Across the bar

摘要

1. Frederick Sloane Ford, Jr., 90, August 1, 2014, Harbor Springs, Michigan. Mr. Ford grew up sailing his father's John G. Alden-designed schooner and a yawl that won the 1938 Mackinac Race. After serving in the U.S. Coast Guard for a few years in the 1940s, he set up a yacht design office in Grosse Point Farms. He became an advocate of cold-molded construction. Working with builder Ted McCutcheon, he developed his Sassy design, a family-friendly sloop. QUINTET, a yacht from his board, won the 1958 Mackinac Race's cruising class. One successful design was the Great Lakes Class Sloop, 36' LOA, first built by Burr Brothers in Marion, Massachusetts, in 1960. In 1983, Mr. Ford wrote, "STAR: A Designer's Own Boat," for WoodenBoat No. 54. The cold- molded 33 sloop was an early commission for builder Steve Van Dam (see WB No. 104). Van Dam built a sister sloop, STAR'S ECHO, for Mr. Ford's daughter, and three more boats for the Ford family, including FLICKER, a reproduction of a John L. Hacker "gentleman's racer." Mr. Ford contributed to the resurgence of the Northern Michigan One-Design sloops from the 1930s (see Currents, WB No. 217) and donated design work to a 1970s reconstruction of the 18th-century sloop WELCOME (see WB No. 10), now destined for a forthcoming indoor exhibit at Headlands International Dark Sky Park in Mackinaw City.