of a few of our local first responders checking the aneometer:
These rugged folks are an endangered mixture of foul-mouthed saltiness, lifelong Macguiverish maritime skills, and old-fashioned kindness. They generally do what they do for gas money for their outboards and generators and sometimes beer. They are often the first responders and assist vessels in distress at all hours of the day or night. They stop them from hitting Tiburon in storms, they raise them from the bottom and deliver them to the Army Corps or repair them. When they say "Keep Sausalito Salty", this is the real deal.
At that time, because Pronto II was on the run, with the local police hell bent on destroying her (which hopefully will turn into being hell bent on saving Pronto II) and no marinas willing to take her in, we were forced to put her in deep pirate waters one quarter mile from shore. While we awaited 2 months for time in the yard, her pumps and generator were stolen and she went down again.
Raised again during a king tide at night in a storm in mid December, Pronto II towed in and was hauled out on the ways at Richardon's Bay Boat Works in Sausalito on Saturday December 22, 2018. This is one of the few railcars still in existence in the Bay Area, located in the Marinship district of Sausalito.
A dedicated team from the Sausalito boat community, close to 2 dozen individuals, participated in this work including: Graham and Ross Sommers from the yard, Louis Tenwinkle, Dave McGregor, Doug Storms, Greg Baker, Ramblin Jack Elliot, Oleg, Brian Doris, Bruce and his rambunctuous rottweiler Chevy, Opal, Sunny, and many more. Advice was offered by Jim Linderman, who with his father ran Stone's yard for many decades, Holden and ... from the Arques School of boatbuilding in Sausalito, and just about anyone who walked into the yard...
Ramblin' Jack Elliot impersonating a boom crutch:
Over the course of 2 months, 20 gallons of concrete were removed with an airchisel from a previous emergency fix in the old fishing boat technique, and 8 sawn oak frames were installed. She received a bottom job to get her through the next phase, was sanded bow to stern, was reefed and caulked in a number of seams and the garbard seams, was hand brushed with multiple coats of bottom paint and an enamel topside paint.
Slowly but surely her unique beauty began to emerge:
Put back out at anchor in deeper water, as still no marina we could find would both fit and/or have her and forbidden to return to her 30-year mooring in protected Sausalito waters due to changes in local ordinances.
A few months later disaster struck.
We are not sure what happened, because we need to see her hull, but we have some ideas. She went straight down onto her keel in the mud rapidly in the middle of the night, a leak much faster than the slow leak before the all the repair work in the yard. We approximate it must have been 30,000 - 40,000 gallons an hour (think firehoses), far beyond what any backup pump system could handle, or any popped seam could produce.
This time she was in 20 feet of water, a whole different ball game.
Characteristically, the community did not give up. The Boat Savers rallied, up to 8 guys at one time, and we floated her on industrial float bags the size of hot tubs, and which took us close to 5 days to locate some to rent for $1500. (If you would like to support buying float bags for the Boat Savers please put a note in your donation. They will put them to good use and save the government tens of thousands of dollars a year. Again, often for gas money. Support the Boat Savers!)
It was an amazing sight, seeing her cruising down the channel towed behind the 1910 fishing vessel Bristol, floating but still submerged to the Army Corps of engineers.
(picture from Louis...)
Along the wall we sat her up on her keel on the concrete ramp where boats go to die, and waited for the low tide to survey the damage.
Despite having received permission from Federal and Regional authorities, at the crucial moment of high tide to pull her as high as we could on the ramp, we were threatened with arrest for being at the Army Corps by some local law enforcement officers who hadn't gotten the memo.
Despite ample explanations, names of all the people in charge who granted safe harbor, and the letter you see above from the National Maritime Historical Museum, we were forced at threat of going to jail to pack up and leave because the police didn't believe us/had noteworthy animosity towards the Boat Savers, and even the Pronto II it felt like.
We missed the last high/low tide we needed to get a clear visual on her hull below the waterline.
With the aborted mission and with a time mandate from the Army Corps boss, suddenly the task of getting a clear read on the damage and repairing it right then and there, which had felt possible, felt impossible. As the photos above show, a popped plank, or an open seam, are not daunting if you're accustomed to the way it all works. The vessel can be patched up enough to get somewhere safe.
But without the low tide we needed, we were beat tired, physically from the hauling and diving and crazy ropework, and emotionally from the harassment, I began to consider sparing us all and sending her to a fate of salvage. I even make the decision to do it, and felt the loss, and the relief.
But somehging didn't feel right about it. I spent a night contemplating whether I was in a sunk cost fallacy, but letting her die felt like too extreme a response to a likely fixable issue. I had in earlier in the day received numerous cash offers for her very valuable bronze from locals watching from the shore, but it didn't feel right to let her disappear into the crusher and the bodies of other boats just yet. We make museums for lesser things than Pronto II.
If you know boats, you can likely see that there really are few boats left in the world as graceful as this.
I am moving forward with this campaign as I feel is important to get her safe as she wants to be, to make a call out for emergency cash assistance, and to get her properly out of harms way for the long term and rest of her existence.
We are all very tired, and our bodies hurt, but this is a real boat. Our children need to know what one looks like, how it sails, experience how it lifts the spirit in awe. Keep our aestehic minds alive.
We need to make emergency repairs, and give her berthage for as long as it will take. It will cost quite a bit to do it right, we have tried to accomplish this mission for less money than anyone could imagine, but the few shortfalls in resources made simple things very difficult and she was in harms way.
Dozens of individuals and land and at sea have given in labor and materials and spirit into the saving of this vessel. It has brought community together into something bigger than us all, truly keeping the tradition alive. Keeping Sausalito Salty.
Local authorities have given some leeway in support of the effort, and maybe if we're lucky a bit more time at the Army Corps to survey the damage, patch it, pump her out, float her and get her movable and easily towable.
Please help us give this irreplaceable treasure of San Francisco maritime history a new life in her retirement,
that she may continue to inspire future generations with her grace.
Many people committed to Pacific maritime history, and countless people ashore in the Bay would be profoundly grateful for your assistance now, so that Pronto II can sail again and lift and inspire our hearts.
This ancient craft of wooden boat building is being kept alive through gathering around and assisting in restoring boats like this one.
I am doing everything I can that Pronto II will be saved, and so that this window into a more rarefied time in culture, boat building, and the Bay Area's rich maritime history will not be lost to us forever. A story or a picture cannot touch us, or the next generation, in the same way as the actual thing.
Pronto II is like a small yacht version of San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts, which still today uplifts its visitors, and was built in exactly the same years. I imagine those people who supported it to survive long ago, if they could see all the people being moved by it today, would be glad they did. From shore, or driving over the Golden Gate, all eyes are moved by the graceful sails and lines of a truly classic yacht, we somehow recognize it. It makes our San Francisco Bay an even more beautiful place to live, more enchanted, and can touch thousands of people on a sunny and windy day. May that day come soon.
With great gratitude for your time and assistance in any way in making this vision a reality,
Alden
Thank you.
An irreplaceable piece of maritime history, and one of San Francisco's finest historical wooden vessels, needs immediate financial and logistical assistance to save her, bring her to safe harbor and berthage, to then begin the funding of a complete restoration.
Built by legendary Bay Area yacht builder Lester Stone as his personal yacht in 1914 and is one of only two surviving yachts in the Bay from the era. She is now the only N-Class yacht left in existence.
Pronto II was sailed in the regattas of the magnificent 1915 San Francisco Panama Exposition in what is now the Marina District. This is a taste of the aesthetic era of the 1915 Panama Expo:
Designed by Frank and Lester Stone in 1914 at their yard in Oakland, the sloop Pronto II is built with the lines and beauty that almost completely disappeared after the First World War. 50ft in length and just under 20 tons, drawing just over 6 feet, she was Lester Stone's personal boat, and is one of the few boats that he designed and built together with his father, as a graduation gift. She represents a particular high water mark in sailboat design.
Original architectural drawings and photos of Pronto II are preserved at the San Francisco National Maritime Museum, Historic Documents Department, in San Francisco.
Here's Pronto II when she was built, before she went in the water the first time. Stone Boat Yard, Oakland, 1914:
Pronto II under sail in the 1920's:
Original architectural drawings and photos of Pronto II are preserved at the San Francisco National Maritime Museum, Historic Documents Department, in San Francisco.
Pronto II's sail plan from Stone Boatyard:
Glass plate negatives from the SF Maritime Research Center at Fort Mason, San Francisco:
I purchased her sunk in Autumn of 2018 to save her from destruction from old couple who had bought her sunk 30 years prior and restored her against all the naysayers. I was not in a strong financial position to purchase such a project, but she would have been salvaged and crushed within a day.
She was floated the old fashioned way by a crew of skilled members of the Anchor Out community in Richardson's Bay, who we sometimes informally call the Boat Savers.
Here's a picture I took of a few of our local first responders checking the aneometer:
These rugged folks are an endangered mixture of foul-mouthed saltiness, lifelong Macguiverish maritime skills, and old-fashioned kindness. They generally do what they do for gas money for their outboards and generators and sometimes beer. They are often the first responders and assist vessels in distress at all hours of the day or night. They stop them from hitting Tiburon in storms, they raise them from the bottom and deliver them to the Army Corps or repair them. When they say "Keep Sausalito Salty", this is the real deal.
At that time, because Pronto II was on the run, with the local police hell bent on destroying her (which hopefully will turn into being hell bent on saving Pronto II) and no marinas willing to take her in, we were forced to put her in deep pirate waters one quarter mile from shore. While we awaited 2 months for time in the yard, her pumps and generator were stolen and she went down again.
Raised again during a king tide at night in a storm in mid December, Pronto II towed in and was hauled out on the ways at Richardon's Bay Boat Works in Sausalito on Saturday December 22, 2018. This is one of the few railcars still in existence in the Bay Area, located in the Marinship district of Sausalito.
A dedicated team from the Sausalito boat community, close to 2 dozen individuals, participated in this work including: Graham and Ross Sommers from the yard, Louis Tenwinkle, Dave McGregor, Doug Storms, Greg Baker, Ramblin Jack Elliot, Oleg, Brian Doris, Bruce and his rambunctuous rottweiler Chevy, Opal, Sunny, and many more. Advice was offered by Jim Linderman, who with his father ran Stone's yard for many decades, Holden and ... from the Arques School of boatbuilding in Sausalito, and just about anyone who walked into the yard...
Ramblin' Jack Elliot impersonating a boom crutch:
Over the course of 2 months, 20 gallons of concrete were removed with an airchisel from a previous emergency fix in the old fishing boat technique, and 8 sawn oak frames were installed. She received a bottom job to get her through the next phase, was sanded bow to stern, was reefed and caulked in a number of seams and the garbard seams, was hand brushed with multiple coats of bottom paint and an enamel topside paint.
Slowly but surely her unique beauty began to emerge:
Put back out at anchor in deeper water, as still no marina we could find would both fit and/or have her and forbidden to return to her 30-year mooring in protected Sausalito waters due to changes in local ordinances.
A few months later disaster struck.
We are not sure what happened, because we need to see her hull, but we have some ideas. She went straight down onto her keel in the mud rapidly in the middle of the night, a leak much faster than the slow leak before the all the repair work in the yard. We approximate it must have been 30,000 - 40,000 gallons an hour (think firehoses), far beyond what any backup pump system could handle, or any popped seam could produce.
This time she was in 20 feet of water, a whole different ball game.
Characteristically, the community did not give up. The Boat Savers rallied, up to 8 guys at one time, and we floated her on industrial float bags the size of hot tubs, and which took us close to 5 days to locate some to rent for $1500. (If you would like to support buying float bags for the Boat Savers please put a note in your donation. They will put them to good use and save the government tens of thousands of dollars a year. Again, often for gas money. Support the Boat Savers!)
It was an amazing sight, seeing her cruising down the channel towed behind the 1910 fishing vessel Bristol, floating but still submerged to the Army Corps of engineers.
(picture from Louis...)
Along the wall we sat her up on her keel on the concrete ramp where boats go to die, and waited for the low tide to survey the damage.
Despite having received permission from Federal and Regional authorities, at the crucial moment of high tide to pull her as high as we could on the ramp, we were threatened with arrest for being at the Army Corps by some local law enforcement officers who hadn't gotten the memo.
Despite ample explanations, names of all the people in charge who granted safe harbor, and the letter you see above from the National Maritime Historical Museum, we were forced at threat of going to jail to pack up and leave because the police didn't believe us/had noteworthy animosity towards the Boat Savers, and even the Pronto II it felt like.
We missed the last high/low tide we needed to get a clear visual on her hull below the waterline.
With the aborted mission and with a time mandate from the Army Corps boss, suddenly the task of getting a clear read on the damage and repairing it right then and there, which had felt possible, felt impossible. As the photos above show, a popped plank, or an open seam, are not daunting if you're accustomed to the way it all works. The vessel can be patched up enough to get somewhere safe.
But without the low tide we needed, we were beat tired, physically from the hauling and diving and crazy ropework, and emotionally from the harassment, I began to consider sparing us all and sending her to a fate of salvage. I even make the decision to do it, and felt the loss, and the relief.
But somehging didn't feel right about it. I spent a night contemplating whether I was in a sunk cost fallacy, but letting her die felt like too extreme a response to a likely fixable issue. I had in earlier in the day received numerous cash offers for her very valuable bronze from locals watching from the shore, but it didn't feel right to let her disappear into the crusher and the bodies of other boats just yet. We make museums for lesser things than Pronto II.
If you know boats, you can likely see that there really are few boats left in the world as graceful as this.
I am moving forward with this campaign as I feel is important to get her safe as she wants to be, to make a call out for emergency cash assistance, and to get her properly out of harms way for the long term and rest of her existence.
We are all very tired, and our bodies hurt, but this is a real boat. Our children need to know what one looks like, how it sails, experience how it lifts the spirit in awe. Keep our aestehic minds alive.
We need to make emergency repairs, and give her berthage for as long as it will take. It will cost quite a bit to do it right, we have tried to accomplish this mission for less money than anyone could imagine, but the few shortfalls in resources made simple things very difficult and she was in harms way.
Dozens of individuals and land and at sea have given in labor and materials and spirit into the saving of this vessel. It has brought community together into something bigger than us all, truly keeping the tradition alive. Keeping Sausalito Salty.
Local authorities have given some leeway in support of the effort, and maybe if we're lucky a bit more time at the Army Corps to survey the damage, patch it, pump her out, float her and get her movable and easily towable.
Please help us give this irreplaceable treasure of San Francisco maritime history a new life in her retirement,
that she may continue to inspire future generations with her grace.
Many people committed to Pacific maritime history, and countless people ashore in the Bay would be profoundly grateful for your assistance now, so that Pronto II can sail again and lift and inspire our hearts.
This ancient craft of wooden boat building is being kept alive through gathering around and assisting in restoring boats like this one.
I am doing everything I can that Pronto II will be saved, and so that this window into a more rarefied time in culture, boat building, and the Bay Area's rich maritime history will not be lost to us forever. A story or a picture cannot touch us, or the next generation, in the same way as the actual thing.
Pronto II is like a small yacht version of San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts, which still today uplifts its visitors, and was built in exactly the same years. I imagine those people who supported it to survive long ago, if they could see all the people being moved by it today, would be glad they did. From shore, or driving over the Golden Gate, all eyes are moved by the graceful sails and lines of a truly classic yacht, we somehow recognize it. It makes our San Francisco Bay an even more beautiful place to live, more enchanted, and can touch thousands of people on a sunny and windy day. May that day come soon.
With great gratitude for your time and assistance in any way in making this vision a reality,
Alden
Thank you.
Organizer
Alden Bevington
Organizer
Sausalito, CA