National Park Service

How an Old Boat Told a Forgotten Story of a Family and Craftsman

A team of rangers and volunteers began to slave over the Eva B, re-crafting her missing decorative railing, her rotten deck and cabin sides, rolling back time nearly 80 years.

"Just a local gem of a story," said National Park Service ranger John Muir, "very much a 1930’s Bay Area story."

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Some of the boat’s missing parts turned-up - the "eyebrow" visor above her canopy, the electric horn. As the workers filled in the cracks and holes, the Eva B’s story began to spill out. It turned out  the boat was built by renown Bay Area boat builder Menotti Pasquinucci, whose Sausalito Boat Company turned out many of the bay’s wooden workboats for fishing and maritime tasks.

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Joe Rosato Jr. / NBC Bay Area
Menotti Pasquinucci was considered one of the grand masters of Bay Area boat building. He built the Eva B at his Sausalito boat company in 1936.

"This boat was built in Sausalito by sort of one of the earliest old, grand boat builders of the Bay Area," said Muir above the din of the workshop. "There’s not too many of his boats left."

Pasquinucci started building boats in the 1800s. He was in his seventies in the 1930s when he built the Eva B. While Muir’s volunteer team of retired shop teachers and carpenters were able to recreate much of Pasquinucci’s original details, they were unable to recreate the boat’s story.

"We didn’t know much about it," said Muir.

But one day an elderly man wandered into the boat shop after recognizing the Eva B and turned out to be the link needed to bridge the boat’s history. It had been commissioned by his father "Batch" Batchelder in 1936 for his wife and four children. Batchelder chose Pasquinucci over a yacht builder because he liked old style wooden boats. He named the boat after his wife Eva.

Along with anecdotes of family fishing trips up the Delta, the son also provided photos of the boat which helped restorers accurately reproduce the missing pieces.

"Those photographs really went a long way to inspiring us to restore it," said Muir, "because suddenly we had all the details."

Batchelder’s son said the family finally outgrew the boat and sold her. She bounced around to several owners before landing in the Hyde Street Pier boat shop. The restoration has taken five years.

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Joe Rosato Jr. / NBC Bay Area
The Eva B was commissioned in 1936 by "Batch" Batchelder, a Bay Area engineer and his family.

"This boat isn’t just a boat," said volunteer Rod Baker. "It’s this whole family - boat builder - family that’s still here."

The restoration work is expected to wrap up soon with the boat scheduled to be re-christened on April 11 and put back in the bay. She’ll be used for events like baseball opening day and yacht races. But more than that, she’ll serve as a floating link to a golden age of boat building, before fiberglass, when wood was shaped and twisted by hand.

"By getting these boats and keeping them out on the water," said Muir, "you keep the connection to the bay alive and well."

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