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Salute and Her Big Stick

Salute at Puerto Venere, Italy, showing a mast too tall to slip beneath the Golden Gate.

© 2008 Bernie Barden

"Mine’s bigger than yours!" writes Bernie Barden, Docent at the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park. "We spend our summers in Porto Venere, Italy, where we see some of the world’s classic yachts drop anchor every summer. Among them, Tom Perkins’ 289-ft Maltese Falcon by Perini Navi, and the 184-ft Rosehearty, also by Perini Navi.

"Then, on June 11, in came Salute, a Ron Holland co-designed sistership to Rosehearty. What makes Salute different from her six sisterships is that she’s a sloop rather than a ketch. Her mast is 246 feet tall, which according to information on the web, makes it the tallest in the world. Too tall, in fact, to slip beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, so I guess we won’t be seeing her on the Bay any time soon."

The Perini Navi photo of Salute just before she tastes water for the first time.

Perini Navi
©2008 Latitude 38 Media, LLC

Actually, Bernie, Joe Vittorio’s 247-ft sloop Mirabella, another Ron Holland design, still has the tallest mast in the world, at 290 feet tall. If you read closely, you’ll learn that her mast is made of carbonium, which means that Salute‘s 246-ft mast is only the tallest aluminum mast in the world.

By the way, we like your first sentence, which is a play on the title of Mine’s Bigger, the fine book by David Kaplan about the design and building of Maltese Falcon, with lots of good info on Mirabella, and Jim Clark’s 292-ft clipper ship Athena.

Ron Holland has lived in Ireland for many years now but he left his mark on the Bay Area.

© Dana Jinkins / Ron Holland Design

Folks who have been sailing the Bay for many years will remember that Ron Holland, originally from New Zealand, kicked around the Bay for several years, and eventually designed Dave Allen’s San Francisco YC-based 40-ft Imp, which set the racing world on its ear. The soft spoken Holland moved to Ireland long ago, where he’s become one of the premier designers of mega sailing yachts. In fact, another design of his, the 190-ft ‘super green’ Ethereal, for Bill Joy, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, is soon to be launched by Huisman. Hasn’t Ron done well for himself, proving that you don’t have to be a loudmouth to be successful.

Bill Joy’s NEW 190-ft ketch Ethereal, dedicated to being as ‘green’ as possible, is soon to be launched from the Huisman Yard. Come to think of it, so is another Silcon Valley-funded yacht, Jim Clark’s new J Class yacht Endeavour.

Ron Holland Yacht Design
©2008 Latitude 38 Media, LLC

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At long last Gulliver the macaw is back home in the U.S. Gulliver and his furry pal Snickers the cocker spaniel were abandoned on Fanning Island last December when their owners lost their boat on the reef.
We normally don’t do ‘crew wanted’ ads for individuals, but when it comes to folks who have made circumnavigations aboard schooners they’ve restored, we make exceptions.