If you happen to stop in and take a look around the Bay Model in Sausalito, chances are you might bump into docent Lon Woodrum and hear a few of his seafaring stories. Since he started sailing and racing El Toros at a young age in Hawaii, the 77-year-old Richardson Bay Marina resident has spent his life surrounded by boats, whether living on them for more than 50 years with his wife, Susie, making a career of working on them and traveling around the world on them.
Since retiring from his business, Woodrum Marine, where he worked on yachts for about 40 years, a few years ago, the Tiburon Yacht Club member has continued to connect with and share his love of boats and maritime life with others through his work as a docent first at the Matthew Turner tall ship and now twice-a-week at the Bay Model.
Q When did your love of boats begin?
A We moved to Hawaii and lived on the boat my stepfather built, and that’s when I learned how to sail. I was 12 years old in a little 8-foot dinghy called an El Toro. After two years of that, my stepfather said, “We are going to Tahiti,” so we spent two years sailing all through Tahiti and beyond to finally get to Auckland, New Zealand. We would stop at an island for like a month and meet the people.
Q How’d you get into working on boats?
A After New Zealand, I went to Los Angeles and finished high school. My mom had bought a 24-foot sailboat and I lived on it in Wilmington, and I started working on boats. I had worked on my stepfather’s boat with him, sanding for him, so he could varnish things or paint things, and kept the boat clean and all that. And three of us as kids in Hawaii started a business of scrubbing boats when they got in from sailing. When I got out of high school, I was doing the same thing and met a family. They knew I loved boats. The man was a yacht salesman in Marina del Rey, and he said, “One of the boat yards needs someone to help with cleaning the yard up, can you do it?” So I started working there, and been working on boats all my life ever since. I worked in boat yards here in Sausalito — they heard I was a good carpenter — and I decided I was going to start my own business and that’s when I bought my truck and built a carpenter shop in it, so I could go to the marinas where the boats were and do interior work.
Q Which of your sailing trips stand out?
A Susie and I when we were first married, we bought a 30-foot Atkins Cutter and sailed it all around Southern California, and when our son was born, I made a boat for him. We sailed to Hawaii with him when he was 6 years old and we spent a year in Hawaii, and I worked on charter boats that came over there.
Q How’d you get into docenting?
A I had to quit working because my back wouldn’t take it anymore and we knew about the Matthew Turner and I went to Alan Olson and said, “You need a docent to give tours of your boat.” I did that for three years and in that time I think I gave tours to 1,000 kids, and verbally, I could help the carpenters. And someone with the Bay Model saw what I was doing it and liked it, and I have been now volunteering at the Bay Model, giving tours and showing the namesake.
Q What do you love about sailing?
A I was immediately in love and I haven’t left it. You love the sportsmanship of it. You love what’s happening around you, and you see things differently than you would from the freeway. It’s just amazing.
