CHUBASCO

Wayne Ettel could never have imagined that the moment would come when he, as a young boatwright, would be telling one of the world’s most-respected naval architects that there was a flaw in the designer’s masterpiece—and that he, Ettel, knew how to fix it.

But here he was, in 1983, wearing his flowery Hawaiian shirt, and seated in the posh inner sanctum of the prestigious Ardell Yacht & Shipbrokers in Newport Beach, California, where men in blazers and ties make million-dollar deals on trophy boats. He was talking with none other than Olin Stephens, co-founder of the design firm Sparkman & Stephens (S&S), by speaker phone, about the leaky garboards in one of the grand dames of the Southern California racing circuit: CHUBASCO. The yacht, one of several S&S legends from the 1930s, was Ardell’s flagship, S&S design No. 255.

Ettel had just told Stephens and the yacht’s owner that he had determined the cause of the leaks and knew how to fix the problem. He could replace the garboards and broadstrakes, then tie the planking and lead ballast keel together with long, bronze, exterior straps the way N.G. Herreshoff had done on many of his designs. There was a long pause from Stephens, and Ettel feared that he had just crossed a line by suggesting another designer’s solution to spreading out the loads on the hull of a large racing sailboat.

Finally, Stephens’s voice rose from the speaker. “Mister Herreshoff was a good mechanic…. I think you should fix CHUBASCO his way.”

So began what has become a 35-year relationship between the boatwright and the 67' wooden yawl known affectionately in California racing circles as “Chubby.” And so began a slow march to the yacht’s total restoration.