Across the bar

摘要

Dean Stephens, 87, May 29, 2010, Ventura, California. Mr. Stephens (see WB No. 42) learned wood craftsmanship and self-sufficiency early by building a log cabin at age 13 in Blackfoot, Idaho. After serving in the Marines during World War II, he went home and apprenticed in furniture and cabinet making. He became enthralled with boats after moving his family to Alam-eda, California, in 1953 on the hope of better prospects. His first boat, FAIR DINKUM, was an 18'Sam Rabl-designed sloop, quickly succeeded in 1962 by a William Atkin 34-footer, CHARITY, which he, his wife, and their four children lived aboard for a decade while he worked as an itinerant boatbuilder. Among his large boats was the pinky schooner RELIANCE, built to Howard I. Chapelle's Glad Tidings design and launched in 1971. In the early 1970s, divorced and soon with a second wife, he moved to Abalobadiah Ranch outside Fort Bragg, California, where he established a boatbuilding school that emphasized self-sufficiency. One of the school's boats was MATILDA D, a felucca now in the collections of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. He moved to Wisconsin in 1978 after the school closed but returned to Fort Bragg in 1986 and fit in a few more boat projects until ill health forced him to cease.