Against the Grain: The Master Mariners Wooden Boat Show

There are always people willing to go against the grain, and the owners, craftsmen, crew and volunteers that put on the annual Master Mariners Wooden Boat Show at the Corinthian Yacht Club are among the few. Walking the docks of the show is like entering a living museum where you rediscover the allure and aura that surround handcrafted works of art. These are people who work with the 10 digits on their hands and not the terabytes of digits in data centers.

The living part of this living museum is that these boats are far more than showpieces. Many of them were racing in 25 knots of breeze in the Master Mariners Regatta four weeks ago. The 42-ft S&S yawl Fairwyn raced in the regatta, and also did the 2025 Baja Ha-Ha.

The San Francisco Maritime Museum’s 43-ft replica of a San Francisco Bay Chinese shrimp-fishing junk, Grace Quan, was on hand to show how the Chinese, fishing from China Camp in Tiburon, caught shrimp in the late 1800s.

There were 16 Hurricane class one-designs built at Nunes Brothers in Sausalito, and today only one survives. Random was in Kers Clausen’s family for seven decades and changed hands a couple of years ago when Phil Mills took her on and has since been busy restoring her. Like the Bear and the Bird, the Hurricane was a local, Bay Area class that dwindled over time. The Birds, Bears and Farallone Clippers are survivors, and thankfully, there are members of a new generation who are captivated by the magic of wood and are taking on the preservation of these heritage pieces of art.

Call of the Sea and Spaulding Marine Center were there to help connect people to some of the institutions that keep alive the skills, trades and art of sailing, building, and repairing wooden boats. Vibe coding has very little utility in this crowd. It’s about working with your hands and building something you can hold.

Since we spend our days working with a keyboard and mouse, we’re always cautious when shaking hands with the people whose hands work with a bandsaw or pounding caulking into planks.

We have enough photos from one day on the docks to fill several photo albums (do they still exist?). The camaraderie of the crowd, the pride of ownership, the joy that emerges from showing the details, the varnish, the history and lore of each vessel shine through every year. We feel lucky that the owners who care for these vessels are willing to share them and let us climb aboard to explore the intricate detail that went into building and rebuilding these boats over many decades.

if you’ve never been to a wooden boat show, make sure to make a note in your calendar for a year from now. It will inspire you to care for your boat just a bit more and reconnect you with the soul of sailing in a way that modern boats just can’t manage. We thank all these folks who continue to go against the grain to preserve the culture and beauty of all these classic vessels.