Twenty-three feet of Douglas fir over white oak, designed in the Depression to be cheap enough that a working man could own one — and stiff enough for a Bay westerly.
Ernie Nunes and Marty Martinsen conceived the Bear in 1929. The first keel was laid in late 1931 at the Nunes Brothers yard in Sausalito and the first boat was sailing by the summer of 1932. The name comes from a remark by San Francisco Yacht Club Commodore Cliff Smith on seeing an early hull: 'That is a bear of a boat.'
After five boats existed, Nunes and Martinsen formalised a one-design class and joined the Yacht Racing Association — which required retrofitting self-bailing cockpits. In 1937 there were still only seven boats built or building. In 1938 more than a dozen home builders started hulls, and the class took off.
By the late 1950s the Bear was the largest one-design fleet on San Francisco Bay, peaking at around 65 boats in the 1960s. Sixty-nine hulls were built in all, the last in 1976, and the class still has the strongest surviving presence of any wooden one-design on the Bay.
Merry Bear, the first boat, is now in the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park small-craft collection, described there as the first class of sloop yachts designed and built specifically to sail on San Francisco Bay.
- Designers
- Ernest Nunes and Marty Martinsen, 1929
- Builder
- Nunes Brothers Boat & Ways Co., Sausalito; many hulls home-built
- LOA / LWL
- 23'0" / 18'0" (per the restored Unbearable, hull No. 60)
- Beam / Draft
- 6'6" / 3'6"
- Sail area
- 258 sq ft
- Construction
- Carvel, Douglas fir on white oak, bronze fastened
- Hulls built
- 69, from 1932 to 1976
- Dimensions differ slightly between sources: the restored Unbearable is recorded at 23'0" LOA, 6'6" beam, 3'6" draft; the NPS record for Merry Bear gives 22'9", 7'0" and 4'0". Plausible given amateur and semi-custom construction, but not reconciled.
- Velerosa is listed elsewhere as hull #69 with a 1978 date, which sits just outside the 1932–1976 build span given by the class association.
- The claims that the Bear was the largest one-design fleet on San Francisco Bay by the late 1950s, and that it peaked near 65 boats in the 1960s, come from the class association and a closely related site. The 69-hull total is independently corroborated; the superlative is not, and was not tested against the Bird, Folkboat or El Toro fleets of the same years.
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