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Educational Tall Ship in Sausalito to help kids set sail

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Education Tall Ship volunteers Biily Hager (left) and Ian Sidey work on the Matthew Turner in Sausalito.
Education Tall Ship volunteers Biily Hager (left) and Ian Sidey work on the Matthew Turner in Sausalito.Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

Just down the road from Sausalito’s only supermarket, a crew of skilled shipwrights and a couple dozen volunteers are building an oceangoing sailing vessel in a big white tent.

When it is complete in a couple of years, the boat will be a two-masted brigantine, 100 feet long. It will be named for Matthew Turner, a noted 19th century shipbuilder, and it will take young people on voyages of discovery.

The boat is about 25 percent complete, but the framework is in place now — the wooden bones of the ship are there. It is coming to life.

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“The hard work is done’’said Alan Olson, executive director of Educational Tall Ship, the official name of the project.

He has big ideas for the Matthew Turner. He sees it as a tall ship out of the past sailing the world well into the future.

“We will sail primarily on the bay and the coast,’’ Olson said. “And Mexico, of course.’’

He got a dreamy look in his eye. “And Hawaii, Tahiti and Alaska,’’ he said. “For starters.

“There’s a million kids in the Bay Area, and all of them would like to go out for a cruise and learn something,’’ Olson said.

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Olson is entitled to dream. He is one of the founders of Educational Tall Ship. Like a lot of others, he liked to talk about sailing ships, and projects to build and sail them, taking kids and young people out on the salt water. He lived for a long time on a boat at Galilee harbor in Sausalito.

The harbor is built on the bones of the old sailing ship Galilee, a famous old Pacific trading vessel that was laid to rest in the mudflats that line the shores of Richardson’s Bay. The project came to him gradually.

A replica

“The idea was to build a replica of the Galilee,’’ he said.

The real ship is long gone. The stern was cut off years ago and is on display at Fort Mason in San Francisco. The bow was also saved; it’s in Benicia. The rest is history. However, the Smithsonian Institution measured the lines of the ship from top to bottom; complete drawings. It was possible to recreate the ship, using computers, of course.

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It is a long story, but the short version has Andy Davis of Tri-Coastal Marine in Point Richmond designing a somewhat smaller version of the Galilee.

“The Galilee was too big for our purposes,’’ Olson said.

The Matthew Turner will be 100 feet long on deck, 32 feet shorter than the Galilee, but will be otherwise similar.

It will have bunks for 38 persons for long voyages, an auxiliary engine powered by electric batteries and modern electronics. But the vessel will mainly sail on the wind.

Olson and his associates figure a budget of $6.2 million should do the job. They have raised $4 million.

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“Where did it come from? I don’t know for sure,’’ said Olson. “From everybody. We have a number of pledges and a number of contributors are looking at us — foundations, corporations.’’

The nonprofit Conservation Fund donated 80,000 board-feet of Douglas Fir timber from forest it owns in the Big River country in Mendocino County.

Prep work

It took a lot of planning to get ready, to get the site for the shipbuilding project, which is between the Mollie Stone Market and the Sausalito city tennis courts. The keel was laid just over a year ago.

The key workers are professional shipwrights and carpenters, but there are also a lot of volunteers, many with high levels of boatbuilding skill, and some with nothing more than a willingness to work.

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Rob McCrimmery, 58, saw the Matthew Turner when he went to the Sausalito Art Festival over the Labor Day weekend and decided to sign up. He retired last year after 28 years in the Coast Guard and his last post was officer in charge of the intelligence section at the Pacific Area headquarters in Alameda. He held the rank of captain.

'Building community’

“I have the time now, and I like the idea of building a ship that will be around for a long time,’’ he said. He started on the Matthew Turner just before Thanksgiving.

Martin Falasai, 69, a retired engineer, describes his job on the Turner as “master sawdust maker.’’ Actually, he has long experience sailing and working on wooden boats. “This is good, fun work,’’ he said.

The two were working on the starboard sheer plank, a long wooden timber that runs along the top of the hull on the right side of the vessel.

It is still basic work: The vessel lacks hull planking, a deck, masts and many other components. If all goes well, the Matthew Turner will be completed in 2016, after three years of work from the ground up.

“We are building a tall ship and building community here,’’ Olson said.

He is 73 now and is sure his project will outlast him. The Matthew Turner, he said, will last for generations — for a hundred years.

“We are not just building a boat, we are building a program, for kids, for the grandkids and the great-grandkids,” he said. “It’s an ageless program.’’

The Matthew Turner project is open to the public during business hours daily in the big tent at 2330 Marinship Way, Sausalito.

Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.

E-mail: cnolte@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carlnoltesf

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Carl Nolte is a fourth generation San Franciscan who has been with The Chronicle since 1961. He stepped back from daily journalism in 2019 after a long career as an editor and reporter including service as a war correspondent. He now writes a Sunday column, "Native Son." He won several awards, including a distinguished career award from the Society of Professional Journalists, a maritime heritage award from the San Francisco Maritime Park Association, and holds honorary degrees from the University of San Francisco and the California State University Maritime Academy.