Star of recent Vallejo festival hits levee near Pt. Richmond; owner raising money to save schooner he built himself

By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

The red-sailed schooner Aldebaran, which last month thrilled thousands by firing its cannon onshore during the Northern California Pirate Festival in Vallejo, has run aground, and its owner is trying to raise money to rescue the boat he built himself.

Hayden Brown is determined to bring the schooner back to his dock, where he’ll begin a restoration of the vessel he knows so well. He built every inch of the boat, starting 43 years ago.

Brown, a Point Richmond resident, had taken 19 guests aboard his schooner, and they sailed to San Francisco to see the July 4 fireworks.

The outbound trip went well; it was on the return that Brown and his boat ran into trouble.

The conditions seemed right. “The wind was to our backs and the current was with us,” he said. “We were making eight knots.”

Brown, his guests and the Aldebaran approached the Point Portrero Reach entrance, just off Point Richmond.

“It was a real high-tide night,” he said. “I was a little inattentive.”

Nor was his GPS device turned to its highest resolution. The Aldebaran was 150 feet too far east to round the breakwater near its home dock.

“I thought we would be all right,” Brown said. “I thought we were to the west of it.”

But as he looked out at the water that night, he thought he saw a section of water turned glassy by the wind. Suddenly, he realized it was the top of the levee. “Then it was too late.”

The schooner ran onto the levee, which Brown said couldn’t be seen from a distance because of the tide. He and his guests were thrown forward, and the boat was thrown up, caught by the breakwater.

After checking that his passengers were all right, Brown called the Coast Guard. He tried to back his craft off, but it was caught.

One by one, a Coast Guard cutter removed Brown’s passengers. He hoped to stay with his sailboat, but the Coast Guard crew wouldn’t let him. “We left about 11 p.m., and … they brought us to the Richmond Yacht Club,” Brown said. “But she’s still out there.”

He returned early the next morning and saw the Aldebaran being bashed against the rocks.

Brown said he could tell that had he been able to stay aboard overnight, he might have taken advantage of the way the boat had shifted with the changing tide.

He climbed aboard, started his bilge pumps and began bailing by water. But then the boat slipped and settled into the mud. “I could tell I was down. The water got calm,” he said.

That meant his schooner wouldn’t be sailing away that day. The 70-foot craft had taken damage starting 8 feet from the prow on the port side. The friend who had given him a waterside lift to the schooner took him away again, leaving the Aldebaran behind.

Brown, a former aerospace designer, decided in 1971 to build a schooner. Becoming a boat builder changed him, he said.

“A man builds a boat, and the boat builds the man,” he explained, using a quote that has been his saying for four decades.

He studied the craft of master ship designers as he worked out his own design for his schooner. The sleek vessel “is an amalgam of what I thought was pretty,” he said.

Linking his schooner with his space age career and the astronomy he loves, he named the vessel “Aldebaran,” after the red star that is the eye of the bull in the constellation Taurus. “It’s a good name for a boat,” he said.

He outfitted the vessel with red sails, resembling old sails that were dipped in a tanning solution to preserve the Egyptian cotton. “I love red sails,” he said.

Ten years after he started building the schooner, he launched it. “I finally got her ‘writ up’ in 1991,” he said. That meant she was papered for sailing, “and I’ve been sailing her ever since.”

Brown’s wife, Fern, may not share her husband’s deep enthusiasm for sailing, but she’s been a steadfast supporter of that passion, he said. She’s also the boat’s co-owner.

Brown wasn’t finished with the Aldebaran, even after it finally took to the water. He’s been tweaking the craft as long as he’s been sailing her, adding details here and there.

But when he was done with the bulk of the work, he had a 70-foot craft with a 54-foot deck and a 15-foot, 8-inch beam.

With its suit of 13 red sails at work, the vessel can travel as fast as 11 knots “with a following sea,” and has the option of power, which can carry the schooner at 8.3 knots.

Its 34 belaying pins — the narrow, shaped wood cylinders that are used for wrapping the vessel’s lines — and its 93 blocks through which lines are run are all home built.

Brown, now 77, said he has used the ship to bring joy to others who otherwise wouldn’t get the chance, a bit of “giving back” in exchange for having the time to build and sail the boat.

He frequently takes out high school students, particularly members of Adventure Clubs and other enrichment programs. He’s also provided rides to seriously ill children who have told such organizations as the Make-A-Wish Foundation that they want to ride on the water — or aboard a pirate ship.

When a group of would-be buccaneers decided to launch the Northern California Pirate Festival, Brown and his schooner were in, hoisting a Jolly Roger and participating in a ship-to-shore cannon battle with members of the Brotherhood Of Oceanic Mercenaries of Portland, Ore.

The cannon battle has become a highlight of the pirate festival, each Father’s Day weekend at Vallejo Waterfront Park.

Another event in which he’s participated since its inception has been the Great San Francisco Yacht Club Schooner Race. Mostly, Brown said, he’s run last. But 2012 finally was his year, and he sailed the Aldebaran to victory.

Brown spoke March 6 to members of the Benicia Yacht Club, telling how he hand-built the vessel and how it’s been used since it first set sail.

With so much of his life tied to the vessel, Brown won’t think of abandoning the Aldebaran, even though there is no insurance and little savings to use for its salvage.

He and Fern have launched a page an online fundraising site. Donations are being accepted through www.gofundme.com/3ifhhg. He said he hopes contributors will help raise the $50,000 estimated to free the Aldebaran and tow it to Point Richmond.

Contributions are starting to come in, from $10 up to several hundred; in two days donors have contributed nearly $2,000 as word spreads about the Aldebaran’s plight.

Brown said he is confident that once the schooner is back at his dock, he’ll be able to manage its repairs and return the vessel to sailing.

“Absolutely,” he said. “My heart is in that boat!”