Carl Cramer: A Legacy of Ideas—and Boats
“Her racing days were over” by 1973. So writes Nic Compton of VIVA TRIDANTÉ!, the competition powerboat that appears on the cover of this issue. The boat was one of several near sisters designed by the legendary Sonny Levi and launched in 1964 to compete in the Daily Express Offshore Powerboat Race—the so-called Cowes-to-Torquay Race. She was a scrappy competitor, clawing her way to 19th out of 52 competitors in 1969, and winning first in her class in the 100-mile Torbay 100 race in 1970.
The boat had been out of the water and languishing for nearly 30 years by the time Matthew and Ronnie Reed spotted her and realized she ticked the boxes on their list of requirements for a pedigreed family cruiser, in wood. With vision, elbow grease, and tasteful restraint, they have brought the boat up to a high standard and equipped it with recreational conveniences. It’s an inspiring story of repurposing a design—of seamlessly adapting an old concept to a new use. Such an endeavor requires a fearless but informed confidence, and an open mind.
Carl Cramer would have loved this story. He was the fearless and open-minded publisher of WoodenBoat when I became its editor, and, as such, was my boss here for more than 20 years, before he retired in 2014. The word “boss,” however, does not accurately describe our working relationship, which was a collaboration rather than an old-school hierarchy. He was an idea machine. Are you familiar with Family Boatbuilding, the event that gathers families at boat shows and other events to build small boats together over the course of a weekend? That was Carl. The Wood Regatta, which was an open-class competition for classic wooden one designs? That was Carl, too. Professional Boatbuilder magazine, which was owned by WoodenBoat Publications before rejoining its sister event, the International Boatbuilders Exhibition and Conference (IBEX), last year? Carl was the creative spark and founding editor of that magazine—and of IBEX. How about Getting Started in Boats, the supplement that was for several years bound into WoodenBoat? Carl again. The WoodenBoat Forum—our online discussion group? Carl started that on his desktop in the mid-1990s.
Carl died in mid-April this year. As his obituary beginning on page 18 notes, he was “never one to dwell too long on a single project.” Indeed, many of the projects I just listed, while conceived by Carl, were stewarded to maturity and fruition by colleagues—just as Carl wanted it. He loved ideas—his own, and those of others. He motivated people by his confidence in them, by stepping back and letting them do their best.
Carl was as open-minded and all-embracing with his boats as he was with his ideas. In the time I knew him, he owned: a plank-on-frame Alden Barnacle, which was a classic cruising sloop built by the Graves Yard in Marblehead, Massachusetts, in the 1940s; a Calkins Bartender, a rough-water dory-like powerboat designed for economy, speed, and seakeeping; a Ray Hunt–designed 210-class sloop; the 36' 6"L. Francis Herreshoff ketch DEVA; a strip-planked Sparkman & Stephens mini ocean racer, BLACK SPIRIT, which was a sistership to the legendary sloop SPIRIT; an Alerion Express sloop; an Etchells-class one design; and the powerboat WILD ROOSTER, built to Uffa Fox’s Ankle Deep design. Carl commissioned WILD ROOSTER to be built in Nova Scotia, and wrote about its conception, construction, and performance in WB No. 298. There were other boats, too. I’ve lost track of them all. But many are still in the greater WoodenBoat orbit, for Carl was as generous with his boats as he was with his ideas: he often dispersed them to friends and worthy new owners without fretting over price or legacy.
But his legacy is, nonetheless, profound. In 2012, my friend and colleague Paul Lazarus published back-to-back articles about Sonny Levi in Professional Boatbuilder magazine. That was my introduction to Levi, and it certainly played no small role in our publishing the article on VIVA TRIDANTÉ!—one small example of the continuing ripples of Carl Cramer’s influence.
Editor of WoodenBoat Magazine
