YARD WORK —
MARTHA BLANCHFIELD MARTHA BLANCHFIELD
The Jollys Build Rediviva What reader has not clicked through Instagram travel photo feeds (known to some as 'travel porn')? And who hasn't paused to read about how one sailor or another solved an onboard plumbing issue, or brought a gleam back to 50-year-old brightwork? Cruisers, racers and DIYers love to show and tell, but some of the best
MARTHA BLANCHFIELD
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h, spring has sprung. The hills surrounding the Bay are sumptuously green and dotted with brilliant wildflowers, the seabreeze is starting to fill in, and, if you listen closely, the sounds of grinders and sanders are echoing through boatyards everywhere. That's right, it's time to crack open that hibernating boat, lay down some blue tape, and get ready for summer. Hauling a boat out and rolling up your sleeves represents a higher level of dedication to the sailing life. Anyone can have a boat sit in a slip, pay someone to scrape the bottom once in a while, and kick back with a cold one while exalting themselves as a boat owner. But when you're wearing a Tyvec suit and respirator, ankle deep in chips of toxic bottom paint and covered in dust, the bond with your boat, as well as your commitment and pride as an owner, is galvanized. This year — as has been the case almost every spring for the last 40-plus years — we visited sailors throughout the Bay Area, and talked to sailors involved in all levels of doing it themselves. We saw projects ranging from the minor and routine to the ambitious and painstakingly, mindnumbingly involved. We were delighted (and pleasantly surprised) to see a few wooden boats being both built and rebuilt, as well as an old America's Cup warhorse in for a routine checkup.
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stories come from those who build a boat from scratch. Meet Ruth and Garrett Jolly, a 20-something couple who share their experiences via their YouTube channel, Salt & Tar. This duo planned on building a 42-footer, but settled on something a bit more manageable. It all started with a wee bit of lofting in 2015 in a shed in Washington state. Ruth smiled, "It's a Buehler design called Button. We loved the salty lines of the Button's hull, but the deck, cabin and rig were not right for us. Luckily George Buehler is awesome and has done a bunch of custom work on the plans, so she will be exactly what we want. She'll be a 35-ft gaff-rigged ketch, complete with rat lines, baggy wrinkles and top mast. Wildly impractical, but dreams aren't always practical, so salty she will be!" First, a little background about this pair who met on the islands in their mid-teens. It was serendipity that each family happened to vacation in Aruba each year. And it was serendipity each family happened to live in
Garrett and Ruth Jolly pose in front of 'Rediviva', a 42-ft wooden Buehler ketch that they've been building from scratch. It's one thing to work on your boat; it's an entirely different and considerably more serious thing to build a wooden vessel.
California — a mere five hours apart. But it was a casual conversation between two mothers (while standing in the hotel shuttle line) that clinched a connection, leading to a pairing that's outlasted a family holiday. Happily, both Ruth and Garrett enjoy building boats and neither is a stranger to planks or pliers. Over the years, this couple has restored a 40-ft mahogany racing boat, and has toiled on a 30-ft wooden ketch in need of plenty of frame work; they also copperplated the bottom of that ketch. Garrett, who started sailing at age 7, has worked on boats since age 15, and in the past six years has completed six major boat projects. Ruth admitted to having no sailing experience prior to meeting Garrett. "He was building his first sailboat, a 20-ft Vacationer, in his mom's backyard. We bought our first
