In 1905, a young Frenchman named David Abecassis commissioned Frank Stone to design and build him a racing yacht. Abecassis was what the parlance of the day called a “remittance man” — a gentleman whose income derived from regular payments sent by his family in Europe. He was living in San Francisco with his wife, a New Englander, and their children. (See Chapter I about Stone.)

Stone drew the lines himself. The design was a gaff-rigged sloop of the San Francisco style then popular among Bay racers: 52 feet 6 inches on deck, 36 feet at the waterline, with a beam of approximately 15 feet and a draft of 5 feet 10 inches — augmented by a centerboard that could drop another four feet for windward work. The mast was stepped where Yankee’s foremast now stands, and the main boom extended a full eight feet beyond the transom. There were no winches; all sheets and halyards were handled by hand, a feature that has endured to the present day. The hull was planked in Douglas fir over white oak frames. (See Chapter XI — Sailing Yankee for specs.)

Construction proceeded through the winter of 1905–06 at the Harbor View yard, a hundred yards from what would become the San Francisco Marina. By mid-April 1906, the hull was nearing completion on its building cradle.

At 5:12 on the morning of April 18, 1906, the San Andreas Fault ruptured along nearly 300 miles of the California coast. The earthquake — estimated at magnitude 7.9 — devastated San Francisco. Fires raged for three days, destroying some 25,000 buildings and leaving half the city’s population homeless.

At the Stone Boat Yard, the shaking threw Yankee off her cradle and down to the shore below. By all accounts she suffered no significant structural damage — a testament to the soundness of Stone’s construction. In the chaotic weeks that followed, the yard workers hauled her back up, completed the remaining work, and launched her properly. Yankee was ready for the 1906 racing season.

Years later, during a refit in the 1960s, it was discovered that the counter planking at the stern had never been fastened — a detail almost certainly overlooked in the rush to finish the boat after the earthquake’s disruption.