‘Yankee’ Needs a New Home
There comes a time in every wooden boat’s life when a new steward is needed. Two old sailors want to pass on a Bay Area classic that’s been sitting dormant and is ready for new people to breathe new life into an old boat.
Some 120 years ago, Frank Stone and his son Lester were building the 65-ft gaff sloop Yankee — which has since been re-rigged as a schooner — at his boatyard on the San Francisco waterfront near the Presidio. The story goes that she was launched before the April 1906 earthquake. Surviving the disaster, Yankee has been racing and cruising the Bay ever since.
She started her life racing under the Corinthian Yacht Club burgee before changing hands and eventually becoming the flagship of the St. Francis Yacht Club after she was purchased and maintained by descendants of the local Ford family since 1925. After appearing in countless Master Mariners regattas and other classic-boat events on the Bay, she’s been absent since the pandemic.
Latitude reached out to her current caretaker, St. Francis staff commodore John McNeill, to ask what’s up with the legendary schooner.
John told us that Yankee has been lying in her berth at Loch Lomond Marina in San Rafael suffering from COVID-induced mothballing, with spars, rigging, caprails and sheer planking in storage. This is not an unusual lull in Yankee’s long life. The boat was in storage in San Rafael Slough in 1925 when a young Robert Ford rode past her on his bike. That’s when Sydney and Arthur Ford purchased her and had her brought back to form, preparing the boat for her next century of sailing the Bay. Since then, she’s had many adventures, including being stolen in the 1930s and recovered off Ocean Beach, then patrolling for Japanese ships during WWII. She even had a role in a Hollywood movie. Mostly, Yankee has been racing and cruising on the Bay. She was amid her regular 20-year rebuild when the pandemic struck. Partially disassembled and with parts in storage, she’s been sitting in the water since July 2020.
