Way back, growing up in suburbia, we had a neighbor family unlike any other around there. Mr. and Mrs. Bill S. and their two daughters had an ordinary home, but on entering you did not see anything like the ordinary: no furniture in the living room except for a gleaming black Steinway piano and a huge black and white photo of a movie pirate. The piano represented the girls' exceptional musical talent (the younger played a gold-plated flute), and the picture told you something essential about Mr. S.
From 1969 to January 1974 he owned a legendary ketch (a two-masted yacht) called the Pious Puffin II, built in 1947 at Amsterdam. The previous owner, Josephine Forrestal, widow of the Secretary of the Navy, had purchased it to donate to Bob Jones College of Jacksonville, Florida. It had a short stay there, as two professors tore the 65' masts off under a bridge (here it is languishing, post-accident:)
Mr. S. bought it for $64,000 to restore and then put the Puffin into charter service. He had operated a marina and could do just about anything (he had a degree in music education, was a jazz drummer, and at this time was a self-employed telephone systems consultant0. But things went awry, as any foreign-hulled boat could not be used as a charter in the U.S. He took the matter to Congress, but the bill was nixed in committee, since the law was clear and the sort-of association with James Forrestal was not enough to make an exception.
Many friends and family enjoyed the magnificent Puffin anyway, with its built-in piano, stained glass, engraved cocktail shakers and room to sleep eleven and three crew. A couple married on her in 1971.My one day and night on her was devoted to work, sanding, polishing and applying pumice paint to the edges of the deck. The Puffin went up and down the East Coast, to Chesapeake Bay and the Caribbean, and I didn't, but it was the coolest anyway.
A couple from Iowa bought the boat to complete the restoration, but there were not sufficient funds left to make their planned around the world sail. It ended its 33-year career as the official Pirate Week vessel at Grand Cayman; it was scrapped in Miami by 1980.
Looking like Errol Flynn, Mr. S. lived, in a way, the life of the pirate on the living room wall. And I will probably never meet anyone like him again.
