VetsBoats Brings New Life to SV ‘Clover’

Back in the late 1970s, a majestic 68-ft sloop named Clover called Sausalito home, whence she raced the Bay’s waters and operated as a charter boat. Decades passed, and her condition waned. By 2015, she lay in significant disrepair at the Oakland Yacht Club, kept afloat only by constantly running bilge pumps that seemed only to pause her inevitable demise. Fortunately, less than a year later, she was donated to the nonprofit VetsBoats, an organization aimed at improving veterans’ mental health through sailing and wooden boat restoration.

VetsBoats founder Terry Moran’s relationship with Clover began unknowingly in 1977 when his 10-year-old eyes spied her racing that year’s Master Mariners regatta from aboard his parents’ 48-ft Alden cutter Elan. “She was this gigantic Marconi-rigged behemoth shouldering aside the chop as if there was none, like she was a locomotive on tracks, leaving a sizzling, steaming wake in her path,” Terry recalls.

He never forgot that day, which left a “lifelong impression” on him. Remarkably, it wasn’t until after Clover was donated to VetsBoats and her restoration began that he recognized her as the same boat he’d seen decades earlier.

Clover was commissioned by Royal Naval Reserve Officer Eric Thompson in 1938, designed by Albert Luke, and built at the A.R. Luke Brothers boatyard in Hamble, England. She displaced 50 tons, had a full keel, was framed in double-sawn oak, and was wrapped in traditional carvel-planked pine. Soon after her completion, she was loaned by Thompson to the Royal Admiralty and lightly used by the Coastal Command prior to England’s declaration of war in 1939. Thompson later took her to the Mediterranean and sold her in 1960. Notably, in the 1970s she was bought by “Billy Bones” Pringle and sailed from the Caribbean to Sausalito, where he installed a Marconi rig and sailed her regularly. Over the years, she was passed among a variety of owners. Eventually, the Deckard family purchased her, and she continued plying the Bay’s waters for yet another decade. While they were outfitting her for cruising, a family matter sidetracked the project, and Clover’s situation took a turn for the worse. When VetsBoats took ownership, her exterior was in complete disrepair, while much of the glorious craftsmanship below still shone.

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