An Azorean family yard that built tuna clippers, a 127-foot schooner for a banker, and the two one-design classes that put working people on the Bay in boats they could afford.
Manuel and Antonio Nunes came from Pico in the Azores and began building on the Sacramento River around 1898. In 1925 they moved to Sausalito, acquiring the existing Reliance Boat and Ways Co. at Second and Main, and for the next thirty-four years the Nunes yard was the most versatile builder on the north Bay.
The range is the point. In 1927 they built the 66-foot racing yawl Truant; in 1928 two 112-foot tuna clippers, Funchal and Greyhound; in 1929 the schooner Zaca for the banker Templeton Crocker, on a low bid of $350,000 — a boat later owned by Errol Flynn and restored in Brittany in the 1990s.
And at the same time they built the Bear. Ernie Nunes and Marty Martinsen conceived it in 1929; the first keel went down late in 1931 and the first boat was sailing by the summer of 1932. It was 22 feet 11 inches of pine and Philippine mahogany over oak, it cost very little, and by the 1950s it was the largest one-design fleet on San Francisco Bay. Sixty-nine were built between 1932 and 1976.
Ernie Nunes followed it in 1939 with the Mercury — one of the first one-designs engineered specifically for plywood — and opened a dedicated Mercury shop across the street in 1946. The main yard closed in 1959; the Mercury shop in 1962.
One near-miss deserves recording. Myron Spaulding first pitched the design that became the Farallone Clipper to the Nunes brothers at about $4,900 a boat. Stephens Brothers of Stockton bid $4,750 and got the class. Three of the Bay's most consequential yards are connected by that $150.
- Principals
- Manuel and Antonio Nunes, of Pico, Azores; Ernest 'Ernie' Nunes as designer
- Sausalito site
- Acquired from Reliance Boat and Ways Co., 1925
- Closure
- Main yard 1959; Ernie Nunes's separate Mercury shop 1962
- 1927Truant — 66-ft racing yawl
- 1928Funchal and Greyhound — 112-ft tuna clippers
- 1929Zaca — schooner for Templeton Crocker; later Errol Flynn's
- 1931–32Merry Bear — the first Bear; now in the San Francisco Maritime NHP small-craft collection
- 1932–1976Bear class — 69 hulls
- from 1939Mercury 18
- The predecessor on the Sausalito site is now established: the Reliance Boat Company, founded by William Hynes in 1920. The name 'Dickerhoff & Nunes', which appeared in this project's original brief, remains unsupported by any source found.
- Zaca's length is given as both 118 and 127 feet, and her launch as both 1929 and 1930.
- Ernie Nunes's collaborator on the Bear is spelled both 'Martinsen' and 'Martinson' in different sources.
Wooden Boat Atlas v3.0 · built 30 July 2026 · a project of the Golden Gate Wooden Boat Foundation · licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 · open data · corrections