January 6, 2014

Santa Cruz boat building and racing has always been a community affair, and a prime example of that is the story of Rocket 88. In 1985 Serge Pond, a local sailor and owner of an old C-Class catamaran, decided he needed to go faster, so he set out to build and race the next step up, a D-Class cat. Howard Spruit helped design the new boat and get the project started. "Bill Lee brought a C-Class cat up here and Serge bought it and started racing but it had been broken and rebuilt a few times so was heavy and was no longer fast. They took 40-ft of sail area off of it so they could sail around Mile Buoy and not worry, but he was itching to go faster."

Serge enjoyed digging through boxes of old photos. ©2013 norcalsailing.com

Another big cat happened to be in the area, Beowulf V, Alan O'Driscoll's winning D-Class. "I first met Beowulf in 1972 when Steve Dashew was the owner, and was struck by it," said Howard. "I was a Hobie cat sailor and here is this thing that's five times as big as a Hobie." In 1980 Serge got to know Alan and at one time wanted to buy Beowulf. But Alan decided not to sell her (he still owns and races her as HMB Boys and Girls Club).

Somehow lobsters got involved in the deal. "We went up to Alan's with the lobsters," said Serge, "had lunch and measured Beowulf. Then Howard went into design mode. He worked on templates and built models to check the rocker and so on," said Serge. "I drew it up and Serge took it seriously and started building a boat," added Howard.

Howard Spruit, a self-described odd-job guy, in his new machine shop at his house in Santa Cruz. ©2013 norcalsailing.com

Howard built a shelf 18-ft high and made Serge get up there to mimic the height of a capsized catamaran 18-ft wide. "Now think about jumping off," he said.

Serge's wife Lesley had given him the Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction book for Christmas in 1985. From this he and Howard decided to used the tortured plywood method on panels of fiberglass instead of wood. "I didn't want it to be a multi-year project," said Serge. The real work on Rocket 88 began.

The hull build took ten months in Howard's Frog Craft Boat Shop, and as it progressed many in the Santa Cruz community added to the mix and flavor of the Rocket 88 story. The shop was in an old box plant off Swift St. and was used to build Wilderness Boats before Howard moved in.

Serge with the hulls during construction. Photo courtesy Serge Pond

Continued in Part 2…