I arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area in the summer of 1965, and soon met up with a group of young radicals who saw that life on the water held out an alternative to an ordinary lifestyle. Those were the days of hippies, drugs, communes, geodesic domes, free love and various unconventional ideas being put into practice. One overwhelming idea was that they needed to prepare for the coming revolution. In practice, that entailed finding a way to live without the use of money. It was the need for money, after all, which created the burden of rent payments, grocery bills, and thus the need to have a “job”.
Since the SF Bay Area provided access to a lot of waterfront, those looking for such alternative choices in housing soon found their way to the Bay and it’s shoreline where they could avoid paying the price of living on land. Sausalito, with its mudflats and protected harbor, was an attractive location where those rebels could congregate and create alternative housing. Slap together some telephone poles to make an A-frame, set it up on the mudflats, finish it out with castoff items from a thrift store or a local junk pile, and voila, you had a home of your own, rent-free. Alan Watts, the Buddhist philosopher, lived in similar accommodations, consisting of a dilapidated ferry, the Vallejo, which had been run aground on the mudflats and abandoned.
Within this environmental petri dish, there arose a number of new ideas for building innovative living facilities, among which were domes, housecars, houseboats and trimarans. One such innovator on the Sausalito waterfront was David Brooks, a house painter who had the honor of being the first squatter to live offshore. Brooks had obtained a military landing craft, welded up a 200 pound anchor to secure a permanent location about a hundred yards away from land, and then proceeded to build a superstructure on it with lumber and plywood stolen from a nearby construction site and floated across the water during the night.
He called his floating home the New Moon, and it led to a number of other copycat builders following his lead. But Brooks had a more ambitious plan, which was to build an ocean-going trimaran, sail off to Mexico and return with enough marijuana to finance his future. In pursuit of that goal, he moved the New Moon across the Bay to a boatyard on the Oakland Estuary, and began building a 40-foot trimaran, to be named Far Horizons when finished.
The construction took about a year, built from plans drawn up by his friend, Jim Jorgenson. Jorgenson had previously built a 30-foot trimaran from Arthur Piver’s Nimble plans and had learned enough in the process to design his own tri, which plans consisted of only six large sheets of paper. But that was enough for Brooks. The design was primitive, with two straight box beams used to join the three hulls, a flat aluminum plate for a daggerboard, a cutter rig, no electricity, very light in weight and with planing floats that allowed very little heel at speed, all of which made for an extremely fast boat. Under proper conditions, the boat would do at least twenty knots, leaving rooster tails behind the hulls and with the non-streamlined daggerboard vibrating and screaming in protest. Brooks loved it, and if the opportunity arose, he would give slower monohulls what he called “The Treatment”, which consisted of coming up on their quarter at high speed on a beam reach, making a close pass and watching the yachties’ mouths drop open.
Once the boat was deemed ready for the ocean, Brooks left San Francisco Bay and headed south. I was fortunate enough to be part of the crew on a short overnight hop from Half Moon Bay south to Santa Cruz. Since the boat had no electricity and thus no lights and we were traveling in the shipping lanes at night, Brooks made about a half dozen attempts to climb the mast with a lit kerosene lantern, intending to hang it from the masthead as a signal to any freighters we might encounter. But the wind blew out the lantern before he could get even halfway up the mast, so he finally gave up and we just sailed without lights. After Santa Cruz, Brooks’ voyage continued south past Baha California, got about as far south as Manzanillo, then turned west for Hawaii. After some time in Kona and Honolulu, it was time to return to San Francisco Bay. Brooks had apparently learned enough navigation using noon sights to arrive at his destination with some degree of reliability. However, the trip east from Hawaii encountered some rough weather, bad enough to tear the masthead fitting loose. The rest of the eastbound voyage only had the lower shrouds to keep the mast up. But it was enough to reach San Francisco Bay.
After repairing the rigging, it was time to head south again to get that marijuana. It was on the return voyage from Mexico that the Far Horizons and David Brooks finally met their end. The remains of the boat were spotted by a freighter floating upside down near Monterey. Brooks and his one-man crew were gone and his pet monkey and dog had starved to death within the capsized hull. The Coast Guard hauled the hull ashore onto the San Francisco waterfront where it was discovered that several hundred pounds of marijuana were aboard. The size of the barnacles that had grown on the cabin top indicated that the boat had capsized about two weeks previously. Sometime later a wake was held in San Francisco to bid farewell to David Brooks, a man who had inspired many others to follow in his nautical footsteps.
He certainly inspired me. I went on to build a 24-foot Piver Nugget, then a floating home and finally a 40-foot trimaran, named Vanilla, which was a sort of blend of Far Horizons and a Jim Brown 37-foot Searunner. But before I went on any memorable ocean voyages, my daughter was born. So faced with the choice of being a mariner or being a father, I chose the latter, sold Vanilla and proceeded to raise my kid.
Rich Clark – Berkeley, California , Monday, June 29, 2020
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Hi Rich Clark,
My parents have a painting which I have in my home now, that was painted by David Brooks in 1967. I know he had a pet monkey and was wondering if we could talk. Amazing story and you made the right decision…Your daughter!
Please contact me!
I hope you are having a wonderful evening, this article was so cool!
Hi Tami -=-
Well, here it is about a full year after your post on this site. But I’m still here in Berkeley, having become a total landlubber. The only boat I still have is a kayak.
Hi Rich! Wow, I stumbled across this fabulous recollection today, and it brings tears to my eyes. I know it’s been many years since we last saw you, but am sending love and warm regards. Thank you so much for sharing these memories. Hope you and family are well! Ondine, David Brooks’ daughter.