MAYAN’s History — Her Early Years
The John G. Alden yacht design firm of Boston Mass. drew the lines for design number 356-B just after the close of World War II in 1946, delivering them to Paul Allen and his father (of New York City) in early 1947. This was the second design number 356, the first having been built in 1928. Paul Allen, a US Navy veteran, had saved his war time pay and by pooling it with funds from his father headed to Belize, then British Honduras, to build MAYAN utilizing the amazing woods of that tropical country. In Belize, Mr. Allen found the Tewes’ Dockyard and they started construction.
Tewes was a well known yard in Belize, run by the Scottish Tewes family building fishing boats, power yachts and the occasional sailing boat. Years later Robert Tewes would recount to us how proud his grandfather was to have built a design by the great John G. Alden. While the Alden Register shows Paul Allen as the “builder”, it’s clear that Mr. Allen utilized the extensive skills of the Tewes’ Dockyard.
MAYAN was given her name by the Allen family in honor of those who built her and the country in which she was built, a name she carries to this day. Upon launching MAYAN was immediately sailed across the Gulf of Mexico and up the coast of the US to Philadelphia. Howard MacIver, the grand nephew of Paul Allen, joined MAYAN’s crew in Philadelphia and sailed aboard her to New York City.
Howard was good enough to talk with us about his passage to New York as a thirteen year old young man, it was the trip of a lifetime. Now in his eighties, he recalls the entrance to New York Harbor perfectly. In New York MAYAN was put up for sale, returning a handsom profit to the Allen family when she quickly sold. Just after the second world war there were few yachts available, and even fewer with a design by Alden and built with the beautiful woods of Central America.
Alden had designed a classic centerboard schooner for the Allen family, with a galley forward along with crew quarters for a skipper, cook, and two deckhands. She carried a very large ice box to supply up to eight guests who were berthed aft in two private staterooms and the main saloon. Her head included a bath tub with a shower above. The peak of luxury in yachts of that era.
MAYAN’s rig was the same transitional schooner rig Alden had designed for the first no. 365 in 1928 with a leg-o-mutton mainsail, gaff headed foresail, fore staysail and jib. (See first picture in this post) Her shallow draft of five feet with the centerboard raised and her relatively short rig of 65 feet at the mainmast truck, made her perfect for the Inter Coastal Waterway and the shallow islands of the Bahamas, Turks & Caicos, and the Florida Keys. The only compromise forced upon the builders of MAYAN was the use of iron for her ballast keel, as lead was in extremely short supply following world war two.
When Alden re-drew the 356 design, to provide the Allen family with the 356-B, he added a deck house in the vein of General George Patton’s schooner WHEN & IF. Fortunately, the decision was made to build MAYAN with the original 1928 low trunk cabin and eschew the deck house which we find to be an awkward design feature despite its obvious comfort in poor weather.
At this point, the history of MAYAN becomes more obscure. We are continuing to follow up with Lloyds, the USCG Documentation Office and the records of the Alden company to try and determine who owned her and where. She passed through many hands, served in the charter trade, and by 1969 was in need of some help. In her day it was normal for MAYAN to be fastened with iron nails, boats were considered replaceable. After more than twenty years of service, she was starting to suffer from the iron’s desire to join with oxygen and form rust.
We do know that by the winter of 1969 she was in Florida, she was for sale, and a young rock star fell in love with her…. but that’s the next chapter of her story, and fuel for another post.
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