Myron Spaulding - Reputation & Legacy

Reputation & Legacy

By the time I had finished my bookends, that guy had built a boat. —Prescott Sullivan, classmate in woodshop class at Polytechnic High School in San Francisco, Sail West To Spaulding boats were life: he loved the design of them, loved to build them and loved to sail them. He made himself into an expert on how the forces of wind and currents and the sea affect boats and their performance, and made himself a master of design. His aim was to build sailing vessels that would conform to class rules (for nothing is so circumscribed by exact measurements as classes of racing yachts) but also would be fast and beautiful. —Carl Nolte, Sea Letter He was a legend on the Sausalito waterfront. … not a traditionalist, but he was a conservative in his engineering. He was a careful and exacting man who wanted to understand everything before he did it. He wouldn't design something until he completely understood how it would handle the forces on it. —Michael Wiener, Sea Letter Myron was a tremendous influence on every sailor active on San Francisco Bay in the first 60 or 70 years of the century—whether they knew it or not. Besides being an excellent sailor, he was one of the premiere designers in the country, though it went largely unrecognized. …The thing that Myron did for all people under his influence was to show them a way and an ethic of addressing problems that was results-oriented and had very little to do with economics. Concepts and results were his standards of excellence. Never the dollar. —Commodore Tompkins, Latitude 38 He was one of two or three people I've known over the years who could get the most out of any boat they raced. But he was the only one who also designed and built boats, which made him a complete yachtsman. —Bob Keefe, Latitude 38 Myron was one of the best sailors on the Bay, ever. He knew the water, he knew design, and he knew how to make boats go fast. He was one of the first pros long before there were pros. —Hank Easom, Latitude 38 He was the dean of San Francisco yachtsmen and designers. On the Bay, he was the best sailor of the 20th century. —Charlie Merrill, Latitude 38 Myron Spaulding was a legend on San Francisco Bay and the West Coast; his keen intelligence, precise memory, immense fund of knowledge and experience, and longevity all combined to establish him as the dean of West Coast naval architects. He was known to sailors around the world.
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Spaulding’s boat were characterized by a soundness and rationality of design and the best of materials, equipment, and workmanship, whether built by him or other builders.
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Highly regarded and respected by the current crop of boat designers, Myron Spaulding was a mentor to several of them over the years and a counselor to local and visiting sailors from around the world. He dispensed wisdom, advice, and expertise on a wide range of subjects to all who came. —Thomas G. Skahill, Myron Spaulding Myron was, "a complicated man; a seat-of-the-pants scientist; a synthesizer of ideas, possessed of an exhaustive memory and a remarkable charm, which he chose to use occasionally." —Commodore Tompkins, Sail West Myron? Well, he was Myron. Frisco Bay to the core. Aced the woodshop class at Polytechnic High ("By the time I had finished my bookends, that guy had built a boat." Prescott Sullivan). Damn fine first-fiddle with the symphony until he quit that for a 95-year-lucid life of designing, building, measuring, fixing, and sailing sailing boats. Did he own one pair of wrinkled khakis or twenty pair identical? Kind of like a character in Faulkner: so individual that he carried all of the life of the galaxy inside him. —Kimball Livingston, Sail West Myron Spaulding was a big influence in my life. I met him when I was 14 or 15. He knew I liked sailing. I was crewing on a boat named Buoyant Girl, one of his designs. He’s one of those people that I’d sail with, and then I sail my own boat and think I’ve got to get back with Myron because he knows what he’s doing. He’s just raw intellect and power. As a sailing person, as a user of materials, he was a genius. He was Excalibur; he learned from Sparkman and Stephens. the first one on San Francisco Bay to combine a thorough knowledge of design, along with the difficulties of sailing in San Francisco Bay. So it was a powerful combination. And he won all the races. There’s a wonderful photograph that used to be on Myron’s wall that showed a start off the St. Francis and four or five of Myron’s designs and one Sparkman & Stephens design racing. He was a lion in his own small town, but he never got national recognition except a very small group of people. —Commodore Tompkins, The Log