It’s a Scene Out of the 1800s : Modern-Day Tars Tackle Rigging on a Schooner

“Women are OK,” says this old salt at Dana Point landing, “but there’s nothing like the real thing . . . “

He looks straight ahead as he talks. His misty eyes just climb up and down the sensuous curves and full bosom of California’s newest square-sail schooner, the Californian. It is the kind of ship that you’ve seen carved into walrus tusks, sewn into 19th-Century needlepoint samplers and adorning gentlemen’s club walls alongside paintings of race horses and pastoral scenes.

The scene itself looks to be straight from a 19th-Century dock: Down by the jetty, the rake-masted tops’l schooner is a-scurry with matelots loading boxes and cases, preparing lines, hauling jolly boats up on davits. Bouncing what look like sea chests over the gunwale. . . .

You blink: Are they preparing to take colonists up the coast to Oregon, or are they Jack Tars readying a revenue cutter to go maintain law and order around the fever-mad gold port of San Francisco?

If it wasn’t for the aluminum clinking of halyard shackles against a surrounding forest of modern metal masts, the scene could almost be as Richard Henry Dana Jr. saw it back in 1836. This was the harbor he sailed into from Boston and Cape Horn after two hard years before the mast.

“Cast off!” shouts a voice.

The lines are wiggled free of the bollards. And, if you choose not to, you don’t hear the diesel engine, quietly slipping the big toy out into the blue Pacific and down to San Diego via Santa Catalina. It is a three-day voyage that is bound to take you back to saltier, more sedate times of rustic sea days when the slower going makes the journey longer, and the arrival that much more mystical.

But let’s be honest, we’re a rum crew. Not so much guttersnipes scooped out of bars by the press gangs.

Far from it. This is costing Yuppie-class money--$450 per paying crew member for the three days. The only comparison is our level of experience in the ways of the sea.

As the Californian slips out through the breakwater, our huddle of more tweedy than seedy 20th-Century characters forms an eddy in the swirl of activity, nervously waiting on the main deck for orders.

As Dana pointed out, back when the Californian’s sisters really sailed, crews were hijacked from bars and forced to give away at least two years of their lives, if not life itself.

Today, the Californian’s idea is to shanghai teen-agers on board for two weeks of their lives, show them a different world, teach them to live in a confined society with real tests of physical courage and knowledge and try to mold teen-age leaders in the ways of self-sufficiency and leadership so that, it is hoped, they will become Forces for Good in tomorrow’s society.

Fee for Cruises

Trouble is, that costs money. About $4,000 a kid, based on the ship’s $600,000 annual operating costs. The full fee for an 11-day Californian cruise is $750 per youth, but about half can’t afford that amount and pay only $350. So, to help pay, the Californian’s umbrella organization, the Nautical Heritage Society, invites over-age teen-agers--working men and women who, in some dark corner of their stress-wracked bodies, have kept alive the kid in them and still long to play Captain Blood and Robin Hood and Peter Pan and Captain Hook.

Today, there are half a dozen paying, aging swashbucklers who have come out of the smog of Los Angeles and the offices of Sacramento and the bureaucratic burrows in the Golden Triangle to spend three days away from the mainland, to be whiplashed and keelhauled into action, trying not to notice the swell that starts almost immediately outside the seawall.

We’re quite a cross section of romantics: a husband and wife whose kid made a previous trip and talked them into taking it; a former Los Angeles cop; a retired printer who flew in from Hawaii just for his high-seas adventure; a young landscaper and a couple of late-’40s designers--old buddies from San Francisco who saw the Californian when she was up there and decided it would be the perfect escape from their families and their high-pressure work.

‘First Get-Together’

“OK, uh, everybody: this is our first get-together and there are certain things we need to get across . . . . “

The group is gathered around, sitting on the warm wood of the deck or the cold bronze of the operational cannons on board, as the Californian chugs out, bare-masted in the glassy ocean.

Dave Martin introduces himself as the science officer. “Uh, whu . . . ?” mutters someone, “I thought we were here to learn about reef-knots and sails.”

But Dave is handing out professional looking folders, self-published, it turns out, on an Apple Macintosh. Dana should have been so lucky.

Inside is everything from a maritime history of California to the flags that have ruled the California coast to the legend of Queen Calafia, whose naked wooden torso adorns the bow and dips and plunges into the sea with every swell we meet.

“First, let me beg you all to go down the stairwell into the cabin backwards,” Martin says. “That’s our most common source of injury. Not climbing the rigging or stowing sails. The stairs. Backwards, please! Now, would you all turn to the page headed Sail Plan.”

The group’s getting the same treatment as the cadets. Soon, they’re filling in blanks on the drawings with the pens they’ve been given--mainsail, fore, staysail, inner jib, outer jib, topsail, studding sail, top-gallant.

“Hot dog,” says someone, “we’ve got a top Gal -lant ! This must be a real sailing ship.”

Maybe, but the more crew we meet, the more it becomes apparent these are no normal rough-hewn gobs. Just like the rest of us, they’re refugees from the middle class.

Nearly all of them have degrees of one sort or other. Martin is a former teacher. John Beebe-Center, the first mate, is a former video producer. Pat McKenna, the engineer, has a degree in aeronautical engineering.

Even simple deckhands aren’t what they seem. The guy polishing the ship’s bell turns out to be Jeffrey Miller, a 24-year-old whiz kid who has a Jaguar and owns his own mortgage company . . . when he’s not back in the 1800s sailing this glorious old windbag. Deborah Hadwen is a young woman who has just returned from a year of study in Alsace, in France. She is bound for a career studying international law.

But don’t think these people aren’t serious about this. They are running this ship with the same passion as the dressed-up burghers of Virginia keep Williamsburg firmly back in the 18th Century.

They love the fact that every sail seems to take hours to raise and that coming about is as difficult as pulling down Barnum & Bailey’s Big Top. They also love the fact that the Californian is a replica out of the same Revenue Cutter hull design that helped the original America beat the sails off Britain’s best in the first America’s Cup 137 years ago.

Shipboard Talk

But some of us, as we sit about the deck watching the shining blue sea slick by, are still fretting about the faster, nervier life we left behind. Gee Heekscher and Eric Engstrom, the two friends from San Francisco, are both looking twitchy. Heekscher’s an architect into structural restoration. Engstrom’s a designer also devoted to refurbishing old interiors. They have abandoned their wives and work for a week of this, and you can see that those deadlines and schedules at home have already begun to creep back into their minds.

A heavy-set, square-jawed guy with a mouth surrounded by a gray beard, wearing dark shades, a long filter cigarette in one side of his mouth and a toothpick in the other, and a foam cup of coffee in his right hand, is also looking too taut for the relaxed do-nothing atmosphere. He’s standing propped against the rail, watching, like a cop out of a ‘40s movie.

He is a cop, or was. Sgt. Joe Barton’s here on a freebie, a sort of thanks for working in the San Clemente Lions Club to encourage all the financial support given the Californian. He’s 60. Been retired these 13 years, and pretty glad, too.

Barton thinks the kid-discipline concept driving the Californian project is basically beneficial, although it doesn’t get to the real troubled teens.

“They probably do good to the kids they get on board here,” he says. “It’s great to show them there’s a world out beyond the ghetto. But man, they’re not getting at kids who are really in trouble. I used to be in juvenile for a few years. I mean those kids in gangs now, they are bad . No more Boys Town. Remember the line: ‘No such thing as a bad kid?’ Ha!”

He lights another cigarette, and looks around at the others who have been listening to him. Jim Johnson, an elderly-looking gent with silver hair and a gentle expressive face picked up the conversation from Barton, saying he is the only one who is really aboard to learn.

“I’m training,” he says, his face lighting up with a smile. “They said I’d have to do a training trip if I was going on their voyage to Hawaii next year.”

Johnson leans on the rail and watches the ship’s hull cut into the water.

Iwo Jima Veteran

“I was introduced to the Pacific through the Marines--Iwo Jima and the rest of the islands out there. It was some introduction.”

He’s spent the rest of his life typesetting, Johnson says. He’s 62, and he’s just come back from Hawaii to be on this trip. Getting to Hawaii, that’s no problem. Sailing there, just like they used to do when King Kamehameha ruled, that’s worth making efforts for.

“Our son is with the Sea Scouts,” says Irene Clanin, who’s here with her husband, Bob. They already have a boat, a 30-foot Pearson. They’ve sailed all their lives in Chicago, but after, hearing from their kid, they know this is a different experience coming up.

Judging by the weather, the differences with the Clanins’ cruises aren’t going to be as dramatic as they might be. As Martin leads the group around the deck, he stops at a sort of horse’s hitching rail just forward of the mainmast.

“These are called the ‘Bitts,’ ” he says. “You should have seen our cadets on the last cruise to San Francisco. Rough weather? We had a dozen of them tied to the bitts with two great trash bins lined with plastic to lean into and, uh, you know . . . . “

It’s an hour before the feel of a breeze on the cheek brings the Californian to its natural element, when the diesel engine is switched off, and the skipper calls his mate Beebe-Center into action.

“OK,” shouts Beebe-Center, “I need crew aloft. Some for the T’gallant. Clear those lines!” Suddenly, the “new crew” starts realizing how much they don’t know. As a maze of hawsers and flapping canvas start making them feel like helpless babes in arms.

“Two men on the port outer jib halyard!” shouts John. “Two more on the main gaff topsail. No, no. Back there, you! The staysail halyard! Hold onto it. Make her up around that pin!”

The new crew members find themselves getting caught between sheets and halyards, between jibs going up and fores coming down. Between poles being hauled aloft to carry more sail up top and hawsers being kept in strict order down below.

“OK Pop your sheets. . . . March that aft. . . . staysails aback . . . No! I didn’t want that sheet--make the sheet fast. Slacken the halyard!”

John’s voice, trained to be positive when relating to newcomers, starts to get an edge after the third sail “fwopped” out of control, thanks to us newcomers panicking, and getting lost in the incredible snake pit of lines.

We’re suddenly learning the difference between flemishing rope and cheesing it and faking it and flaking it and coiling it and belaying it and clover-leafing it.

New terms like “lay on” and “lay off” come to take on awesome meaning when you’re up 75 feet over the deck trying to put your feet onto the lines while you cling to the yard and try not to spring the rope and maybe twang others out into the clean air.

Worked on Tanker

“I spent a summer crewing on an oil tanker when I was a student,” says Gee Heekscher, “but we spent most of our time chipping paint. It wasn’t like this.”

But after it’s all done, there is a glorious silence. No motor, no propeller. Just the swish of a great ship reaching up to catch whatever breezes the day has brought.

The sun is easing down as the cloud-shrouded cliffs of Catalina heave up over the western horizon. Hey, we could have done this in an hour by hydrofoil, but what a great feeling to see her come gradually toward us.

Wendy, the ship’s cat, chooses this moment to emerge from below decks. She has a Turk’s head grommet around her neck for a collar, and she owns the ship. Ever since she was tossed into the sea by a nearby fishing boat and swam determinedly toward the Californian five years ago. She cruises up along the railing, and settles down against the ratlines, watching the latest batch of recruits.

Wendy has watched a lot of young and old landlubbers face a new world around her. Steve Christman, the 50-year-old boy-wonder (he looks that young) who conceived the whole Californian idea, says 700 kids--high school seniors really--have spent sea time aboard the Californian in 4 1/2 years. And that’s not counting all the grown-ups like us who have filled in the gaps. All in all, Californian has logged 75,000 miles at sea.

She’s California’s official flagship, but that doesn’t mean the state pays for the running costs.

“No way!” says Christman, saying “If I knew then . . . what I know now . . . . “

“(My wife) and I mortgaged everything we owned to create her. Plus, it has taken huge generosity by people like Earl Rippee of the Anvil Corp. and many others. She cost a million and a half to build, and we still owe a million. When I think of the millions spent on this America’s Cup--and all we need is $2 million.”

Christman says that with $2 million, he could pay off everything and use interest from the remaining money to cover running costs.

‘Do Pretty Well’

“We do pretty well, considering,” he says.

Christman runs the operation out of Dana Point with an office staff of three. Six years ago, the whole idea was just a twinkle in the eye of Christman, who grew up in New Mexico and got to the sea the same way most inlanders do--through their imagination.

He finally got to the West Coast when his father came here searching for work. Young Steve joined the Sea Scouts in Long Beach, right where the Queen Mary now rests. He says he brought his Puritan ethic with him and a patriotic pride that was ruffled by the protest atmosphere of the ‘60s.

“I was an Elvis teen,” he says, “I had to work from the start. I’m a traditionalist. I didn’t grow my hair. I didn’t question our values. I didn’t drive a VW. I didn’t have enough money to indulge in that stuff.

“When Vietnam and Watergate came around I could see the pride in America and our traditions wasting away. Scouts did away with uniforms, ROTC wasn’t allowed on-campus. I hated to see the pride go away.”

Christman says he saw the deck of a ship as one of the few places where the flag was still flown proudly, where there was discipline and respect for chain of command. Especially, he says, a sailing ship--labor intensive, dependent not on technology but on the awesome power of nature.

‘No TV, No Walkman’

“The amazing thing is the deck of the ship is one place where you can step back. Now, with these kids, for 11 days, there is no TV, no Walkman. For 11 days, your world is 90 feet long, 25 feet wide, and 6 feet deep. Yet, you are out on a completely empty horizon. These kids are seeing farther than they have ever seen in their lives.”

Christman got the idea for the Californian about the time he retired as a commercial artist in 1980. “I thought about Sea Scouts again. I thought, ‘What big sailing ships are there sailing on the California coast?’ I had the idea that we somehow needed to let people experience the marine environment. The ocean is our last great hope.”

The result has been the hardest working years of his life.

“I’m a born-again capitalist,” he says. “I want the state to help us more, but I want the Californian to help the state, too--any way we can stimulate trade with California is great.”

San Diego was where the ship was built, but somehow she has been embraced much more warmly elsewhere. Howard Thomas, her home port captain for San Diego, says he and designer Ray Wallace (who designed Seaport Village and consults with Walt Disney) proposed to the Port Commission that it transform the G Street Mole--disused since the days of the “nickel-snatchers,” ferries that took sailors out to moored ships--into a high-profile home port for the Californian.

“Wallace,” says Thomas, “set up beautiful plans for a mini Mystic Harbor.”

The Port Commission turned them down. Instead, the Californian has found a warm welcome in Chula Vista, which is eager for recognition as California’s “Most Southern Port.”

“But there isn’t the visibility (in Chula Vista), not for the State Ship,” says Thomas. “We were going to have a little school down there, for lessons in seamanship.”

They are getting a lot of “customers” from schools and adult groups from Northern California all the way down to Oceanside. But again, San Diego forms a kind of gap, a black hole in tall-ship consciousness.

“We’d love to take more people from San Diego,” Christman says. “I want to eventually build another ship, similar, so we can have one for the north and the other concentrating on Southern California.”

The climax, in a way, comes after we’ve moored at a large buoy off Avalon, as dark gathers. The crew lovingly folds and coils and tidies everything into ship-shape order.

Just after 6 o’clock, a bright face appears alongside. It’s Karen Balog, the cook, just flown in from a camp northeast of Eureka called Forks of Salmon. The ship’s previous cook had fallen sick this morning, and Karen has saved the day. She rushes below to cheers, and takes over from Mark Crutcher who has been taking time off as skipper to become cook and prevent a mutiny.

Half an hour later, the ship’s jolly-boat pulls away with a group of crew, new and old, and makes its way through the inky waters toward the dancing lights of Avalon. Far off, a seal barks. Above us, Mars is throbbingly close to the right of a crystal clear three-quarter moon. Jupiter is bright below her. A shooting star passes long and undying right overhead.

Everyone takes it as a good omen.

Later, in Solomon’s, an Italian-style cafe above the bay with Bougainvillea framing the moon over the bay, the day is made perfect by Linda, who’s there with her mother, soaking in the atmosphere.

“You’re off that tall ship? The one sailing in this evening? Oh my! That was so beautiful, so romantic. We climbed the hill to the Wrigley House to watch you come in. It’s the kind of boat you expect to see, you know, well, Erroll Flynn, swashbuckling on. It was the most romantic sight . . . . “

Yes, that’s it, that’s the fantasy. We draw up our shoulders and stare down at the silhouetted raked masts of our schooner in the tiny harbor. Erroll Flynn! After one day! Joe and Eric and Gee and the rest of our one-day club.

We all toss a pleading glance toward Pat and John and the real crew, who seem on the verge of cracking up. But it’s OK. They don’t move a muscle. They don’t say a word. Linda will never know.