“Tell the Truth, but Make the Truth Fascinating”
David Ogilvy knew a thing or two about advertising.
When it comes to Classic Yacht brokerage there is some terrible copywriting out there. Running a close second, only behind inner-suburban real estate jargon, the average yacht broker is a fountain of cliches that leave me gasping for a trace of originality.
Believe it or not, these lines are CURRENTLY being used to try to sell classic yachts!
“…gracious lines and beautiful finishes make her hard not to fall in love with, gold plated tap wear and meticulously maintained interiors certainly do take your breath away.”
“…the eye catching first look and the head turning thereafter says she is a pearl.”
“…this isn't just a boat; it's a unique cruising experience ready for its next custodian.”
“….although there is a project element it is predominately superficial, with a bit of elbow grease and a paint she will be an amazing yacht capable of almost anything”
1913 Advertisement by Gielow Orr Yacht Models Sale Charter & Exchange
As always with these generalisations (“brokerage copywriting is crap”) there’s an exception that shows us that it doesn’t have to be this way. Having been in the market for a Classic boat over the last eighteen months I’ve browsed my fair share of adds. And the brokerage whose copy and attention to detail stands head and shoulders above the rest is the Sandeman Yacht Company.
Take for example this copy associated with the sale of the Alden design MAYAN, a boat that we wrote about last year in SWS. It’s a joy to read this prose, even if you don’t happen to have the $680,000USD required to make her yours!
The JOHN G. ALDEN DESIGN NO. 356B MAYAN (ORIGINAL DRAWINGS BY K. AAGE NIELSEN AT JOHN G. ALDEN, 1927) will be forever associated with over 40 years of ownership by musician David Crosby; the famous songs he wrote on board – in particular ‘Wooden Ships’, together with Paul Kantner (Jefferson Airship) and Stephen Stills – and the other musicians of the 1960s and 70s, including Joni Mitchell, who sailed with him and were inspired in songwriting. But MAYAN’s story before that time is no less interesting.
New York 1947
It is understood that Paul Allan had served as a US Navy captain in World War Two, and saved wartime salary to pay for MAYAN’s build, augmented by funding from his father, New York born Miami winter resident Charles W. Allen – named in the Alden records as the client. Certainly, many men like Paul Allen had time during the war to imagine their dream ships, and perhaps MAYAN was planned for making up for lost time with his ageing father.
Why build her in the then British Honduras (now Belize)? Was it a case of taking the drawings to the mahogany when, post-war, supplies of the best quality timber were hard to come by back home? And/ or did the Allens have some connection with the British Crown Colony? Was Tewes’s build price incredibly low?
So many questions, but the answer is always: the magnificent MAYAN.
Whatever the reason, they chose her builder very well. Believed to be of Scottish origin, Tewes (probably Stacie Tewes) was one of many creators of local craft on the shallow lower reaches of the Belize River. Between them, Tewes and Paul Allen created a beautifully constructed vessel in such circumstances, neither apparently having built a boat of this size and type before.
MAYAN was built in nine months and sailed for New York soon after completion, arriving in early summer 1947 after a mid-May stopover at Miami. Then in March 1948, presumably under charter, a Detroit Boat Club team with Commodore Art Mitchell at the helm took part in the then highly prestigious St Petersburg (Florida) to Habana (Cuba) Race, MAYAN rubbing shoulders with, among others, STORMY WEATHER, and her Cuban built and owned S&S cousin CICLON, drawn by Aage Nielsen in the early 1940s when running the Sparkman & Stephens Boston office, and a hull sister to the yawl BOUNTY that MAYAN would race against 70 years later on San Francisco Bay.
MAYAN then seems to have been sailed back north, we imagine up the Intracoastal Waterway, to Morehead City, North Carolina, where in June/ July 1948 Miami yacht broker H. Morton Jones sold the schooner to her very interesting second owner, Harvey S. Bissell. Perhaps this was always the plan for the Allens: a money-making venture and adventure, at a time when few newly built yachts were available.
Bissell’s mother, Anna, “the world’s first female CEO”, sold the carpet sweepers while Harvey went off sailing and operated as one of the largest US beef producers from his Corralitos Ranch, Las Luces, New Mexico. Between the wars, Bissell and his family had completed a Pacific circuit via New Zealand and Hawaii with the 85 ft A. Cary Smith designed 1901 steel schooner (wonderfully renamed) WANDERLUST, and a world circumnavigation with their Clinton Crane designed 148 ft three-masted 1902 steel schooner ARIADNE. Both adventures were immortalised in published books.
MAYAN would have been purchased with less ambitious cruising in mind, her shallow draft perfect for the cays easily reached from Bissell’s winter residences at Jupiter, Florida, and St Thomas, Virgin Islands. Preparations for their first Virgin Islands cruise got underway as soon as she was delivered to Miami from Morehead City in July 1948.
From 1953, MAYAN became SEPICO II at Miami, entity owned by ‘Sepico Company’, whose beneficial owner is believed to have been Sherman F. “Red” Crise, a larger than life former WWII Army Air Corps strategic photographic survey pilot who became a significant motorsport and 'Midget Racing' entrepreneur: founder and promoter of the Nassau Speed Weeks of the mid-1950s to mid-1960s, and, together with offshore powerboat racing legends Dick Bertram and Sam Griffith, the Miami-Nassau Race. Also in 1953, Crise bought Sir Malcolm Campbell’s ‘Blue Bird V’ land speed record-breaking car, but that is another story.
There was also an aviation connection in MAYAN’s (her name restored) next ownership from 1962 by Alice B. Hively of Nurmi Isles, Fort Lauderdale and Gulfstream Sailing Club: her husband, Captain Howard D. Hively, was a WWII US Air Force air ace. But aboard MAYAN, Alice was most surely the captain, cruising and racing the schooner with the wives of fellow Gulfstream Yacht Club members who would otherwise have been left ashore. In Hively’s ownership, among other events, MAYAN took part in the 1962 Fort Lauderdale to Grand Bahama Race, and in 1963 sailed the October Columbus Day Regatta on Biscayne Bay before setting off on a Caribbean cruise.
Between 1966 and 1969 MAYAN had two separate documented owners, James E. Ottaviano and Lee Goodwin, about whom little is known. It is thought that she was a Florida charter boat at this time, and according to David Crosby not so well cared for.
MAYAN’s US Coast Guard documentation record shows that David Van Cortlandt Crosby purchased MAYAN at Miami on May 19th, 1969. In his 2007 autobiography, Crosby revealed that his friend Peter Tork of The Monkees loaned him the $22,500 purchase price funds. MAYAN would become a source of songwriting inspiration to more than just her owner, and a place of peace in an often famously turbulent life.
“MAYAN became my rock. She was always there and I could always get away from the crazies in my business... I always figured if everything really went to hell, we’d just leave on MAYAN and head for the islands. Back then a lot of us thought everything was going to collapse pretty soon. I’m sure glad it didn’t.”
Rather than reinvent the wheel, we’ll let present owner Beau Vrolyk speak about the David Crosby he knew – the sailor, and unconditional lover of MAYAN:
“From the perspective of a fellow sailor, David did what the best of us do. He cherished his beautiful boat, pouring a mountain of treasure into maintaining and eventually completely rebuilding her. He sailed MAYAN from the Caribbean to California, to Tahiti and Hawaii, and endlessly cruised the Channel Islands off of Southern California. His beloved schooner was no “harbor queen”. In MAYAN’s wake, David left sailors who cherish having known him. It wasn’t because he was a famous rock star. It was because he was a fellow sailor….
“Every sailboat needs care, and wooden boats need more than most. Throughout his life, David would pour love, affection, and money into MAYAN. Most of this maintenance was modest, but occasionally she needed to have 'a little work done'.
“Eventually, the frames, planking, and deck of MAYAN were in desperate need of repair. David had done a number of partial repairs over the forty years he had sailed her, but by 1999 she was nearly beyond saving. Master shipwright Wayne Ettel was asked to restore her and after a spirited sail, he agreed, saying: ‘This boat needs to be saved.’
“In 2005 MAYAN was returned to David stronger and better than she had ever been. But financial pressures were building and he reluctantly put her up for sale. At Wayne’s suggestion, we wrote a letter asking David if he would consider selling her to us; we included our sailing resume and assured him that we had the skill and treasure to keep her safe and well-maintained. Two days later the phone rang and David’s distinctive voice asked: ‘Hey, do you want to buy my boat.’ I replied ‘Yes!’ and David continued: ‘Come on down to Santa Barbara, you can look at her, we can eat some tacos, and talk about it.’ The next day in Santa Barbara, after a tour of MAYAN and a long lunch of terrific tacos, we shook hands on the deal.”
Since 2014, Beau and Stacey Vrolyk have continued to work with Wayne Ettel to bring MAYAN to the point where future maintenance of this wonderful yacht should be of the normal rather than invasive variety, and, together with family and friends, have given her one of the greatest gifts a boat can receive: honourable, regular use, care and love; racing, cruising, and just being on board.
