2013 Custom Shootout spotlights Whiticar Boat Works and the family ...

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season Whiticar was on board with Bonbright bankrolling a 26-footer that could be fished offshore. That was the beginning of a lifelong partnership between the two and more or less the beginning of the end of my father’s commercial fishing career, adds Curt. Eventually Curt and his two younger brothers Johnson and Jack followed their father into the charter fishing business, running their own boats, Gulfstream, Skipper and Hobo. With Bonbright’s help, Whiticar bought two acres of waterfront property near the Sunrise Inn and Club on Willoughby Creek, building a three stall boathouse and two cottages for his family to live in and for Irving Bonbright’s guests use. Soon after, work began on a 26-foot skiff that Capt. Add and Bonbright had commissioned from Backus Boat Works in Fort Pierce. Called the Betsy-B, although Curt had nothing to do with its construction, he frequently accompanied his father to visit boat building projects in Florida and out New York and New Jersey. For a while it looked like Curt would not follow his father into the business. Following high school he enrolled at Bliss Electrical School in Washington, D.C. to learn to be an electrical engineer and by 1931 was employed by Western Electric in New Jersey. It didn’t take long for Curt to miss the fishing and the boats that were so much a part of his life. In 1934 his father offered him a job managing and running his two charter boats that summer so he could take a job running Irving Bonbright’s 42-foot sportfishing yacht at Fisher’s Island, N.Y. “The charter business at Fortescue had been declining and dad felt the opportunity with Mr. Bonbright was too good to pass up. Even though business was tough, I was glad to leave Western Electric and take the business over for him that summer.” That summer Curt also began a correspondence course from the Westlawn School of Yacht Design. By this time he had built a half dozen or so boats on his own and working with other builders. The course was so rudimentary, he said, he gave it up and turned to something more inspirational to further his education about boat design. Namely a book about design and theory by a renowned naval architect named Skeene. Skeene’s work was cutting edge, said Whiticar, full of ideas that challenged and inspired him to begin work on a 33-foot boat of his own design that he called Sheerwarter, a boat that possessed the sea keeping abilities that would define every Whiticar boat to come. Sheerwater had a Vee bottom rather than the more common rounded hulls of the day with 12-feet of beam and loa of 33-feet. The framework was of 5/4 white oak with black mangrove for the knees and stern, said Whiticar. “Black mangrove is an upland species with curved branches and each of the annual ring fibers spiral in the opposite direction, forming something similar to our modern manufactured plywood. It’s dense, hard and heavy,” he said. The trunk cabin and super structure were made of white cedar planks. With a contemporary sleek design and 165-HP Lycombing Marine Engine, she cruised as a blistering 18 knots, extremely fast for 1937. Sheerwater soon became part of the charter fleet along with Bonbright’s boat Kingfisher, which his father ran, Baby Orca and Gannet, which his younger brothers were now fishing full time. Because of the excellent sailfishing that Whiticar and charter captains like Toley Engebretsen were enjoying, Stuart had become a popular fishing destination with a burgeoning charter fleet by the mid 30s. The Stuart Jaycees – a forerunner of the Stuart Chamber of Commerce – was so successful promoting Stuart as the Sailfish Capitol of the World with advertisements for its winter and summer fishing tournaments and bronze, silver and gold lapel pins and certificates for anyone catching various sized sailfish, scores of fish were landing at the dump. During the winter months of 1941 some 40-plus area charter boats participated in an unprecedented run of sailfish. Club records suggest more than 5,000 fish were landed during the 90 day period. On the peak day of the run, 200 were killed, an excess that sickened captains like Whiticar, who by this time had been releasing fish for some time. Although many were released during the run, thousands were brought in for pictures and either dumped in the river or carted off to the dump or the shark plant. The slaughter sobered even proponents of fish on the dock. So with the backing of newspaper editor Ernest Lyons, Whiticar convinced the Jaycees to start a sailfish release promotion. The gist of it was to offer a handsome 14K gold pin to anglers releasing their sailfish. As explained by this quote from Ernest Lyons, “Release buttons are worn by a League of Honor among sailfisherman, pledged to the sport – and not to the wasteful killing of the species,” sailfish release was more cache than killing off Stuart and Palm Beach. And in 1955 when the Stuart Sailfish Club Light Tackle Tournament was created, thanks to the Whiticars, it became the first major all release billfish tournament. Of the 49 sailfish caught and released by 10 boats that year the top award went to Capt. Jack Whiticar’s angler, Curt’s youngest brother. The Cooperative Gamefish Tagging Program was started in 1954 by Frank J. Mather III and Woods Hole Oceanographic Center in Mas - sachusetts but years before this scientists at the University of Miami’s Rosentiel School of Marine Science and pioneering organizations such as the Sailfish Conservation Club of West Palm Beach and the Sailfish and Tarpon Club of Mexico already had tagging programs in place with the goal of finding out more about the life history and habits of sailfish. A long time volunteer with the Miami laboratory’s research programs as well as a big supporter of tagging, on January 28, 1951 Capt. Curt Whiticar and his angler Ernest Lyons became the first ever to tag and release a sailfish that was recaught, which happened 45 days later off Palm Beach. By 1954, he’d had three recaptures. (continued on page 20) The Custom Shootout | 2
A renaissance man, Curt Whiticar could have chosen any one of a number of careers. “From the time I was a kid I was always willing to try new things, especially if it involved earning money. I guess you could say I was ambitious,” he explained. He was born into a fishing family and excelled at it - especially bottom fishing - but art was an early passion as well, one he started earning money at as 12-year-old painting custom signs for hotels and businesses and for captains wanting names on the transoms of their boats. As a boy, he taught himself to build rods, which he sold and was a finish carpenter as well as boat builder. A graduate electrician, he was just as handy building custom homes as boats, which he did for a handful others as well as himself and his family. That said there was something magical about designing and building good seaboats that Curt Whiticar could not get out of system. Math and science were two of his best subjects growing up. In designing and building boats, he was able to put all his skills to use. The first ten boats he built between 1921 and 1954 were designed as charter boats either for himself or his brothers Johnson and Jack, father Add and his brother John. With names like Gannet, Hobo, Gulfstream, Skipper and of course Shearwater – Curt’s own favorite – they became famous as record numbers of fish and world records were caught and tournaments were won. Although Curt himself was not much of a traveler Johnson and Jack became known on the South Florida tournament circuit in the 50s and 60s and in ports throughout the Bahamas. Capt. Add was still chartering at 85 years of age until a broken hip sidelined him in 1972. After that he and his menagerie of animals including the famous Whiticar manx cats with their short tails would hold court each afternoon on the Whiticar docks, waiting for Johnson and Jack to come in with their parties. He died in 1980; Johnson had predeceased him. Jack Whiticar died around 1995 after a long and distinguished career as a charter captain of the famous red boat Hobo that in 1979 helped pioneer sailfishing off Cancun and Isla Mujeres, Mexico. In 1946 Curt’s uncle John gave a parcel of land on Willoughby Creek to his father who suggested he build a boat shed on it. By this time Curt was spending most of the summer off season building boats. He already had installed a railway on his father’s adjacent property for hauling boats so they could be worked on. With the war over, surplus materials from military institutions such as Camp Murphy in nearby Hobe Sound were readily available for little or no money so with the help of a couple of workers including brother Johnson, Curt set about dismantling the 70 by 90 foot gambrel-roofed mess hall along with the officer’s latrines, all of which he was able to buy for about $500. By late 1947 Whiticar Boat Works more or less was up and running with Curt dividing his time between his two charter boats – Gulfstream and Norwester - building houses and keeping Whiticar’s seven boats afloat. Two years later a direct hit from a hurricane demolished the boat house. Scavaging what wood he could, he set about rebuilding it again between jobs and as finances allowed. By 1952 the yard was up and running and Curt found himself with two boats to build, a 38-footer for his brother Jack and a 28-foot twin engine skiff for a local man that was his first outside commission. Both designs were based on the sea-kindly hull and lines of the Shearwater but with extra rocker at the stem to make it an even better running boat in a following sea. Curt however soon realized that trying to build two boats at once while running a full time charter business was more than he could handle. It forced him to take stock of what he really wanted to do in life. “I saw I could not do both well at the same time so I eventually sold my charter boats to make Whiticar Boat Works my full time business,” he said. Good thing too because after its launch in 1954, Jack started campaigning the Hobo at Cat Cay and Chub Cay where people took notice of the flashy red boat that cruised at better than 20 knots. Well 3 | The Custom Shoutout known big fisherman Herman Grey saw it and wanted one just like it; Sea Spray was launched in 1955. The following year Curt stretched the hull to 40-feet for the Widgeon and soon after had orders for two more 40s and a 42. Between building and repairing boats, Curt and his brother in law John Dragseth, who joined the business to help run the repair side of things, were busy and stayed that way throughout their careers with customers such as Richard Garlington Sr., (the boat builder’s father), Jock Whitney, Capt. Nelson and Gloria Appelgate, Marshall Field, Charles “Poor Boy” Robinson, Eleanor Bartlett and others all seeking what they considered to be the finest custom seaboat of the day – a 46- to 55-foot Whiticar. Whiticar also credits Irving Bonbright’s passion for buying boats with his father up and down the East Coast for helping him learn about what made for good boats and bad boats. “My dad was a great teacher as were some of those boats that didn’t turn out so great. It taught me about the importance of getting the center the gravity right and keeping the boats light.” In 1986 Curt retired from boat building full time, turning the business over to his son John, who has followed in his footsteps as boat builder and to his nephew Jim Dragseth, John’s son, who manages Whiticar’s repair facilities in Stuart and at the company’s satellite facilities on the East Coast of Florida. Outside of a project Curt managed between golf dates in 1999 building a 16-foot copy of the boat he first built in 1921, he’s filled his days with his first passion. In the 37 years since he retired at 75 Curt Whiticar has completed more than 1,000 canvases not to mention at least that many golf matches, a number that grows weekly.
Page 1: At 102, Capt. Curt Whiticar ranks a

2013 Custom Shootout spotlights Whiticar Boat Works and the family ...

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