The lines still hold.
Frank Stone drew Yankee’s lines in 1905 — to win on San Francisco Bay. A hundred and twenty years later the lines still hold, and a new foundation and a third-generation Sausalito boatyard are putting her back under sail.
Drawn to win. Kept because she did.
Frank Stone drew Yankee in 1905 for a client who wanted to win — 52 feet of Douglas fir on white oak, no winches, every line hauled by hand. She won her first race in 1906, took the first ocean race ever sailed out of the Golden Gate in 1907, and in 1915 won her division at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition regatta, sailing past fairgrounds built on the very ground where she was constructed.
She has been kept alive for 120 years because she is exceptional by design: a Navy patrol vessel in World War II, a Hollywood extra twice, and a champion again in her second century, still hauled by hand, without a winch aboard.
Around 1925, a schoolboy named Robert Ford spotted her laid up on the San Rafael Canal and ran to tell his father. Five generations of Fords kept her for nearly ninety years, most of them in the same St. Francis Yacht Club berth, about a hundred yards from where she was built.
“I’ve found our boat.”
Robert Ford, a schoolboy on the San Rafael Canal · c. 1925
And yes: she was launched the morning of April 18, 1906, shaken from her building cradle by the great earthquake itself. It’s the best birth story in West Coast yachting, and still only her second-best fact.
The drawing, and the boat that proves it.
One Stone drawing survives: the sail plan at left, dated January 1906, drawn by Lester Stone, Frank’s son. The hull’s lines plan is another matter: for that we hold the boat herself. A hull that still carries the shape Frank gave it, a racing record that runs from her first season to championships in her second century, and five generations who kept her because she rewarded them.
One honest evolution, stated plainly: she was drawn a gaff sloop. Her second owner, Charles Miller, gave her the schooner rig she carries today in the 1910s, removed her centerboard, and added her first engine. The rig changed. The hull beneath it is the hull Stone drew.
When she comes out of the water at the yard, her lines will be right there to read, and the Phase 1 survey is, quite literally, the act of verifying them. The drawing and the hull, side by side, is the whole argument: exceptional by design, and here’s the boat to prove it.
A completion, not a rescue.
The hardest structural work is already done. Before the pandemic paused the project, Yankee’s frames, stem, and forward planking were rebuilt at KKMI in Point Richmond, the most demanding and invasive phase of her long refit. Her eight major spars are refinished and waiting, a complete suit of new North Sails stands ready, and more than 1,000 board feet of prime, air-dried Douglas fir is now stacked at the yard for the remaining carpentry.
She is at Richardson Bay Boatworks in Sausalito, a family yard in its third generation, on a working waterfront that still builds and repairs wooden boats the way it always has. Ross Sommer, who founded the yard in 1986, is lead boatwright. His son Andrew manages the work. Beside them is Graham Wheelock, a graduate of the Arques School of Traditional Wooden Boatbuilding, which shares the same waterfront grounds.
Three generations. One waterfront. The right hands for the work.
Haul-out, survey & stabilization
The yard is confirming, plank by plank, that the lines still hold. The survey sets the scope and budget for Phase 2: the next milestone.
Motion, not memory.
San Francisco Bay once built ships, and the skills that built them survive in fewer and fewer hands. The Golden Gate Wooden Boat Foundation exists to keep historic wooden yachts actively sailing on the Bay: working vessels that reward seamanship, teamwork, and care, not exhibits. It also sustains the boatwrights, riggers, and sailors who carry the craft forward. Every restoration is also a payroll and a classroom for traditional skills.
Everyone is welcome aboard this story: to watch, to follow, and to give. Sailing and shipwright work are simply the crafts at the center of it.
Yankee is the first project, not the whole mission.
Doing what she was built to do.
A hundred and twenty years of good stories.
2000s · Racing
The Home Depot Racing gaff
A splintered spar, a lumber-aisle fix, and a regatta won anyway; the crew wore the sponsor name with pride.
Chapter IX →
1942 · War service
Painted gray for the Golden Gate
Commissioned by the U.S. Navy for coastal patrol — and the author of the most famous radio message never sent.
Chapter VI →
1923 & 1962 · Hollywood
Two turns on the silver screen
A starring role in a King Vidor silent film, and a cameo alongside Jack Lemmon, proven frame by frame.
Chapter X →A hundred and twenty years of vocabulary, too: the lexicon keeps it, and the quiz grades you.
A short letter from the yard, weekly.
The Logbook carries the work as it happens: dated entries, photographs, plain captions. The letter brings it to you: one email a week, written from the yard, no noise.
Our list platform is being set up; for now the button sends us a note directly, and we’ll add you by hand. It works.
Experienced sailors and skilled craftspeople who want in on the work: info@ggwbf.org
Funded phase by phase.
This is a completion, not a rescue. Phase 1 (haul-out, professional survey, and stabilization) is funded and under way at Richardson Bay Boatworks. The survey sets the scope and cost of Phase 2; that’s the next milestone. Every dollar funds professional craft, materials, and berthing. No salaries, no overhead.
Many employers match gifts; search for the West Coast Seafaring Society.
A program of the West Coast Seafaring Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit · EIN 84-1776838