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Few modern sailing vessels are surrounded by more
myth and legend than the yacht Zaca. Launched on the eve of the
Great Depression, the 118' gaff-rigged schooner has sailed through
seventy years of history from one remarkable adventure to the next.
Today, berthed in Monaco, Zaca remains a topic of fascination in
nautical circles.
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ORIGINS
1928 |
In 1929, San Francisco socialite and railroad
heir Templeton Crocker hired naval architect Garland Rotch to design
one of the most luxurious yachts yet constructed. This vessel was to
replace a 75’ ketch that Crocker had lost the previous year during a
revolution in Mexico. Rotch borrowed the lines for the second Zaca
from Canada’s famed Bluenose, the fastest fishing schooner ever
built, and in August of 1929 the keel was laid down alongside the
Nunes Brothers boatyard in Sausalito, California. |
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CONSTRUCTION
1930 |
To build a schooner of the size of Zaca was
not an easy proposition. Designer Garland Rotch and owner Templeton
Crocker looked across San Francisco Bay to Sausalito based boat
builders Ernie and Antonio Nunes. The 118' feet vessel was too large
to be built in the Nunes Brothers yard so, in August of 1929, the
keel was laid alongside the shop — in the middle of Sausalito's Main
Street. A week later, the stock market crashed. But even as the
Great Depression swept the nation, construction of the new Zaca went
full speed ahead. TOP |
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EXPEDITION
1933 |
During Zaca’s maiden voyage in 1930, Templeton
Crocker met S.M. Lambert in Fiji. Lambert, a doctor in tropical
medicine for the Rockefeller Foundation, entertained Crocker with
tales of isolated and unexplored regions in the Solomon Islands.
There, said Lambert, lived a tribe of Polynesians who, having had no
contact with white men, were twenty thousand years behind modern man
and the only relics of a prehistoric civilization.
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WORLD WAR II
1943 |
With war in 1941, every seaworthy
private yacht was requisitioned by the U.S. Navy. Crocker was paid
just $35,000 for his beloved $350,000 schooner. Zaca was painted
battleship gray, renamed IX-73, and ordered on patrol 500 miles off
of Eureka, California. She once spotted a Japanese fleet sailing
down the coast and her radio report had them turn tail and retreat.
Zaca’s normal duty was as a radio beacon station, although she did
carry two .50 caliber machine guns ‘just in case’. When she returned
to Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay every three weeks, her
freezer was reliably full of salmon. In 1944, Zaca was replaced by a
diesel patrol boat and in 1945 was decommissioned and, along with
several other well-worn yachts, auctioned off.
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ERROL FLYNN
1946 |
In 1945, Errol Flynn purchased his
‘dream ship’ Zaca from speculator Joe Rosenberg. Flynn completely
refurbished her, painted her white and, in 1946, in the company of a
pick-up crew, his scientist father, marine biologist Carl Hubbs, and
an assortment of actors, relatives, and a documentary film crew,
sailed to Acapulco on a ‘scientific expedition’ that turned into a
fiasco. After everyone jumped ship in Acapulco, Flynn trained a
Mexican crew and rented Zaca to Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth for
the filming of The Lady from Shanghai. In 1947, Zaca reappeared in
Port Antonio, Jamaica, which Flynn would call home. Sailing to the
Mediterranean in 1950 with a Jamaican crew, Zaca would eventually
wind up at the Club Nautico in Palma de Mallorca where he and third
wife Patrice Wymore would live on board.
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ABANDONED
1985 |
After Flynn’s death in 1959, Zaca
stayed at her berth at the Club Nautico, the crew keeping her up
with the little money Patrice could get them. The attorneys for
Flynn’s Estate in the meanwhile were plotting to get rid of her.
Eventually they agreed to consign her to English millionaire playboy
Freddie Tinsley who promised he could sell her in France. Once in
France, Tinsley stripped Zaca of everything of value and, in 1965,
abandoned her in the boatyard of Bernard Voisin in Villefranche.
Voisin eventually claimed Zaca for non-payment of rent. Zaca further
deteriorated and turned into a ghost ship. The locals claimed there
were emanations of Errol Flynn coming from the vessel and the sound
of wild parties at night. This all ceased after a dual
Anglican-Catholic exorcism in 1979. In 1987 English electronics
mogul Phillip Coussins purchased Voisin’s boat yard just to get Zaca
but the deal ended up in French courts for two years. In 1990
Coussins wound up selling a now sunken Zaca to Italian businessman
Roberto Memmo. TOP |
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RESTORED
Today |
After two years of extensive
rebuilding in Toulon, Zaca made her grand reappearance at
Monaco’s classic Regatta in 1993. Zaca is regaled as one of the
finest yachts in the world. Skipper, Bruno Dal Pias, and a
regular crew of four keep Zaca busy, visiting such ports as
Punta Ala, Gaeta, Capri, Cagliari, and the Aegean. Owner Roberto
Memmo has Zaca again hosting world leaders, writers, movie stars
and the occasional documentary filmmaker. During the summer,
Zaca can be seen in person at important Regattas in the
Mediterranean. In the winter she can be found in her berth in
Port de Fontvieille, Monte Carlo.
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BACK TO ZACA |
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