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A Man and the Sea

Chris Duffey

The man behind the boatyard is Sven Svendsen, 77, whose grandfather and great-grandfather were boat builders in Denmark.

Learn Your Way Around a Boatyard

     There was a time, a decade or so ago, when schoolchildren in Alameda would take field trips to Svendsen’s boatyard, down by the estuary. They learned about fishing and boating, and they saw men building boats that would sail on the San Francisco Bay.
     Today, though, the kids don’t come to visit, and Alamedans forget that it’s an Island, a place where there still is a thriving boat culture along the water. Alameda feels more like a suburb these days than a place that has its own maritime industry.
     But Svendsen’s Boat Works is still down at the estuary, and while its employees aren’t building as many boats these days — competition from China — they are maintaining and repairing about 900 boats a year. That represents most of the boats on the Island and many that call San Francisco Bay home.
     And the man behind the boatyard is Sven Svendsen, 77, whose grandfather and great-grandfather were boat builders in Denmark. His father departed just a little bit from the family business and was a fisherman. His son, Sean, 48, carries on the tradition of watermen in his family, having left a promising career as a lawyer in 1996 to come on board at the Boat Works.
     “I’m taking a little break from the law,” says Sean, smiling. With his suntanned face and his 30-foot racing sailboat, named Svenkist, bobbing in the marina just outside his office, it doesn’t seem like he will hurry back anytime soon to his former career representing banks and lenders.
     It’s a natural fit on the water for the Svendsens. Sven came to the United States in 1956 from Denmark and landed seven years later in Alameda, where he started his boat-building business — mostly sailboats, pleasure boats and some fishing boats.
     At the same time he was building his business, Sven enjoyed racing Nordic
folkboats on San Francisco Bay. The folkboat, with origins in Sweden, is a sturdy 25-foot sailboat that is recognized for its seaworthiness and well-mannered behavior in strong winds and high seas.
     Sven, with boat building in his blood, tinkered with the design and made a mold of his wood folkboat. And then, in 1975, he built the first fiberglass Nordic folkboat, a sweet
little sloop that’s perfect for bay sailing and more easily maintained than its wood cousin. The boat’s popularity took off, and today there is an active group of folkboat sailors in the area, including members of the San Francisco Bay Folkboat Association, which holds various racing and social events.
     The folkboat, like Sven, has a compact build and is more practical in its appearance than some of the larger, flashier sailing yachts. Sven happily leads tours of his boatyard and shows the differences between a smooth-hulled sailboat and a folkboat, which looks ridged on the outside, like wood siding on a house.
     “It’s a good little boat,” says Sven, patting the folkboat, which had been hauled out for repairs. “This is what people are looking for
in a sailboat.”
     The marina and boatyard cover 26 acres on the estuary along Clement Avenue. There are other boat businesses, too, in the area, and most of the commercial boat repair is done nearby at Bay Ship & Yacht.
     “We have sail makers, yacht clubs, electronics shops — all for boats in Alameda, maybe 300 or more jobs,” says Sven.
     Bill Colombo runs Doyle Sails’ San Francisco division out of Alameda, and his employees sew great, billowy sails in their sail loft, next door to the Svendsens’ metalworking shop. Sails are the only things that the Svendsens don’t provide boaters, so they often refer their customers to Colombo.
     “We do a lot of work for Svendsen’s, and generally they refer a lot of work to us and vice versa,” he says.
     Sven, meanwhile, would like to get back to the time when children in Alameda knew their way around a boatyard.
     “We need to get all the Alameda kids out on the bay,” he says. This island and its surrounding waterways are ideal for sailing.
     “The wind’s going to blow every afternoon out there,” Sven says. “You’re going to have fantastic sailing.”