Martin, Please Thank Your Dad for Me
Hi Martin,
I'm new here. Didn't know it was you, or perhaps more precisely, didn't know who your Dad was, when you replied to my message about the Angelman Ketch. I just figured it out.
When I was 15 I met a couple in Newport Beach who had a new E-41. Having only sailed Lido 14s before purchasing it, the boat was an awful lot for the couple to handle, so they took me along and I became their deck ape, the guy to hoist up the mast to run halyards and change lightbulbs, and ultimately their good friend. My friend was an industrial model maker and somehow he came across the hull station lines for his E-41. I expect he talked with your Dad; I don't know. At any rate, he wanted to teach me his craft, so we cut aluminum templates out of tracings from the drawing and laminated up large block of mahogany.
I spent most of that summer carving, sanding, and checking my work against the templates. I worked and worked until the templates fit against the wood with no light showing. Sometime during the next school year, with the hull finished, I thought maybe I'd make a model of the deck to add to the eventual half model. But I didn't have the deck lines. My friend suggested I talk to your Dad. So I dropped by his office on PCH unannounced with the completed 1:16 scale hull under my arm. This was about 1973. Your Dad was standing next to his drawing board looking down at his work and when he saw a scrawny kid open the door from the street, he initially scowled. Then when he saw what I was carrying, he suddenly grinned and said, "I recognize that boat." We chatted a little and I explained what I wanted to do. Without saying a word, your Dad opened a drawer and grabbed a drawing. He made a blueline copy for me then and there and sent me on my way with a request that I return and show him the completed model when I was finished.
I ended up creating a fiberglass mold from the hull model, then sliced it down the centerline on the bandsaw and used the best half as a female mold to make the half model. I didn't know that half models are traditionally of the starboard side. In my case, the port side came out better so that's what I used. And I know the rudder's not quite right; I made it from memory after seeing the boat once on the hard at Lido Shipyard.
I painted and mounted the resulting half model, had a brass plaque made and presented it to my friend as a thank-you for the many kindness he and his wife had shown me. It hung in his office for many years until he retired. The model now hangs in my son's room and is one of his most prized possessions.
When I visited your Dad, I had no concept of intellectual property, or what it meant to actually have the hull stations and deck lines of a rather high-end boat that was (I think) still in production at that time. The kindness that your Dad showed me didn't dawn on me until years later, and I will always be grateful.
Don't know whether your Dad remembers that; I don't expect he does. But please thank him for me and show him this picture:
