Courtesy Of Wayne Ettel
ROSE OF SHARON, a 1930 W. Starling Burgess–designed schooner, currently sits in Los Angeles. The Stockton, California, location of the new boatyard of Wayne Ettel, her longtime steward, is too far from open water to be a good home for her.
Change is everywhere these days, and change dramatically affects ROSE OF SHARON and her longtime caregiver, Wayne Ettel. He is moving his wooden-boat repair facility (see WB No. 187) up the coast to northern California—way up the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta to the former Stephens Bros. yard in Stockton. The move includes the Maritime Preservation Trust (MPT), which Wayne founded in 2017 and which owns this 51' schooner and other classic yachts. The yard’s distance from open water, however, makes ROSE OF SHARON a poor fit for the new site, and she’s now languishing at MPT’s old Los Angeles location and is in need of a savior.