Myron Spaulding

Spaulding is the figure through whom most of this atlas connects. He trained in naval architecture and boatbuilding at Polytechnic High School in San Francisco and, at the same time, in music — he played violin with the San Francisco Symphony until 1957, and largely taught himself the rest of yacht design after his schooling ended.

He was first famous as a sailor rather than a designer. In 1936 he skippered the Sparkman & Stephens yawl Dorade to victory in the Transpacific Yacht Race; he sailed six Transpacs in all, and was a class champion in Birds, Stars and Six-Metres. That combination — designer who races his own water — is the recurring pattern in the best Bay work.

He opened a naval architecture office in San Francisco before the war and spent the war years at Madden & Lewis in Sausalito, building subchasers. In 1951 he bought the waterfront property at 600 Gate Five Road and established Spaulding Boatworks, which is still there and still hauling wooden boats.

His own designs are a short, coherent list rather than a large one: the 20-foot Clipper, the Spaulding 33, and a run of custom sloops and yawls. He also pitched the design that became the Farallone Clipper to the Nunes brothers before the commission went to Stephens Brothers in Stockton — a single decision that links three of the Bay's most important yards.

When Spaulding died in 2000 and his widow Gladys shortly after, the yard passed into charitable trust and became the nonprofit Spaulding Marine Center. Since 2007 it has housed the Arques School of Traditional Boatbuilding. His design collection is archived at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.