Clear the Deck for Tradition : Refurbished Trumpy Yacht Recalls the Sails of Yore

Many yachts have fascinating histories, and the Trumpy yachts--of which Tonda, berthed in Newport Harbor, is one--seem to have more than their share.

“We’ve seen pictures of John F. Kennedy on this yacht, and there are rumors that he brought Marilyn Monroe here,” said Larry Heitzler of Foster-Kevill in Costa Mesa, interior designer for the Tonda.

The 67-foot Tonda is a beautiful wood boat that is elegant and graceful and harks back to more relaxed times, when yachting was the sport of gentlemen.

The combination of the lightness of the boat, the traditional feel of this craft--which spent most of its life on the East Coast--and the comfortable interior design make this yacht a special home away from home. In fact, when the sun is setting over the bay and the lights start dimly coming on in the aft stateroom with its surrounding windows, it could easily be home.

For Tonda’s owner, builder Warren Toman, the yacht is his dream fulfilled.

“About six years ago I decided the Trumpy was the boat I wanted to have. I’ve owned yachts off and on through the years, but I decided I liked the traditional feel of this boat. It has a feel, a smell, a life to it with a lot of warmth and charm.

“It took about two years to find a Trumpy that had not been massacred and turned in to a 1990s Palm Beach-style condominium. To try and restore one of them to the original condition would have been impossible.”

Because Toman grew up on the East Coast, this yacht represented a kind of homecoming. After much research, Heitzler was able to discover how the original Tonda had looked. He and Toman worked with Tonda’s captain, Bruce Cunard, to restore it, a project that took about three years.

“Actually, Cunard has about five years of his life in this boat,” Heitzler said. “He worked on restoring all the wood.

“Tonda has a double-planked mahogany hull over an oak structure. The interior of the pilot house and aft deck are teak, the forward is ash and the aft section is Honduras mahogany. About 432 yachts were built from 1911 to 1974 by Trumpy.

“He was a cantankerous old man, so when he shut the yard down, he put all the original drawings in the middle of the yard and burned them. Luckily one of his sons saved some of the drawings, and so we have some of them.”

All the wood on the Tonda was stripped and refinished, while the equipment and hardware were re-chromed. “All the original equipment still functions,” Toman said. “These yachts were built to last.”

When Heitzler came to do the interior design of the yacht, he wanted to maintain the traditional but give it an updated look.

“I wanted to give the feeling of being in Martha’s Vineyard in New England. I grew up back East, so I knew the look. I added antiques to keep to the traditional theme.”

Slipcovers are changed with the season for a completely different look. For warm weather, there is a blue and white striped fabric in the main salon; in cooler times, the covers are changed to plaid.

“I wanted the main salon to have the comfortable, rainy-night kind of feeling, like a men’s club,” Toman said. With the wood and the plaids, the boat could easily be docked off the coast of Scotland rather than Newport Beach. All that’s missing is a fireplace.

The wood on the boat was done by American craftsmen, and Toman hired local wood craftsman Dwane Clark to build a cabinet to hide the television and VCR. He also added a built-in book rack, among other things.

“The major restoration work was done in the main salon,” Heitzler said. The coffee table in this room rises up to dining table height and can seat six. In this room, as well as others throughout the yacht, the portholes are large and let in a lot of light. This, combined with the width of the boat, gives a feeling of spaciousness and airiness.

One of the areas redesigned was the galley, which originally had been chartreuse Formica with green vinyl floors. The cabinets were replaced with wooden ones built by Clark, so now this ultra-modern galley with its microwave oven fits schematically into the boat as a whole. There is a built-in dinette area off the kitchen for watching the cook prepare meals and for impromptu tastings.

The large master suite has two beds with a mirror in between that hides a working dock for equipment storage. The master bathroom has the original steel-blue color, and needed no restoration.

There is a guest stateroom that sleeps two comfortably, and a crew’s quarters for the captain and crewman Toman needs when he takes the yacht out on trips. The staterooms have louvered shutters for privacy when docked.

“You feel the spaciousness here because of the relationship of the amount of space to the amount of light,” Heitzler said. “Most boats are dark, especially sailboats. So even though the wood is beautiful, and the craftsmanship is exquisite, you’re still sitting in a pit. Most people stay up on deck because it’s more pleasant. This boat has a lot of generously sized portholes, so it is pleasant to be down below.”