Bogie would be so proud if he stepped aboard Santana today. Just imagine his white-soled sneakers squeaking a little on her 55 feet of pristine teak deck, his cap askew, Chesterfield cigarette dangling, highball in hand, glancing up to the top of the 68-foot spruce main mast and maybe giving the lines a little test tug while checking out the gleaming brightwork.
Would he run his fingers over the mahogany trim in the cabin, giving an appreciative nod at the new navigation station? She’s a little different, perhaps he’d think. Still, she’s the same elegant sailboat he loved like nobody’s business.
Before passing final judgment, he’d want to see her under sail with the schooner rig instead of the yawl to which he was accustomed. After seeing the old girl look yar after so many years, he’d certainly flash that classic ear-to-ear Humphrey Bogart grin and raise a toast.
Bogart would be toasting the owners of his old sea boat, Paul Kaplan and his wife, Christine (Chrissy), and a team of craftsmen who rescued Santana from a watery grave at San Francisco’s St. Francis Yacht Club a decade ago.
Labor intensive? That’s a gross understatement. Costly? The Kaplans aren’t talking. Worth the effort? Of course. Isn’t every great love affair?
“It is a completely emotional and romantic notion we pursued, and we’ve had a ball,” Paul Kaplan says. While Santana will always be known as Bogie’s boat – he named his production company after her, and astute movie viewers will recall it was also the name of the boat in Key Largo – he only owned her from 1945 until his death in 1957, for just 12 of Santana’s 72 years of existence. He was one of 14 owners.
“A thoroughbred,” is how Bogart described a good boat in a July 1951 article in Film Review magazine. “She has a history and frequently a series of owners – and sometimes she wins races,” Bogart said.
Santana – a contraction for Santa Ana, the name of the hot winds that plague Southern California – has history and a half. Designed by Olin Stephens of the legendary yacht-building firm Sparkman and Stephens, Santana was built for William L. Stewart, the son of the founder of Union Oil. Stewart wanted a schooner. Stephens argued for a yawl because of its greater speed, akin to the Sparkman and Stephens-designed yawl, Dorade, which won the 1931 Trans-Atlantic Race and sealed the firm’s reputation. Stewart won the argument at the time, but in 1939, he sold Santana and replaced her with a yawl.
Charles Isaacs, a San Diego businessman married to actress Eva Gabor, bought Santana but sold her two years later to George Brent, a rakish actor whose cinematic résumé included 11 Bette Davis movies.
Brent re-rigged Santana to a yawl and introduced her to Hollywood. In 1944, Ray Milland– Oscar® winner for Lost Weekend – owned her for a few months. Following that, Dick Powell and his wife, June Alyson, bought Santana. In fact, during Santana’s rebuilding, the Kaplans found a special compartment Alyson had constructed in a drawer in the stateroom to hide her jewelry.
Then Santana came to Bogie and Lauren Bacall. “Lauren Bacall then – and today – doesn’t look very fondly on the boat,” says Kaplan, who, on a whim, invited Bacall to Santana’s 70th birthday party in October, 2005. “It wasn’t a vital part of her recreational menu.”
It was for Bogart, though. A lifelong sailor, he knew quality when he saw it. He took Santana out from Newport Beach between 35 and 45 weekends each year. Usually these were stag affairs, involving prodigious amounts of liquor. In fact, Bogart’s most significant addition to Santana was a highball glass drink holder around the base of the steering binnacle, one which remains to this day.
Legend has it that after one race, the owner of a yacht bested by Santana asked Bogart what made his boat go. “Scotch,” he replied, and walked away.
Actor David Niven wrote about one weekend when he and his wife were on board Santana. Frank Sinatra was in a chartered motor yacht, which tied up to Santana. Sinatra sang all night – really, the whole night – while accompanied on the piano by Academy Award® winning composer, Jimmy Van Heusen, whose songs include “Love and Marriage,” a Sinatra staple.
“People from other boats rowed over in dinghies and sat in a circle around the yachts, under a full moon, listening, until the sky began to grow light and the singing ended. Then they rowed quietly away,” Niven wrote.
After Bogart’s death, his model of Santana placed next to the pulpit at his memorial service as if to stand in for his remains. The yacht came to San Francisco Bay after its purchase by Sacramento oilman, Wally Nickell.
Looking for more speed, he sold her in 1966 to William Solari, a wealthy lawyer, who in 1968 took Santana through the Panama Canal to race from Newport, Rhode Island to Bermuda – a race Santana won in 1938. Sadly, she didn’t repeat. “I zigged when everyone else zagged,” Solari says.
Newer boats were faster, and Santana’s racing days petered out. She sat at anchor more than she sailed.
Sausalito restaurateur Charlie Peet and his wife, Marty, sailed Santana around the world in 1971, putting 40,000 miles on the aging yacht in two years. The mizzen mast was lost in a storm, and the trip took its toll. After the voyage, Santana was a wreck, and the engine room was a greasy disaster.
Twin brothers, Tom and Ted Eden, resuscitated Santana in 1973, taking two years to get her back in sailing form. But after Ted’s death in 1993, Santana again sat mainly at anchor.
In 1997, a bilge pump malfunction slowly filled Santana with water, destroying her interior and electronic system. Quite possibly, she was beyond repair.
The Kaplans rescued her. As a kid, Paul Kaplan learned to sail on Lake Merced; his wife across the Bay on Lake Merritt. Now, they’re sail-mates, and their daughters, Erica and Sarah, are also both sailors who work in the family business.
In 1995, Paul opened a marine sales and service company at Point Richmond, selling Nautor SWAN racing yachts from a top-of-the line Finnish boat maker. The boatyard of Keefe Kaplan Maritime, Inc. became Santana’s new home. She didn’t go back in the water for a year.
“Structurally, the boat was sound, but all the machinery and electrical systems had been destroyed. The interior was a shambles,” Kaplan says.
Santana’s original plans were preserved in a museum, designs that were invaluable in rebuilding the boat. The Kaplans’ goal was to make Santana look like she did when she was splashed in 1935. This included converting her from a yawl back to a schooner, which, as Paul Kaplan dryly notes, “is not a trivial matter.”
While the interior stays true to the boat’s original design, the cabin includes several modern touches. There’s a $15,000 audio and video system that includes a flat screen television hidden in a cupboard, which rolls into the wall like a pocket door and, if Bogart poked around in the galley, he would also discover a microwave.
Unlike for Bogart, the Kaplans’ use of Santana is a family affair. “I can’t think of the number of times it’s just been a stag type of deal – probably only a handful of times in the 12 years that we’ve had the boat,” Kaplan says.
For charitable causes of their friends, encompassing everything from a pet rescue program to the Leukemia Society, the Kaplans donate day trips on board the yacht that groups can auction. Santana generates up to $50,000 for charities each year, Kaplan estimates. “It’s our way of making the boat available to people who would never ordinarily be exposed to it,” Kaplan says.
When in Southern California, the Kaplans met a number of people who had sailed with Bogart on Santana. One elderly man became teary at boarding because he figured he would never set foot on the boat again. When the man was just a kid, Bogart asked him to crew on an upcoming race. The gentleman’s mother politely informed Bogart that she would not permit her son to go because the men aboard Santana drank, smoked and used coarse language, thus leaving him with the missed opportunity of a lifetime.
At 72 years young, Santana still has plenty of history to make.
Here’s looking at you, kid.
