The Resurection of Rosebud

Reprinted from the December 2022 issue of Latitude 38

Serendipity has many forms - perhaps running into an old college flame right after a breakup; small talk at a bar bringing a job opportunity; a gap on starboard layline when you’re overstood out of the left side. For me it happened on August 12th, 2022 when on the 2nd-to-last night of the 505 Worlds Rob Woelfel casually mentioned he had worked as a salvage diver. The next 2+ months would bring a crazy adventure, as four friends and competitors came together to save and rehabilitate a boat that started another sailor’s racing dynasty.

This is the story of Rosebud, a Santa Cruz 52 commissioned by Roger and Isobel Sturgeon in December 1997. The boat is the 15th in the production run of 27, and a former Big Boat Series champion. It nabbed the cover of the October 1999 Latitude  and led to the build of two other great Rosebuds - the famous and successful TP52 and STP65. While the two newer Rosebuds are still sailed in the Northwest and in the Mediterranean under new owners, the first SC52 version had disappeared, long forgotten since the last time it was seen racing on SF Bay in 2005.

I became part of the story of Rosebud in 2016 as the victim of a never-ending conference call on my commute back from Palo Alto to Alameda. It was during that call  that I discovered San Leandro Marina - what must have been a formerly big marina now most used for watching planes land in Oakland, relaxing after a visit to the dispensary and cleaning out your Lyft. Much to my surprise there was a big rig that sure seemed out of place in the marina - a tall, triple-spreader mast that I recognized quickly - it was a Santa Cruz 52. A fuzzy, zoomed-in photo showed the boat’s name was Morgana, and she had fallen into disrepair. I was intrigued.

What happens to send a boat like a SC52 into being forgotten in a marina? How does it end up in San Leandro, so far away from the waters where it would sail? A month or so later I dropped by the harbor office to see if I could find out more. Sure enough the slip fees were up to date and, while they were unable to give me the owner’s name, they were happy to let me check out the boat.

The boat was on an end-tie, two fingers from the mouth of the marina. There weren’t many other boats on the dock, and those that were there were in disrepair or on their way to it. The woman who walked me down to the boat said that the marina was going to close, and I’d find out why soon.

The boat was a time capsule. It looked as if it had finished its last race, been tied up to the dock and then left to sit for ten years. It was covered with lichen and dust from 1000s of 737s landing nearby. The halyards were all still pulled forward to the pulpit, with the exception of the topping lift that had been skyed. Two carbon spinnaker poles were on the foredeck. The racing main had been left on the boom! You could see through the windows that there were gear and personal items down below, but it looked as if no one had been aboard in years. The bottom of the boat had been untouched and had a long beard and mussels all over.

So began my fascination with the boat. Before long, I learned that it was the former Rosebud and that its 2nd owner had raced the boat in San Francisco to modest success for a few years in the early 2000s before stopping sailing altogether. The boat had been in San Leandro since 2007 and had been forgotten while the owner dealt with family and personal issues. To add to the challenges, the San Leandro Marina was silting in and Rosebud’s 9’ draft was far too deep for the marina. In fact, at low tide there was only 18” of water at the front of the boat!

But, for the time being, what could I do? I had found the owner’s contact, but was unable to connect with him. And, what would I be able to take on as a 37-year-old with a new family? Something needed to be done, but I wasn’t in a place to do it.

Fast forward five years, with countless flights in and out of Oakland, each time seeing the boat in the marina begging for a rescue. I found bathymetric charts for the harbor, plotted the king tides required to get the boat out and remembered enough high school trigonometry to figure out how much a boat must be healed to gain 10% of draft (bad news - it’s basically 20 degrees!). I saw that the marina would close in January 2023 and every boat still there would be destroyed. The salvage remained more than I could put together by myself, but it needed to happen!

And then I found myself having a pint with Rob after yet another light air day at the 2022 505 worlds. “You were a salvage diver? Whoa, let me run this past you…” Before too long, we were in it together. Rob would be the expert in extraction, I would find a way to secure ownership. And it got better. Bruce Edwards was sitting at the other end of the table and texted me the next day - he wanted in. And during the light sail out to the racecourse the next day, Rob had mentioned this to his helm, Mike Holt, and he was in as well. The syndicate was formed.

As soon as we were back from Ireland, it was full steam ahead. Bruce hatched a great plan to secure ownership - showing up at the owner’s house with cash and a bill of sale - and started working on that plan. On the second visit, Bruce was able to make contact, and the owner was receptive! Before too long, we owned the boat but, not unlike a dog who finally caught the car, now we had to get it out of the marina!

The siltation was worse than we had imagined. In low tide, the boat sat on a cradle of mud. At all but the highest tide, three-plus feet of the keel was still in the dirt. The plan quickly coalesced around three key areas. 

First, the boat needed power to get out. That meant the diesel needed to be running strong and we needed to have a powerful RIB on standby. We had a mechanic come work on the Yanmar and get the old fuel out of the tanks. Rob dove on the boat and found the running gear operational and cleared the thru-hulls. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the auxiliary fired right up. When the time came, we had a Zodiac RIB with a 150 HP outboard to provide some extra oomph.

Next, we needed to get the boat as light as possible. There was a collection of personal gear aboard, old computer parts and years of stuff that had been piled on after the boat had last sailed. In total, we think we removed 2000 lbs of gear and equipment - before long the boat was floating higher on its lines and looked much more lively just floating at the dock.

Finally, we needed a very accurate survey of the bottom of the harbor. There was a 2018 bathymetric survey performed for the Marina when they announced their imminent closure, but even that was now four years old and might be off by more than a foot. So, we circled a date on the calendar that had a very low tide and planned to mark the channel in a small dinghy then. Little did we know that that day - October 10th - would end up being our extraction day.

A couple things came together to make October 10th the day we chose. First of all, we were all in the area, as the 505 PCCs were the weekend prior in Santa Cruz. There was a 7am low tide of only 1’, giving us a really good feel for the depth at a given water level. Finally, that low tide was followed by a 7.8’ tide just after noon, meaning that if we were happy with our plan at lunchtime, we could go for it.

Rob, a natural fit for this role as a National Champion rower at Cal (truly, a renaissance man!), and I as his coxswain proceeded to paddle around the marina in an 8-foot dinghy using a chunk of PVC to measure the depth. If we could find about 2’ of water in our 1’ tide, then we knew we could plot our path out of the marina. We then connected multiple sections of pipe together to mark our channel, with the goal to run the boat right against that pipe to make sure we were in the right spot. It was close - there was only 18” of water in a lot of places - but we felt that with just the right amount of high water, ample power and if we nailed just the right location that we might be able to pull the boat out. Of course, the worst possibility was getting stuck halfway out, high and dry at the next big low - it’s a bad look to have a 52’ boat on the dirt with the keel out of the water tipped over seventy degrees right next to final approach into OAK!

To make the boat draw a bit less, we then found a large chuck of dock that was floating in the marina that we could use as a counterweight. With the boom extended and supported by the main halyard (a decayed piece of vectran, no doubt highly compromised!) We tied the mainsheet to the piece of dock and used that to heel the boat. If you’re trying this at home, we all highly recommend using docks as counterweights - they’re heavy, they float, and they are abundant in abandoned marinas! We think that the boat achieved about 20 degrees of heel at most, not much change to the draft, but every little bit would count.

Heeling the boat also provided one possible emergency strategy. Should we get stuck while going straight ahead, a last-ditch approach would be to use maximum power to pull the boat sideways out of the channel, with the bottom of the keel laying sideways against the shoal.

Sure enough, noon was upon us and the water had risen 7 or more feet since we had surveyed the bottom that morning. With the water still rising another inch or two over the next 30 minutes, it was time.

We fired up the diesel. Like you’d expect from a non-stabilized engine that’s been sitting for 17 years, it started right up. We had power!

We got the RIB in position in front of the boat, planning to be towing as well as using the boat’s own power.

We cast off the bowline.

And, unbelievably, the boat blew right off the dock!

Shit! Let’s go. Rob and Mike drove the boat while Bruce and I attempted to tow from the RIB. Before long, it was clear that the boat was picking up speed and was clear of the bottom. Hitting all the PVC markers we laid just hours before, Rob and Mike turned left along the abandoned Southern docks of the marina, skirted the rocks to be in the deepest possible spot at the harbor mouth, then turned hard right into the main channel.

We all were laughing. Did this just happen? Was it really that easy? An incredible sense of relief, accomplishment and fun. The boat was motoring to deep water with San Leandro behind it. Rosebud was on the move once again!

We had the boat arranged to be hauled out at Berkeley Marine Center. I’ve sailed with yard GM Ruben Gabriel for years and knew that he would be excited about this project. Ryan Nelson, whose Rogue Rigging shop is at BMC, is a good friend and fellow 505 sailor, so we all wanted to work with him to sort out the rigging.

As you can imagine, the bottom of the boat appeared to be in rough shape. There was a lot of growth from sitting idle for 17 years, but epoxy bottoms are remarkable. After hauling out and some serious work with a pressure washer and scrapers, the bottom is clean and smooth. There are no blisters on the boat, and Ruben and the team now have the bottom sanded and prepped for a new racing bottom.

The engine running gear is straight and the cutlass bearing and prop are both in great shape and getting cleaned up by the staff at BMC.

These boats were built incredibly well and the workmanship shows. Rosebud was basically dry down below all those years in the marina, and the electrical and systems only need some small updates and replacements.

The rigging is a bit more complicated. Seventeen years is a long time for stainless rod and aluminum spreaders to hang out together in San Francisco Bay and in the lee of the Oakland Airport. There’s plenty of corrosion on the spreader tips, and they’ll need to be replaced. Fortunately, Buzz Ballenger knows this rig well from its original build and is working with us to get it back up to speed. Ryan is testing the rod to see what, if anything, needs to be replaced.

Shockingly, the exterior has cleaned up phenomenally well. Mike’s wizardry with a pressure washer and magic eraser has the decks gleaming once again. The hull gelcoat is in great condition and we will quickly learn our lesson for taking on ownership of a 52-footer once we move on to waxing the boat!

So, what’s next for the mighty Rosebud? There will be quite a bit more refitting to happen before the boat hits the racecourse. We have electronics to replace, running rigging, halyards and 10 winches to service. We need to slowly go through the sail inventory and confirm what is usable and what’s not. And we need to get the interior dialed in with clean cushions, galley and stereo working so that we can enjoy the comfort of this big boat!

Once we’ve completed the refit, the boat will likely sail some fun events here in SF and eventually make its way to the Pacific Northwest. My home is in Bellingham, and Bruce is also headquartered nearby. Mike and Rob, both Tahoe residents these days, are eager to come and take on some cruising in the San Juans. In the future, I’m sure that many more races are in the cards, perhaps reprising Rosebud’s last Pacific Cup in the coming years with a team of dinghy sailors and friends.

Rosebud stands out to me as a testament to the camaraderie and “find a way” attitude in the sailing community. It’s a great experience to have four friends coming together to take on a project like this, assisted by friends in the industry helping to make the big work happen. If you’d like to follow our progress on this crazy journey, give a follow to @rosebud_sailing on instagram. Or drop by and say hello next time we’re in the boatyard.