Wayne’s World of Wooden Boats ―Ettel’s Last Stand for Wooden Boats in the Port of Los Angeles

By Evelyn McDonnell, Columnist

Talk about a hunt for buried treasure: To find shining legacies of Los Angeles’ golden maritime past, drive to the south end of Avalon Boulevard in Wilmington, take a left and then a right at Port Police headquarters, and continue beyond the pavement’s end. Go slow down a bumpy, dusty gravel road lined by storage tanks, a cement plant, and rusting vehicles, to the murky waters of the Port of Los Angeles’s East Basin. Get out of your car, cross the swaying bridge to the dock, past boats in various stages of decline and repair, and ask Wayne Ettel to part the curtains shrouding a sleeping beauty.

There, in the midst of industrial blight and rubble, floats a goddess herself: Athena, a 47-foot twin-engine cruiser built in 1929 by the Stephens Brothers and lovingly restored and maintained by Ettel and his crew. Her gleaming flanks speak of a time when enjoying the Pacific Ocean on finely crafted personal vessels was as integral to the Southern California lifestyle as film stars, surfing, cars, and aerospace.  

“The movie industry was part of the boat-building industry,” says Ettel, whose clients at Boatswayne Ettel have included John Wayne and David Crosby. “The movie stars didn’t buy an airplane, they bought a boat, because that was their escape.”

But soon, even treasure hunters may not be able to find Athena, or Ettel, or the Maritime Preservation Trust he founded to maintain such historic boats, in Wilmington. The Port of Los Angeles is evicting the nonprofit educational program, its wooden ships, and its founder and master craftsman. The planned replacement? A concrete slag processing plant.              

Ettel and the generations of sea lubbers dependent on his knowledge and skills see the revocation of his permit as the end of an era and a contradiction of the port’s obligation to the future.

“I just feel like they don’t have their priorities straight, says Sean Murphy, as he takes a break from working on the deck of his Kettenburg 50, made out of rare Honduran mahogany. “They could crush concrete any place.”

“It’s just getting so they’re boxing us in and we don’t have access to the ocean anymore,” says Ettel. “People used to come down here and buy a used boat for pretty cheap and be able to fix it up and go sailing. And you can’t do that anymore.

“We’re land creatures. We don’t have flippers, we don’t have breathing holes in the back of our head. But we have hands to access the ocean. That’s what a port’s for: where we can build the boats and harbor the boats and access the blue part of our planet.”

“A CALIFORNIA KID”
Born in San Diego, one of four sons of a welder who worked for the Navy, Wayne Ettel has been around the sea his whole life. “I was just enamored by the water,” the soft-spoken sailor says as we sit in Athena while boats pass in the Dominguez Channel. “I was just one of these kids you couldn’t get out of the bathtub. I love to sail, I love to go scuba diving. I just love the ocean; I love to be on it, in it, around it.”

The Ettels moved to Westminster, where Wayne became a junior lifeguard and certified scuba diver by the time he was 16. Sea Scouts led him to his first job crewing, on the tall ship the Argus. From there followed years of apprenticeships building and sailing. He learned much of his craft in Newport Beach, a community where vintage vessels are appreciated: Athena’s polished wooden decks and cabin recently earned her a Best in Show at the Newport International Boat Show. Romance led Wayne briefly to the East Coast, but “about October it’s getting pretty cold there and they start talking about being snowbound. I’m a California kid, and I’m not sure I’m up for staying inside for days at a time. So I came back to California, hired into a boatyard.”

Ettel has a laidback demeanor, a lowkey chuckle in his throat even though you know he’s grappling with a broken heart. That gentle vocal throb combined with stunning footage of white sails zooming over aquamarine waters should make the videos he posts on the MPT’s YouTube channel ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) viral sensations. Tune in, calm down, and sail away.

But about halfway through the “MPT Internship Program,” Ettel’s narrative about the crafting skills that the trust is passing on to future generations goes awry – like a needle scratching across the surface of a new age record. The program’s 2023 request for a grant from the port was not only denied but Ettel was put on notice that MPT and Boatswayne, his private company, must leave berth 193.

In 2023 the port released a draft report on the environmental impact of allowing Ecocem Materials to ship slag across the ocean to 100 Yacht Street (ironic address), where it will be turned into concrete and then shipped out on trucks. It’s hard to see how this heavy industry, high-traffic plant aligns with POLA’s website claim to be “setting the standard for responsible, sustainable growth.”

“What we have been doing here at the Maritime Preservation Trust, and what we would like to continue doing, is at the very heart of sustainability,” Ettel says in the video, with more disappointment than anger. “When you can teach people how to take well-built things, repair, rebuild, maintain, and keep using them, instead of throwing them away, you’re nurturing a better lifestyle and future for all of us.” (Full disclosure: My son briefly volunteered at MPT five years ago.)

Port spokesperson Phillip Sanfield issued this statement in response to Random Lengths’ request for information about Ettel’s eviction: “Mr. Ettel has a revocable permit with the Port of Los Angeles. Revocable permits are temporary entitlements which can be terminated by either party with a 30-day notice. The Port has been in discussions with Mr. Ettel since October 2023 about vacating the property. On March 29, 2024, the Port issued a Thirty-Day Notice to Terminate. Mr. Ettel has not vacated the property and was delivered an unlawful detainer summons on May 29, 2024. As this is pending litigation, the Port has no further comment.”

Paul Cole has been working on his 1963 cutter Aquila at berth 193 for two years. “There’s two things,” he says. “One is the MPT: Can you save some of these and actually make them accessible to people, kids, whatever? And the other is, these are beautiful, old artifacts of a period of time.”

“THE GUY THAT CAN FIX ANYTHING”
Ettel began his boat repair business in 1986. “I started working on boats because I was the guy that can fix anything, and as this evolved along, I ended up starting a business. And it was great because I would help people fix their boats, and then they would invite me sailing. What could be better than that?”

For all his bon vivant demeanor, Ettel is a serious craftsman. “He’s very meticulous,” says Kaelyn Ibold, who went from volunteering at MPT as a University of Southern California student to running the volunteer program. “There’s absolutely a right way to do everything, and so he’ll sit there and watch over your shoulder and tell you it has to be perfect every time. There’s never the last coat of varnish, you have to do it over and over and over again.”

That attention to detail takes time. Ettel says he usually has an 18-month waiting list for his services. Often the boat owners, the MPT apprentices, and other aficionados help him get the job done. Long before coworking spaces were a thing, berth 193 was a kind of We Work for wooden boats. 

“I figured that I wasn’t going to work for money, I was going to work for friends,” Ettel says. “Because you get into these projects, and sometimes you have to make a concession. I wanted to see my friends go sailing, I didn’t want them to go broke. Together we would do the projects.”

His father, Rolland, worked alongside Wayne after he retired from his Navy civil service job and before he passed. A picture of him hangs in Ettel’s tugboat, still overseeing the wood shop. “He spent every day at my shop,” Ettel says, his calm tone breaking. “The knowledge he had!”

Ettel first set up at berth 58, where AltaSea now is. There is no small irony in the fact port leaders tout AltaSea’s sustainable blue economy in one breath then in the next declare a business that has sustained boats for four decades an “unlawful detainer.” The port moved Ettel to his current location in 2000.

“There were 14 boat and shipyards in the port of Los Angeles,” Ettel says of those early days. “They hired tens of thousands of people. There were hardware stores everywhere. I had accounts at four different lumber yards. This was a working town. And I fit right in. I was part of the team that kept our watercraft seaworthy.”

Many of the boats Ettel has worked on are historic, built by some of California’s greatest shipwrights, and sailed by its stars. The Olinka, a 67-foot Swedish yawl built in 1953, was owned by Tony Bill, producer of The Sting and Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. The Resolute was built in Wilmington in 1936 and owned by actor Spencer Tracy before landing in the hands of San Pedro’s family the Fabians 82 years ago. I’ve had the good fortune to spend many nights anchored off of Catalina in this two-masted ketch, reading a book in the bunk once favored by Katherine Hepburn, with her classic line describing a handcrafted wooden yacht in The Philadelphia Story in my head: “My, she was yar.”

Ettel restored the Mayan, owned by music legend Crosby. He has fond memories of the first day they sailed the famous schooner after repairs. “We left here, and we put a feathering prop on the boat. The bottom was more fair than it had ever been. I got moving pictures of David. In that video, he has got the biggest smile on his face. We went from LA light[house] to Avalon in about two hours, the boat averaged 11 knots. That was really spectacular.”

“A PIECE OF FLOATING FURNITURE”
Without Ettel, boats such as these – as well as the tall ships owned by the Los Angeles Maritime Institute – will have to travel to San Diego or Mexico for the regular maintenance that these vessels require. Wooden boats are sensitive to water and sunlight and can become abandoned hazards. Ettel has experienced his own tragic losses: The Argus sank twice while anchored at his dock, while Athena’s sister, Conquest, exploded and burned in November. Wooden vessels are no longer accepted at most marinas in the port of LA. Athena, Volpe, and Laila have nowhere to go. 

Meanwhile, panicked boat owners keep calling Ettel. “People are like, can you finish this project, are you going to be able to help me? It’s just tears in my eyes. I can’t even answer the phone anymore. How do I tell all these people that my services aren’t available?”

In other parts of the world – Seattle, Mystic, Connecticut. – wooden ships are safeguarded as works of art and tourist attractions, even given free dockage. In the Port of Los Angeles, they are endangered species — disposable dinosaurs.

“There’s a dumpster here they put for recycling for plastic goods and cardboard and paper and tin,” says Murphy. “But they want to destroy all these wooden boats or give them no place to go. You’re not welcome at any of the marinas. And so they’re making it harder and harder and harder to own a wooden boat.

Ettel is one of the last boat builders still standing. He created the MPT to pass on the skills he learned from his father and masters such as Dennis Holland and Bob Sloan – “for the old salts to teach the young pups. The young people would come down here, and they started out washing down the boats and going sailing. And then we would learn what their talents and aptitudes were. We could send them to any facet of the marine industry that they wanted to go in because we do everything here. A boat builder can build a house, he can build furniture, he can build anything. But a furniture builder can’t work on a boat. There’s a level of excellence to achieve the curves and shapes and to do this quality work, because it’s a piece of floating furniture, but it has to hold up to the sea. And so it has to be built strong enough to do that.”        

The MPT changed Ibold’s life. She was a film major when a friend took her to Wilmington one weekend to sand and varnish. She sailed for the first time with a USC sailing class on a boat that Ettel had worked on. “I was immediately hooked,” she says. “It was a two-day trip and it just altered the path of my whole life because I was like, this is what I want to do. This is amazing.”             

Ibold, 27, now teaches sailing at USC and elsewhere.             

Ettel has an ambitious plan to integrate MPT, trash removal from the seriously polluted Dominguez Channel, and the establishment of an environmentally conscious boat removal facility. Some Ettel clients and boat owners are trying to find a new home for MPT. After all, what better attraction to connect LAMI, the hoped-for tourists of West Harbor, and the blue economy hub of AltaSea than these icons of icons?                

If these hopes fizzle, Ettel will pack up Athena and take her back to where she was built: Stockton, where there are plans to build a West Coast version of Mystic Seaport and where he and his wife have already bought a house.

But Ettel is a Southern Californian, and the demise of boatsmanship in the city of angels breaks his heart. “We’re losing our maritime heritage because it’s gotten so expensive and so difficult, that people just can’t afford it. They’re getting out of boating…. Fixing up old wooden sailboats and taking them sailing is sustainability. All of these boats, they’re not built with polyester resins. They’re built with wood and metal. They’re built with renewable and recyclable materials. Why can’t we keep doing that? Why do we have to lose all the know-how that it takes to do this?”

You can watch Ettel’s videos, including instructional films on how to restore wooden boats, at https://www.youtube.com/@maritimepreservationtrust8872. Learn more about MPT at https://www.maritimept.org/.

 Evelyn McDonnell is the author or editor of eight books, an internationally recognized award-winning journalist, and a professor at Loyola Marymount University. She writes the series Bodies of Water – portraits of lives aquatic – for Random Lengths.

Copyright Evelyn McDonnell 2024