Good Luck and Greater Fortune
Sandy Brown, April 22, 2024
In most ways I think I'm probably nothing like the typical Spaulding customer. I didn’t grow up near boats, in fact, I had never even stepped on a sailboat until six years ago. I’d always loved the ocean, but it was something that I would visit on vacation with my family and always longed to return to. A few years back good fortune and opportunity merged and I found myself on the path to a fascinating Maritime career. With focus, hard work, diligence and of course, no small measure of luck, I landed a job as a relief cook working on the station boats for the San Francisco Bar Pilots. Today, I’m the full-time cook on Pilot Boat San Francisco and have never been happier.
Several years back, having fallen truly and deeply in love with life on the water, Malaya, a magnificent 37 foot cutter rigged legend. Again, good luck plays the lead role in my story. Being new to sailing, I didn’t know much about sailboats, what to look for or what to avoid, and I could easily have fallen into a very bad situation. We all know that purchasing a boat is an emotional decision.
When I first laid my eyes on Malaya, I fell head over heels. I had looked at boats, lots and lots of boats. Some in my price range, some far beyond, but none of them sang to me the way that she did. This 1983 Hunter cutter rigged 37 foot sailboat was the last sailboat John Cherubini designed. My beautiful Malaya was the very last of what I’ve come to learn are some of the best American made sailboats of that era.
Of course, any boat of this vintage comes with a whole host of challenges. I had never owned a boat before, much less lived on one. The last four years have been exciting, invigorating, and incredibly frustrating. I have lived the idiom ‘boat yoga’, those painful contortions we put our bodies through reaching for far away nuts and bolts, wishing desperately that we had eyeballs on the tips of our fingers. I have watched hundreds of hours of YouTube videos, participated in forums and exhausted the help of friendly neighbors. Late last Summer, Dave Gisdendaner suggested to me that it was time to haul out for a bottom job. It had been three years, and I was certainly due.
On his recommendation, I contacted the fine folks at Spaulding Marine Center. It was a good call. The work I needed was done masterfully. As expected, opening the Pandora’s box of ‘let’s pull the shaft and replace the strut’ resulted in what could have been more than the most patient engineer could withstand but we pulled together as a team and I am happier than ever with my beautiful boat.
The quality of work and pride in workmanship that I experienced at Spaulding is only one piece of a marvelous collage that’s both special and uniquely Sausalito: a love for and commitment to old wooden boats, the intoxicating smell of fresh-cut wood that carries me away every time I cross the threshold, the looming structure that houses a living, working museum and drips with the region’s history. I explored the library and chatted with enthusiastic wooden boat lovers. I met several young women with salt in their veins, bursting with enthusiasm for their work and life on the water. The passion at Spaulding is invigorating.
I’m looking forward to taking a boatbuilding class at Spaulding this summer and making a sailing nesting pram for my beautiful Malaya. I may be new to Sausalito, but I feel like I’ve found a home here.
