Phillips Interview
SAN DIEGO YACHT CLUB
Oral History Program
An Interview with Bob Phillips 1930-
November 15, 2007
This Interview was conducted by Oliver B. Peter and Bob Kyle. Transcribed by Charlotte R. Chalfant. Edited by Oliver B Peter, Bob Kyle. Final typed by Charlotte R. Chalfant. Supervised by Oliver B. Peter and Bob Kyle.
Phillips Interview
Interview with Bob Phillips November 15, 2007
Index Page
Personal History 1- 4, 10, 12 Father, William L. Phillips, Commodore 1940 2-3, 9-12, 15-16, 22-23 Phillips Co. Ad Agency 2- 4 Phillips-Ramsey Co. 3, 16 Lois-Sailing Background 3- 4, 6-7, 17-19 History of Boats in the Family 4-10, 14-19 Names of SDYC Personalities 3, 55-6, 8-9, 11, 13-18, 21-23 Selling Ice Cream and newspapers to Naval Ships during WWII 7 Commercial Fishing History 8-9 Sea Scouts during WWII 9 Schooner “Blue Peter” to Central, S. America & Beyond 9-12 Building a house (on Gregornio) 12 “Blue Peter” tradition (#22) 16 Adventures in the Naval Reserve 17 Intercoastal and Inland Waterways 18-19 Sons, Peter and Steven 20-21 SDYC in the Old Days 5-6, 13, 21-24 200th Anniversary Sailing “Star of India” 1976 24
BOB PHILLIPS INTERVIEW
Bob Phillips (BP) Oliver Peters (OP) Bob Kyle (BK)
START TIME 0:12 OP: We are here today with Bob Phillips, who was a great contributor and counsel to Gary Gould and Iris Engstrand and the research for the history book that was done a few years back. And what we want to do today, as part of our Oral History Program is to talk to Bob about his involvement and his family’s involvement in sailing and cruising and the club which has a very rich history dating back with his father and years as commodore. On the current roster, I note that you are #28, I think you’ve probably moved up a little bit, since then.
BP: Unfortunately we keep moving up, don’t we. I dropped out when I went into the service so I got a bigger number, I’m glad to have it now.
OP: Yeah, they always do get a little nervous about being #1. Bob, will you please state your full name. Phillips Interview
PB: My full name is Robert Lewis Phillips.
OP: And where were you born Bob?
PB: I was born in Mercy Hospital in San Diego, California.
OP: And the date of that event?
PB: That was June 20th, 1930. We lived, I looked at the address this morning and now I’ve forgotten it, on Eagle Street in Mission Hills until I was six years old and then we moved to Point Loma.
OP: Another famous yacht club person was on Eagle Street, I believe the Manzer family was up there.
BP: That’s right. We had several members, we had one of our sail makers lived down the street as a matter of fact.
OP: Who was that?
BP: I’m drawing a blank.
OP: Ok, now were your parents involved in the yacht club?
BP: Well my, yes. They, my father has always been a sailor and he was first involved with Southwestern yacht club and was commodore of Southwestern. But he belonged to Southwestern, Coronado, and San Diego Yacht Club, simultaneously. And so they, the first boat, going, capable of getting to Catalina that they had, was, was called the “Blue Water.” And it was about a 25 foot stone built sloop. Probably took under sail, would’ve taken about four days to get to Catalina, so fortunately having an auxiliary engine, I took my first trip to Catalina on that boat. Down in the bilges, so I couldn’t fall out of the bunk. And I was about, a little more than a month old, somewhere around there.
OP: Oh well, our son Stephen parallels that, not going to Catalina, but we had him on a bunk when I came about San Diego Bay without folks who weren’t really sailors and I realized that he was about to bounce off, and I picked him on the first bounce, but after that we got him a hammock. I note from the history book, that your father was born in New York and then moved to Chile. What was that all about that? The family was a traveling family?
BP: Yes. Very much so. His father, and his father’s family, were travelers. But his reasoning for going down to Chile was based on the fact that he was employed by Time Inc. in New York and was very involved in their publication. And a publishing house in Santiago had come to Time and had asked them if they would consult on printing technology, and they agreed to do so and they sent my grandfather down there. Phillips Interview
OP: Was your grandfather also involved in boating?
BP: His sailing all on steamships.
OP: Oh right.
BP: But he went down, my father stayed there until he was twelve years old, I believe. My grandfather ended up owning the publishing company down there. He got so involved in it. Then they came, well long story in between. They went to Europe and that’s where my father went to school a lot. And then they, my grandfather settled here in about 1918, 1919.
OP: Did he continue in the publishing business here or still connections with Time or ?
BP: In a way, he developed a, he was involved in developing the color ruteger viewer printing, was his background and so he did start a little company. I think he wanted a place to, an office to go to. So he had a company called Sunset and Graving Company, for a lot of years here.
OP: Now was your father involved in that business?
BP: No.
OP: But later he was involved with an advertising business. BP: In February of 1928, he established the Phillips Company, which is an advertising agency.
OP: And did you follow in his footsteps there or ?
BP: I went into the business in New York and Washington D.C. and Chicago, and he called me one day and said, did you ever think about coming to the West Coast? And I said, well we’re pretty busy here and Lois and I were married at that point, and I had just been given the position as manager as a worldwide agency in South Africa, Cape Town. And Lois and I were literally packing and I said no, we’re taking a little trip. And he said, well I asked because your mother and I are going sailing and I thought you might be interested in an agency in San Diego. And I said, well thanks anyway. And well, knowing my father, he didn’t give up, he called me twice a day for the next two weeks. And I said, well that all very nice and I’m interested but I can’t afford it. So the next two weeks, we made a deal, where Charlie Ramsey, who had worked for my father since 1937-8, and I decided between the two of us, if he would give us some credit. So we changed the name to the Phillips-Ramsey Company, and that how that happened.
OP: That’s how it worked out. And you mentioned that you and Lois were married, were about to go off to South Africa, when were you married?
Phillips Interview
BP: We were married in, glad she isn’t here, um, we were married on the 24th of November of 195-, 1951.
OP: And where was Lois from?
BP: Redbank, New Jersey.
OP: Alright. And how did she adapt to San Diego?
BP: She did a lot of sailing there. Her cousin was June Meadow, June and Lowell North were yachtsmen, they shared the Yachtsman of the Year, one year.
OP: Oh is that right.
BP: She was a, a flatty sailor, a lightning national sailor, a holder of the Adam’s Cup, and she also sailed ice boats. Some of that rubbed off on Lois.
OP: She was very competitive in sailing, wasn’t she.
BP: Yeah.
BK: I was gonna back off, and how, where did you go to school. You mentioned growing up here.
TIME 10:25 BP: Went to school. Well here, I was at Grant school, Cabrillo School, Coronado High School, and then I went, the reason why I went East was to go to George Washington University, which is where Lois and I met.
BK: Ok. Now, where did you go after college, that got you on to the East Coast and ?
BP: Well I stayed back there, I was there, and that was a very busy time. I was doing Naval Reserve and school and courting Lois and then we came as soon as my father pressured us, we came West.
BK: But you had gone into the advertising business with what company back there?
BP: Grant Advertising.
OP: Is that New York?
BP: Chicago. But I worked in their New York office for a while.
OP: I see.
Phillips Interview
BP: They had 27 offices around the world, so the one in Cape Town, really appealed to us, but didn’t happen.
BK: Now, when you were growing up here, high school age and so forth, did you do a lot of sailing and yachting during those years? And was it at the San Diego Yacht Club or one of the other yacht clubs?
BP: No. Both, but I was thinking about this, meeting with you, and one of my earlier recollections here, was when we had our, 37 foot cutter here at the club, the Scripps research vessels was at one, I don’t know if the club owned it or if was just very close but it was on the same grounds, but it blew up one day. And I ran across an article on it, and my mother had driven, one of the sailors to the hospital and unfortunately that was one of my early recollections at the club. Then we
OP: You had a brother that told us…
BP: I had a brother, Bill, he passed away about 15 years ago.
OP: Yeah, but he was an active sailor too.
BP: He was very active, he and I both sailed, here was my brother, and that, Bud Caldwell article.
OP: Did you have any sisters?
BP: No. Just the two of us. And I started sailing with a, about an eight foot punt that was something akin to a sabot. And here my brother and I, are, we won the Commodore’s cruise, race around ship’s rock, Southern California, uh, Commodore’s cruise to Catalina was an annual for, forever. We had, we were the only kids in the race. And so it was embarrassing for some of the old racing skippers.
OP: And that was?
BP: Well I had to be, I don’t know about four or five years old.
BK: And was your brother, younger or older?
BP: Older, he’s four and half years older than I am. And he and I both sailed Starlets
OP: That was a very big fleet, wasn’t it.
BP: Big, very active fleet. And we had, I was one of the young kids, when I was very active in it because Andy Bofinger was sailing, Bud Caldwell, my mentor and the guy that really took care of me, saw that the big kids didn’t pick on me was Bob Rock. And Bob must be getting down to member number, single digit there somewhere, and Bobby Israel and Tom Scripps, Peter Peckham, Malin and Peter Burnham, and I crewed, before I Phillips Interview
had my own boat, I crewed for Paul Conner. Paul and I were on a downwind leg, skimming the edge of North Island, trying to stay out of current one day and Commodore Lucious, Criskraff, came up along the side and Paul’s father was on board, and he said, Ahoy there, I believe you’re on fire, and Paul and ducked down, he smoking a pipe at whatever age we were. And that was kinda fun. Paul’s father was with the school system I guess, he was superintendent or some big wig with the school system.
OP: That Paul Conner, related to Dennis?
BP: Dennis’ father. And grandfather. I sailed with Dennis’s father.
OP: And you had some good results?
BP: Not tremendous, we had fun of course.
OP: What other boats did you sail? When you were that age.
BP: Well then I got my own Starlet and I actually did fairly well with it, collected a lot of trophies.
BK: About when would that have been?
BP: That would have been in the ‘30s up until ’42, ’43. Up until ’44 I guess, during the war. BK: We have, Bud Caldwell brought a set of the minutes from the Starlet fleet, it started in about 1938 and goes about 1942, so I imagine your name is on those roles during those years then.
BP: Great. Probably.
BK: And your dueswere like 50 cents for the year and so forth.
BP: Yeah,
BK: There were a lot of entries for the economics for running that club.
OP: They also show a great increase in the number of participants in the Starlets deal, from eight to something like 18. It moved up and was a very popular class.
BP: It was. I remember ’47, Peter Peckham was, about the time I got out of the fleet, that Peter had the only, I think he was the only one in the fleet, oh no my brother had a brand new boat, but he pretty well built it himself, but Peter had a Kettenburg built brand new boat and that was big event.
BK: A PC?
Phillips Interview
BP: Oh no, the Starlet.
BK: Oh the Starlet, ok, his own Starlet.
OP: And then what other boats did you move along to?
BP: Well I’ve never been without a boat, before the Starlet I had a boat called the “Moth” which was a miniature skimmer and there was no other moths around and so there was no competition with it. So then after the Starlet.
OP: Excuse me, tell me, skimmer, is that like a flatty?
BP: Like a no, like a scow.
OP: Like a scow, like the boats they have on the lakes.
BP: Yes. Yeah, we used to have scows, class C scows here on Mission Bay and we virtually did not have them here but this was miniature version about nine feet long. Not much of boat. But it was fun
OP: Did they have a long tenure or not? The scows
BP: The scows? They did on Mission Bay, of course they’re still going in the Midwest and I sailed in an Regatta in Redbank, New Jersey last time Lois and I was there, the yacht club invited me and provided me with a boat and a crew and it was difficult sailing.
OP: I think Gene Trepte has done a little bit of the scow sailing on the
BP: Well he sails the big class A scows.
OP: Out there in the Midwest.
BP: Yeah I was sailing class B, which was what, 20-22 feet. And then my next boat was a Mercury. And I must have gotten that when I was 16 years old or so because at 16 I sailed it to Catalina.
BK: What size boat was that?
BP: 18 feet. You know that Mercury class, it was.
OP: It’s a keel boat, isn’t it.
BP: It’s a keel boat and here is a picture of the bow, Lois and I, I kept it when I went away and Lois and I won the New Year’s day race with it, when I first brought her out here and Lois sent this picture back to her mother and father and by return mail she got a check from her father and said, if your husband can’t afford to buy shoes for you, to be Phillips Interview
worn on the first of January, I’m not going to have my daughter freeze to death, and it was probably 75 degrees here, it was 75 below there.
OP: Sounds like you had a father-in-law with a sense of humor
TIME 23:08
BP: Yeah.
OP: I sailed on a Mercury in Tolmalis Bay in the ‘50s. I think they had a lot of those boats in the Santa Cruz area, didn’t they? The Mercuries, are you familiar with that?
BP: In Santa Cruz, I think they still do.
OP: That’s about the only other place, I’ve ever heard of that class.
BP: Yeah
OP: But really it’s a good boat, sails well?
BP: Sails very well yeah. We had a fair fleet here at the club, here for a while.
OP: Interesting.
BK: And this, this would have been when. It was obviously it was after you were back here.
BP: Probably about 1952.
BK: Ok.
BP: Yeah, I think Lois got a question mark on the year. But it would have been about then I think. We can look on the trophy and see I guess if we needed that information.
OP: To digress just a little bit from the number of boats you’ve had, let’s go back to the time that your mother and father went cruising right after the war and you and your brother were on that cruise, weren’t you, to South America?
BP: We were, let me tell you, when I’m forgetting a couple of boats so that this causes you to think about, but during the war, I bought a, about 20 foot open power boat, it had a Star automobile engine in it. It had a fish box in the open half deck and I converted that to an ice box and we had, as you know, a lot of Navy ships here in the harbor during the war, and so I had been the Arden boy, the symbol for Arden Dairies here in San Diego, and Arden was an account of my fathers at the ad agency, so I bought ice cream bars and I put them in my bait tank on the boat and then I was also a newspaper boy so I bought Phillips Interview newspapers and so I took my boat out and I stopped at Navy ship in the harbor and sold newspapers and ice cream bars. And that was a good little boat.
OP: And it sounds like a good little business.
BP: And it was a good business. And then I just, that as a, commercial fisherman were allowed to cut through the net during the war, so my brother and I both bought small fishing boats and we could get in our cruising and our fishing mostly on weekends, because I was still in high school and I could get out and albacore fishing was very good here in the summer when I could spend more time at it and get out…
BK: Did you have some kind of commercial?
BP: Had a commercial license, yeah.
BK: License, which is what allowed you to get through the net.
BP: Get through the net. Of course they had to have the, you know the big numbers on the hull and as you did in the harbor for that matter. But we had the certain times a day, when we could pass through, and they would open the net a little bit and we could get out and we had to get back, I think we had to be back before sundown.
BK: Then did you sell your catches then, as a commercial fisherman? BP: Yes, oh surely yes. Did very well with it.
OP: Where did you sell it, what…?
BP: Sold them down at the West gate, down, near Campbell machine, down that way. This cannery was still operating but they didn’t buy from the small boats.
OP: Now, did you and your brother have the same boat?
BP: No, different boats.
OP: Different boats, and then you fished by yourself?
BP: And we fished, solely yes.
TIME 28:14
OP: Very versatile yachtsman.
BK: Enterprising.
OP: Yes.
Phillips Interview
BP: Now, I fished. I got big time, I can’t remember the year, Vance Gufstason and I had a fish boat with an eleven ton capacity and the two of us fished that boat and we went down deep into Mexico.
OP: What period would that be?
BP: Well I’m trying to think when it would be, Vance will know exactly.
OP: Was that after the war?
BP: Um, it had to be after the war. Yeah we were high school age. And after the war. And his uncle was the president of what, West gate or and the canneries would grupstake fishermen. And if they couldn’t pay their bill after a number of years, the cannery would say, ok we got a mortgage on your boat, we’ll just take it. And Vance’s uncle called him one day, said I’ve got a spare boat down here if you want to fish it. So we did and we did well with that.
OP: How long a time did you do that then?
BP: Oh we did for I think one summer but you know, we would go out and stay until we would fill the hull.
OP: I thought Bud Caldwell was the only sailor that was a fisherman too. BP: He was Swordfisherman. Swordfish fisherman.
BK: When, your father was commodore of the San Diego Yacht Club what years again?
BP: 1940 I believe
OP: 1933 is uh..
BP: No at Southwestern. 1940 at San Diego
OP: Oh, right 1940 in San Diego.
OP: And so, the time that he, there was an article that said it was the first boat to leave the harbor cruising after the war.
BP: First yacht, first vessel without having to have credential to get through the gate. Although, during the war, I was a sea scout and living in Coronado, in middle school and one of my fellow sea scouts was the son of an Admiral and course there were a lot of Admirals over there, but we had a sea scout rendezvous in Newport Harbor. So my father thought it would be a good idea if the Coronado sea scout, what they’d call it, ship, not a troop, but a ship, could go to the rendezvous, so we took the schooner “Blue Peter” up were an escort of two destroyers, they met us at the end of the point, took us up to the jetty in Newport, let us go in and then they were to meet us a week later, outside the jetty. Phillips Interview
And to make the rendezvous with the destroyers, we had to go out three or four in the morning and it was black, black night, and I was on the fore deck watch, lookout, and we had just cleared the jetty and I saw these bubbles in the phosphorous coming right at us and I conjured up a picture of a torpedo, I mean it looked so much like it, turned out to be a porpoise when it got right to us. That was exciting. So we got out on the “Blue Peter” once during the war, we had a little influence, my father was, in addition to running his business, was a Captain in the Coast Guard Reserve. And he’d worked at his office at 5th and Broadway until noon, and then the staff car picked him up on the corner and drove him down to the Spreckles building where we had his Coast Guard office. So he had some influence too and allowed us to get out.
OP: Very versatile. Well then he took off on his cruise to South America and you and your brother went?
BP: Yeah, we went to Central, South America, through the Canal, we went down to Columbia and Venezuela, we did an extensive cruising through the Sandblast Islands where white people had not been in a lot of years. And then we did virtually every island in the Caribbean.
BK: Now was this on the “Blue Peter”?
BP: That was on the schooner “Blue Peter” in, you should have something on that
OP: I think I got a picture of that on here. I gather your mother was an enthusiastic sailor?
BP: Yeah here’s the schooner “Blue Peter.” She was 82 foot over all, she was 60 feet on water and my mother was a wonderful sailor.
OP: Where did she get her experience sailing?
TIME 35:00
BP: With my father only.
BK: And, where did the “Blue Peter” come from? Where was that built?
BP: She was built in Astoria, Oregon. By an old sea Captain who had been the Lumber Trade sailing, sailing the lumber schooners on the West coast. And he built this to sail around the world, war came along and he had to lay it up and he’s getting older and so my father ended up buying it. Got permission to bring it down here to San Diego, somehow or another.
BK: Actually during the war, then, he acquired it?
Phillips Interview
BP: Yes. Yes and we spent, figuring that one day the war would be over, he spent all that time getting the boat ready for a cruise and said as the minute we can get of here, we’re going. And he had planned it, he said we’re going to take this cruise as they did it in the olden days. We’ll have no electronics on board, the only thing he did give into was, we had a freezer and a refrigerator. But other than that, and we had an auxiliary engine, but the plan was not to use the auxiliary except for in and out of port, and in case of an emergency. And we had no winches on board, we had handy-billies only, the windlass was hand operated, the sails were heavy and it was gaff headed, so those gaffs were heavy, and my brother and I did all of the deck work. And I did everything above the deck, I was the only one aloft and there was a lot of work up there. My brother and I stood the whale watches, generally four on and four off at night, six on six off during the day, and my father was the captain, he stood no watches, and my mother was the cook and she did a marvelous job. The mid-watch always had a nice meal. So we did that for a year.
BK: And was it just the four of you in the family?
BP: Yes. We started with five, we had Wallace Eaton, I believe Wallace Eaton senior was a past commodore of the club.
OP: I believe he was, yeah.
BP: And Wallace came with us as far as Nicaragua or Costa Rica. And came back home, he was a school teacher and my brother contemporary and he came back to teach school.
OP: So that was in 1947 and….
BP: ’46 I think we left.
OP: ’46 and you say, you did that whole trip in a year?
BP: Yes. Yeah. We covered a lot of territory.
OP: Certainly did. And then back to San Diego.
BP: Then back to San Diego. Well yeah, it was interesting, we were going to continue the trip but the Dutch government took a liking to “Blue Peter” and when we were in Curacao they said they would like to buy the boat. And we said, well it’s just not for sale. And so we went on with our cruising and they pursued us. And what they were looking for was, what was his title, governor of Curacao, really was looking at this as a private yacht but he figured out that he could buy it, the government could buy it and use it as a mail boat. To, to like going to St. Eustatius and Aruba, were they had no anchorage, they would, they’d picked up a buoy off a cliff, take a dingy in with the mail, someone would lower a rope from up on the cliff, pick up the mail bag and that was the way they did it. And they could not do it all year-round but they figure with the “Blue Phillips Interview
Peter” she was stout enough that they could sail it through the hurricane season and get the mail through and then he would have a yacht, the folkeskole was the mail part of it. And that’s were the crew and the mail lived and the whole rest of the boat was going to become his. So we ended up selling it
OP: After you got back here?
BP: No, we sold it down there. We flew to, must’ve flown, I don’t remember how we got to Miami. And we bought a car on a Sunday, I remember, my father and I sat out in Miami and we found a used car lot that and money was a problem because they didn’t want to take a check, so we all looked through our pockets to see how much money we had, and we bought a used car and we drove it to Washington D.C. And we started looking for a new boat there, we were going to look from there up to Maine. And on the Potomac we found a 126 foot motor yacht and we all thought, well that’d fun to have to be different. And it had an elaborate bar and soda fountain and an engine, I had become familiar with somewhere along the line at a Fairbanks-Morris in line eight cylinder engine, taller than I. I started it with air and so we bought that and it didn’t pass surveys, so we went on our way. We went to New York and we bought a little better automobile and we toured it home and when we got back here, that was the end of our trip.
OP: Exciting times.
BK: And then that was, right about after that you went off to college?
BP: That’s right. Yeah, well as a matter of fact, well no, not right after that because I hadn’t finished high school.
BK: Oh, ok.
BP: So and I was getting kinda old for the rest of the class and all of that. And I only needed, because I had been working on high school in preparation for the trip, so I was advanced but I needed a credit and a half or something like that to get out of high school. So I went to the Boydin School. Did you know about that? It was a, an academy prep school in San Diego and I went there and earned my credit and a half, plus a couple of others and got out of high school. While I was doing that, a friend of mine from high school and I, my father needed a place to live, so he bought a lot up on San Grogonio and he said, son you need some experience, he said you should know how to build a house, everyone should know how to build a house. So he said, I want you to do it and I said you know, you’re right, I don’t have that experience, he said that’s alright, I’ve hired a Norwegian craftsmen/contractor who’s too old to do the work himself, so his job is going to be to sit there and see that you do it right.
TIME 45:38
BP: So with this friend from Coronado, we built this house on San Grogonio Street. And then my friend and I, he was going back to the Naval Academy, and I was going to Phillips Interview
George Washington, somewhere along the line he and I had, my friend Joe and I had built an automobile in his parent’s garage in Coronado. It was fancy. It was a Ford Opera Coupe 1939, something like that and we just totally changed the body and had no chrome left on it and put a 1947 Mercury V8 engine in it, that weighed about as much as the rest of the car and we chromed everything, you know that could be chromed on the engine, driving cross country, every time we stopped to get gas and check the oil, people came out of the woodwork to look at it. But, I was a busy teenager.
OP: Sounds like it.
BP: The house stood until about five years ago.
OP: Was your father pleased you also learned how build cars?
BP: No he didn’t like because I didn’t put, he thought they were always too noisy, he said if you’re gonna, but, he said,
OP: Wanna take a break? {break}
BK: What kind of yachting did you get into then, when you came back, you had the Mercury and where did you go from there?
BP: I sailed the Mercury a lot in the, in our handicapped races, we had a lot of, we didn’t have many fleets then, one design boats, so I did a lot of racing with the pick up, you know there was everything. But then I started crewing, I crewed for David Ryan on the Star boats and unfortunately David died and then I sailed, I sailed a lot of PCs, my dentist wanted to learn how to sail, he said what kind of boat should I get and I said a PC and he said, well, will you teach me how? And I said sure, so bought #47, that was one of the ones with the doghouse on, I don’t think it in the, I don’t know where it is now, I don’t think it’s here. But,
BK: And who was your dentist?
BP: John Joplin. Who was a member of the club, I guess I sponsored him to membership in the club and he just passed away five years ago I guess. Then I sailed with George Harris and his PC, that was an experience. You ever sail with George?
OP: No.
BP: Or sailed against him?
OP: No
BP: Have you?
Phillips Interview
BK: No, I’ve done other things with George but not sailing.
BP: Well George becomes very vocal. And he gets so busy, it’s just really funny. He yells at his competition, yells at his crew. Phil Stephens and I raced with him, crewed for him longer than any crew he had ever kept I think, on the PC. And we didn’t let it bother us very much when George would yell at us because we were both pretty fair sailors and we knew what we were doing and so whatever George wanted to yell about he could do. We had just set the chute out on the Coronado roads and George had just finished a fit yelling at somebody that wouldn’t give him room at the mark or something and then he was telling us how to set the chute and I think Bill was on the foredeck and so he sent me up there to help Bill because he was incompetent and he didn’t know which end, which corner of that chute put up first. So I said, ok George, I’ll go up and help him. And so actually it was, set and pulling just nicely and I had tacked down the sheet on it and I went up and Bill and I just stood there and chatted for awhile and we said, if George, we made an agreement, if George yells at us one more time on this leg, you step of the boat that side and I’ll step off the boat this side, and it was just the three of us on board and we would leave George with the chute flying and see how he handles that. He really disappointed us, he never yelled at us again. On that race.
TIME 52: 35
BK: What other boats did you get into then? Where’d you go from there? BP: Let’s see, I did from, there I did, I bought a boat from an insurance company sitting over in Kettenburgs, called a Buccaneer, boy I don’t have a picture of her, she’d been run over in a rescue effort by the Coast Guard in San Diego Bay during a storm. I think the boat was doing fine, I think the people sailing it were not capable and so they called for help, so the Coast Guard went out and got them in life preservers and got them on board the little Coast Guard vessel and then I guess in trying to save the boat, they ran the bow of the Coast Guard boat up over the housetop, I remember pushing all the winches right down through the cabin top and they towed the boat, oh and managed to capsize it and fill it with water, it was an open cockpit, they towed it full of water down to where Driscolls, or where the crab catchers, is it called, whatever. There was a marine railway there, they put it on the railway, somehow or another on a weekend and they got someone to pull it up partway, but it was full of water, it weighed tons, so they got a brace and bit and bored a big hole in the bottom, let the water out. And then the insurance company picked it up on Monday and took Driscoll’s and it really looked a mess, and I thought well that’d be fun to redo that. And what to pay the insurance company for it, so I knew the weight of the keel, it was lead, I got the price of lead, and that’s what I offered the insurance company and I bought that boat, redid it and I think maybe one inspection with it the next year.
BK: It was a sloop?
BP: That was a sloop. It was a, it was built in Newport Beach and they had fleet of 20 or so up there, it was a Viking Buccaneer, 20-22ft or something. A nice little boat it had, a little fatter than a PC, had a couple of nice bunks down below and so then Phillips Interview
OP: What did you, did you compete with anybody and then racing with that?
BP: No, no we used it as a day sail, it was the only one down here. But then, yes as a matter of fact, I sailed in the Class C Ocean Racing Fleet with it. That fleet didn’t last all that many years but it was very active and it was kind of a hodge-podge of boats. About, you had ever rating and we had an A, B, and C ocean racing fleet and I did sail on that and sold that and bought a Jerry Bill’s boat, which was a, he and his kids had raced it and it was just a mess. There was, do you remember that boat? It was an all in design and a good sailing boat and a good competitive boat, and I bought that and refurbished it, in fact took the deck off, the house off, took the head out, the engine out, and started from there. And I did that with Dr. Dave Sales, you remember Dave?
OP: No, I don’t think I do.
BP: A radiologist here.
OP: What was the name of that boat, do you remember?
BP: Inchcliff Castle
OP: Inchcliff Castle
BK: And about when would that have been?
BP: Oh boy, ‘60s, in the ‘60s
OP: And did you keep that name?
BP: No, we put the name on it because Dave and I both were, I got a picture of that one here somewhere, loved the Inch Cliff Castle stories, by Guy, what was his name, Glenncannon. And the Inchcliff Castle was the name of one of the vessels in the stories. So we just thought that’d be a fun name. Somewhere I got a picture of it. We had that for a number of years until we bought a PCC the Mickey. From Denny O’Brien. And I had been sailing with Denny for, on and off for a lot of years, on ocean races and to all the Mexican races, I went to, on the Acapulco and the Manzanilla with her. And without her once and we always campaigned the PCC nationals were usually in Los Angeles, we did the mid-winter regatta always, we really were busy on…
OP: Now did your brother sail with you? On that boat?
BP: No. But there, yeah, that was Mickey, that was a lot of really active sailing. And then I was sailing with a lot of people in the ‘60s and ‘70s as the racing boats were developing and I sailed a lot with John Scripps. Became a regular with John Scripps on Miramar and never missed a race on that boat. And somewhere along the line, oh my mother and father went from sail to power as they got a little older and they built and 82- Phillips Interview foot yacht in Hong Kong and set out cruising and I got a picture of that in here somewhere. And they, I’ve got a clipping from a Hong Kong newspaper, cause my father was a member of the Rail Hong Kong yacht club and kept in touch with them and he sailed Dragons over there. While he was building this boat and he and my mother and a Philippino cook/cabin boy and a young British merchant officer, he was a, didn’t have his captain’s ticket but he had a first mate’s ticket. And they took off for the South Pacific. And they were lost at sea for several weeks, they were sinking, my father pretty experienced, he put his radio batteries up right under the overhead, so that when the engine room was full of water and the house batteries and the engine batteries were underwater, his radio batteries were still up where he could use them. So he found S.O.S. and a merchant ship, towed them into Suva, Fiji.
TIME 63:03
BP: And they did a lot of cruising on that, came back here…
OP: Wait, they towed that boat into Fiji?
BP: Into Suva and they did a repair, it was a through hole fitting had developed electrolysis and they couldn’t find it, it was in a bad spot in the engine room. And that’s where they were taking on the water, he did have water tight bulkheads, and they weren’t going to sink but they were without power and so they fixed it up and continued their cruise but came back here and decided that they would limit their cruising to this continent. Because my father’s eyesight was failing and so they had Art Defever design a small trawler for them. And they did all the coast, East Coast, West Coast, and a lot of the Caribbean and the Perlas Islands, a little of South America with that boat, before they brought it back to La Paz and they had some property there and then they took it down to Acapulco and then they bought a house in Acapulco and kept the boat right in front of the house. But decided they couldn’t do that any longer so my father said to me, young man you’re going to buy a powerboat, and so we did. And we brought it up to San Diego….
OP: He was about as persuasive at that as to bring you West to Philips Ramsey.
BK: By that or during that time you were then running the agency then? You were back here doing that.
BP: Yes. Well by that time I was running or I had already sold it. And I had, during the time I was with the agency I was getting into lots of things and I think I had sold the agency, I had eight little businesses related to graphic arts and reproduction and that kind of thing. I had a company called California Graphics and it owned these entities, they had two blue print companies and data processing company and microfilm business. Art, commercial art supply business, silk screen business, and that kind of thing. And they were pretty well running themselves so now we thought having a power boat would be a fun thing, we’ll go cruising. So we went down to Acapulco and brought it home.
BK: What was the name you had on that boat or your father? Phillips Interview
BP: “Blue Peter”
BK: Oh, so that was also….
BP: That was, I don’t know, it must have been, my father decided on Blue Peter, are you familiar with the term and the flag and “Blue Peter?” This is, a lot of people aren’t so, I didn’t, because they were always leaving port, the decided name it “Blue Peter.” So in the family and my son’s Peter’s boat now is “Blue Peter.” And it’s about number 22 in the, number, in the Phillips family.
OP: Phillips family. Now this, the trawler was approximately what size?
BP: 50 feet, small. 50 feet overall, it was 48 or something at water line.
TIME 68:01
OP: And so you did some cruising with that yourself after you brought it over?
BP: Yeah we did. We did a lot of Mexico and you know, naturally Catalina and …
OP: Did you do any East Coast cruising with that?
BP: Not with that boat.
OP: Not with that boat.
BP: No. But we enjoyed that a lot.
BK: About when would it have been when you took over the DeFever “Blue Peter” when you took over from your father?
BP: ’72, 1972 Probably. And then our next boat was a 32 foot Erikkson. And we named that “Blue Peter”
BK: Now did you have more than one of these at a time?
BP: No, it was only one “Blue”, the name “Blue Peter” on one vessel. Now there were times when we owned more than one boat. But at a time, even sometimes we back then you could have more than one slip at the yacht club. But we can’t do that anymore! Then we decided, Lois and I said, I had never sailed around the world, my father had been around the world, not by himself, or not on his own boat but I don’t know, I had the number..
OP: There’s a note that says, 25 years of crewing, seven circumnavigations.
Phillips Interview
BP: Yeah, seven circumnavigations and one of those was on a commercial, he was, as a passage, but that was still a circumnavigation. And I have never done that, I have done some pretty exciting things in the Navy, I went to the North Pole at age 18, which was an experience…
OP: You said you were in the Navy, you mentioned Navy Reserve.
BP: I was Navy Reserve, never active Navy.
OP: Never active. But in the Reserve you went to the North Pole.
BP: Yeah. And I did that, you know, went up from San Diego on a surface ship in 1948, it was the ’48 bar expedition. Then I was in submarines after that when I decided that I didn’t like Navy surface ships. And so I got a lot of exciting sailing with the Navy that a lot of people wouldn’t have had the opportunity to have…
OP: Did you stay in the Reserve for many years?
BP: Nine years. I had to, I mean it was my obligation and all during Korea and Truman and Eisenhower both extended enlistments.
OP: I remember that well. BP: So yeah, I almost died in a submarine but got out and then, but I still wanted to sail around the world, so I decided to get a real sailboat and I think, probably Ed Turner here at the yacht club turned me, he’s another one we cruised with, we went to help take his boat up to Seattle, and Lois and I cruised down to Mexico with them three or four times.
OP: And I remember that Ed Turner went with the Laceys when they took their boat to Canada.
BP: Yeah.
OP: He showed them the way up there or something.
BP: Yeah we, they sponsored us to the Baja Booze Bay Yacht Club. So we were going down to Baja an awful lot whenever we had a little time, we would take whatever boat we had and go down there. But I became interested in the Hallberg-Rassys in Sweden. And so I had this boat built in Sweden and we were going to pick it up in Sweden, but they got delayed in construction, you know which is no surprise, so I had them ship it to Fort Lauderdale or Miami. And we outfitted it there and we kept it on the East Coast for a couple years and we did the Caribbean and we did ALL of the East Coast; we did the Inland Waterway twice, twice, three times, and then we were going to sail it back through the Canal.
OP: Did you go to Maine?
Phillips Interview
BP: Yeah, we went to Maine and in fact we were up and down, you know with the weather.
OP: How much did that draw?
BP: It drew, she drew seven and a half feet.
OP: So that was a little challenge on the Inland Waterway…
BP: Oh it was, I found some spots, left my name on them. But we were aware of it too, so we were very careful. Where we really had to be careful, was we ended up taking her around and we did the Coastal Waterway in Louisiana and Texas, that was an experience. And we really enjoyed that. Sailed from, we got in the Waterway at Apalachicola and went all the way to Houston on the inner coastal, which is primarily commercial. But that was, that was fun cruising.
BK: And this was 42 feet?
BP: 42 feet. And did you and your wife, typically bring other friends on this parts of cruise or ?
BP: Oh on occasion we did, yeah, but the reason we designed the boat this way was that I figured that, I was a bit younger and stronger of course, but I could figure I could handle 600 square feet of sail, which is what that main sail was. And I had self-furling on the headsail and I had a dowser on the geniker. And I had, you can probably see the number, had probably three reef points and I had lazy jacks on it and I had jack lines on deck and good safety harnesses. We sailed her through, one formidable hurricane. Both she and Lois did very well.
TIME 76:36
OP: Where was that, was that in the Gulf?
BP: That was off Hatteras.
OP: Off Hatteras, yes. And then you brought that boat to back to San Diego.
BP: We brought that back here and did you know, local, we did Channel Islands, we did about four trips to Manzanillo Gulf, Baja cruising with that. And then I sold that and I bought a, because by then, my wife Lois has scoliosis, a bad back and it became apparent that we were not going to circumnavigate, so I had, you know, back boat I did, just for the Rural Girtle, so when we weren’t going to do it, I bought another 42 sloop with a tall rig and a deep keel, for sailing around here.
OP: I think that’s the boat I remember. Phillips Interview
BP: The sloop?
OP: Yeah.
BP: But this is the one I really loved because, it was more, we did just for us.
OP: Did you also represent…
BP: Hallberg-Rassy?
OP: Hallberg-Rassy also represent them?
BP: I did, yeah I did, oh I sold a couple of boats for them but it was not a thing I was very active with. They didn’t know many people in the United States and they discovered in dealing with me that I, one appreciated their construction work and so they asked me if I would represent them, so.
BK: So the next one, the next 42 you had was the hull shape similar?
BP: Very, identical, well not identical, it was deep draft and down below it was totally different
BK: It was, ok.
BP: It was a more of a performance boat where this was a cruising boat…
BK: Did you race that boat then locally?
BP: No, no.
BK: But you used it for…
BP: We cruised it and sailed it and sailed it a lot
BK: And again then, you were getting into the late ‘70s at that point?
BP: Getting then into
BK: early ‘80s?
BP: approaching the ‘80s.
TIME 80:10
BK: When you had the “Blue Peters”, you had so many of them, you didn’t necessarily Phillips Interview call them the 5th or the 6th…
BP: 1, 2, 3…No, but what we did do, we never sold the name with the boat. So we kept and in marine parlance I guess that’s a no no really but we always did it.
OP: Now was that the last boat that you had?
BP: I have to think about it.
OP: You had, your boys are interested in sailing.
BP: No, then we got, then we sold that and we must have, we had the cabin in Julian but we, I think we bought the ranch then, and we were spending more time up there. But I said, you know, I cannot be without a boat, cause I have never been without a boat, and so I talked to the kids and my oldest son Steve, who was with us last night.
OP: Yes.
BP: Was not interested, but Peter said, Oh yeah, I’ll throw in with ya. So, he and I decided we’d form a partnership and buy a boat. And Peter wears braces on his legs and it’s a consideration because, he and I went out to sail around the Coronados one Sundays on one of the Hallberg-Rasseys and Peter was sailing and I went down below to read and I said, “Peter are you ready for a beer?” And he said “yeah, I will be in a few minutes.” And so I finished the chapter and I got his beer and I went up and there’s no one at the wheel. And I look back and fortunately it’s pretty flat sea that day, there’s Peter, he’s pretty calmly waving. So I said “Peter, you forgot your beer.” And he said “well, bring it to me, would you?” is what he told me, I couldn’t hear, he was that far back. But I shouted to him, you forgot your beer. So I came about and went back and picked him up and I said, “what happened?” and he said “I went to the taffrail to take a leak and because my legs don’t bend, he said we hit just a little bit of a wave and I went ass over teakettle, my feet came off the deck and I went head first right off. And he said, “I guess you didn’t hear me.” And what a lesson that was for both of us really. So that was consideration in looking for another boat. And we were going to, I don’t know, we had a financial arrangement as well, so I said, Ok, let’s start looking. You look and I’ll look. And everything I looked at was bigger than Peter wanted and so he ended up finding a Catalina 34 and I said, Peter, we can’t have a Catalina, Tupperware boat. And he said, well you come up with something better, we ended up with a Catalina 34 and that’s the “Blue Peter” at the yacht club right now.
OP: Does he sail much?
BP: Yeah, he and Sandra. And she’s getting her sea legs and Peter knows his limitations on deck, so he’s very careful. And they love the boat, they go to Catalina.
OP: Wonderful
Phillips Interview
BP: He’s a very busy guy, so they don’t get out a lot but …..
OP: Well it’s a good thing you finished your chapter when you were out sailing when he went overboard.
BP: That’s true.
OP: Yeah. Exciting.
BP: So that…
BK: Now are you still a partner in that boat?
BP: No, I’m not a partner any longer, I have privileges.
BK: Ok.
BP: And one of the reasons was, that I was breaking a rule of the yacht club, I took advantage of the flag life membership category and Peter or someone called it to my attention and said, You don’t rate a slip at the yacht, as a life flag. And so I was breaking a rule, so I gave my half to Peter. And so, it’s Peter’s, Peter’s “Blue Peter” now.
BK: Now how many children do you have?
BP: Just two boys.
BK: Two boys ok. And their involvement now in the yacht club and sailing world.
BP: They’re both members of the yacht club, they, Peter’s more involved in the yacht club than Stephen. But they, their bother really involved with their business and Peter’s with SAIC, he’s in the corporate office now, and his older brother Stephen has his own business, designing and producing trade show exhibits. And he’s international with that and he’s out of town, like to come to the party last night, he flew in from Las Vegas, spent the night and he was out of here at eight o’clock this morning.
BK: Does he have a boat?
BP: No, he, I had to think about it. He does not. He’s had boats on and off. Well he does have a snipe in his driveway.
BK: Did your boys come through the Junior Program? Did they sail in the Junior Program when they were kids?
BP: Yes, yeah. And they weren’t a pair of the successes really. And that maybe my fault, they didn’t stick with it as well as some of their buddies.
Phillips Interview
BK: Well, it’s if they still enjoy the world of water, then it was a success, I think. It doesn’t have to end up in the Olympic..
BP: Well that’s true but I, you know, I had hoped that they would, you know, I realized I shouldn’t tell them what they had to do. I got them into it and they had the experience.
BK: Do you have any other particular memories of your life on the water or the San Diego Yacht club…
OP: Or personalities that shaped you, that were involved, obviously your father was a great influence on the water, but how about other folks.
BP: We had, I saw your name, Israel in there. Bert and Faith Israel were real leaders at the Yacht club. Did you have the privilege of knowing them at all?
OP: No I did not.
TIME 89:37
BP: Bert was the son of the White House keeper out here. Bert was a painting contractor, operated very much the way Jack Bone did. Owned a R boat called “Aloa” Beautiful, well the R boat was beautiful boat but he put a house and a dog house on it and I don’t believe it had an engine. For a lot of years it didn’t but he used Catalina every summer at the isthmus. And Bert and Faith molded a lot of the youngsters, they were kinda our junior program leaders, we also had a club manager, Billy Eaton, guy about my size, I don’t know what his background was, he must have been a sea captain, he looked like one. He was our manager here for a long, long time, and they lived in the clubhouse when it was, you know, on the water, the one before this one. And they lived upstairs and we had a, we didn’t have a dining room per say, but we had a lunch counter and we had a Danish cook, Mrs. Frunstrom. And she would make every Saturday morning a snail, or you know a sweet roll, she called them a snail and that was absolutely to die for and she would lock the door on Saturday morning to keep the juniors out until the snails were ready and there would be a line. And if any of the kids got out of line, Faith Israel, who had no credentials really, would admonish those kids to behave, you know she would snap into line and things like that around there, people like that. But we had a lot of interesting, as we do today, we’ve got really accomplished technicians of sail now that we never had, we were a lot of seat of the pants sailors. But I was privilege to watch a lot of people come along in the sailing world. Characters that, of course we’ll never see again. He wasn’t that much older than I.
OP/BK: Ash Bown.
BP: And so he taught me an awful lot about sail boat racing. And
OP: He didn’t take on too many, he didn’t tutor too many, did he? He kinda pick and choose who he would help along. Phillips Interview
BP: Yeah he didn’t, true and he wouldn’t share unless he wanted to share, you know, interesting.
OP: That’s the history we’ve heard from talking with a few folks.
TIME 93:52
BP: And he was a guy you never want to make a bet with because somehow or another there was no way you could win. His Owen’s cutter was, I don’t remember the story, but somehow my father was involved in getting Ash together with the Owen’s cutter.
OP: Oh is that right
BP: Yeah. The Depew, who was a member of the club, was the dealer f or Owen’s here and he had the building down here on Rosecrans, right across from NTC about where the gas station place is. And for a long time, he had the Owen’s cutter sitting on the floor in there. And I don’t know whether he had it built or if it just happened to be there but it had a skylight up on top and he was able to have the mast standing in that show room. But, Depew was a good friend of my fathers, as was young Ashley, and my father got them together somehow, and because that boat would, just would not sell. And Ash got his hands on it and was it’s single owner.
OP: But once it sold it certainly sailed, didn’t it?
BP: Oh he made it sail.
BK: That’s quite amazing.
OP: But people like that, we had, we had some loud sailors, like Roy Hegg, who was a very vocal sailor, he was a savings and loans president, I guess was his business and he had one of the fancier, what did he have, a 10 meter? That was always Bristol, and he was such a character it was interesting and then I had the privilege of getting to know, very well Captain Johanson and this was the “Gomar.”
BK: Beautiful picture of it.
OP: In fact after we finish I want to look at a picture I have down there, because I think the “Gomar.”
BP: Oh ok. Well it was always kept in a, he kept it up professionally.
OP: Now did he also work with young sailors?
BP: He with, maybe fewer, he was such a stickler, he was an old sea Captain and he, were as Ash didn’t do much in the way of maintenance or if a splice wasn’t exactly right, Phillips Interview
it didn’t bother him too much. But Captain Johanson wanted it the way the old ships used to be.
OP: The old school.
BP: And unfortunately, Captain Johanson decided that he better have a swan song and about 19 oh in the ‘50s, ‘60s maybe, decided to sail “Gomar” to Honolulu, and probably the most embarrassing time of his life, he didn’t make it there.
OP: Oh.
BP: Got into some weather, blew out some sails. And the, finally, is there a bow spread on there? in that picture?
BK: Yeah. A little one.
BP: It needed one about four times that size. Or move the mast because it had such a weather helm on that boat, that it took two guys if it was blowing over 12 knots. And but he wouldn’t give into that, this was the way the boat was designed and this was the way he was going to sail it. Put another man on the helm.
OP: That was it.
BP: But people like that were, to sit and hear their sea stories was a real privilege.
OP: Now did they have that kind of atmosphere in the club at that day, where they sat around and Johanson could tell old stories and stuff? Or how did that happen?
BP: We, yeah we had impromptu things like that. But my father too, was good friends with Johanson and we’d sit around the boat and talk and I remember and the club is different now,
OP: Yes.
BP: After a stormy winter race, Billy Evans would build a huge fire in the fireplace in the main room at the club because he knew after the race we would come in all wet and cold and he and his wife would get coco and coffee and there was going to be a gathering in front of the fireplace and people were going to sit around and tell lies. And sea stories. And yes we had a lot more of that kind of thing and we did have upstairs in the pool room, where the ping pong and the pool table, we’d have gatherings for come on up and let’s share some pictures or something. And we yes, we did more sharing of cruising and sailing stories that because we weren’t as professional as we are now. I think is a big difference.
OP: And that’s one of the things you really miss though in the club don’t you?
Phillips Interview
BP: I do, because we were all trying to learn and interested and it seemed the boats were all cruder if you will, and there were more mishaps and experiences, listening to my father tell a story of saving a boat that was trapped in under the casino at the South Coronados, it had gone in and anchored in there if you can imagine, which is what they used to do.
OP: This was the gambling casino that was off the ocean.
BP: No no, the one that was, well the building is still there, South Coronado island,
OP: Oh alright.
BP: That was a, have you never been in it?
OP: No, I’ve never been in it.
BP: Oh it’s oh, have you been in it Bob?
BK: No.
BP: Oh it’s fairly elaborate edifice. And the bar was very nicely built and either in the front of the bar or the back of the bar and were all of the burgees of the Southern California’s yacht clubs, hand carved and painted, very nicely. And I bet that their still there.
OP: But that was in the days where you could go into Mexican waters without
BP: Without anything.
OP: Worrying about checking in.
BP: And you could go, I don’t know whether, it wouldn’t surprise me, they may have had girls there, they had gambling, and they certainly had a bar and cruising out there was a normal thing but anchoring in that little tiny cove was about dinghy size, you know fisherman anchor in there, the lobster fisherman, and they bring their supplies right in there and hoist them up the cliff but one of our local yachts was in there and the guy didn’t get out in time and my father’s story of rescuing of them one night was, you know, those are fun things to sit around and listen to.
OP: Well Bob, this has been fascinating. I think maybe we, when we get through all your pictures here, we may decide we need to do a little addition to this interview but we have gone a good bit, but there is one quick question I’d like to ask you, in 1937 in the Star Worlds with Milt Wegeforth was that your father or your brother that was involved, out in the Star Worlds? Or were you involved?
BP: Involved in what. Phillips Interview
OP: Couldn’t be you, I guess.
BP: None of us raced in the Worlds. My, let’s see, and I was seven years old, so I didn’t do a hell of a lot, I’m sure,
OP: It appears it was your father.
BP: So my father was, he didn’t sail in the Worlds, I don’t think, no, but he was sailing Star boats, my uncle Joe Jessop was sailing Star boats then also. Yeah, I did sail, I sailed a big sail boat in ’76, this one.
OP: The Star.
BP: The Star of India.
OP: Yeah you were on that, you were active, very active in the Maritime Museum.
BP: Yeah, I was Captain of the foremost on that cruise, 17 of us 16 of us actually were the only ones aloft, and like last Saturday they had 125 doing the work that the 17 of us did. George Lenly was on my crew.
OP: What, does that show a date on that? Or when was that?
BP: It was 1976, it was 200th anniversary. Oh I sailed, yeah I did sail flight of the snow birds in Newport, I don’t know why I have these, they’re just beautiful boats. The Cal 32s, I was going to leave these with you and some of the things you might like to have.
BK: Yeah.
OP: Yeah, let’s do that Bob, and then we may ask you to come again and go over some of those to pinpoint
BP: Ok, I always thought that was a beautiful picture because of the transome.
BK: Yeah.
OP: Well we thank you Bob for taking the time to spend with us, it has been a fascinating discussion and thank you.
STOP TIME: 106:59