A quiet place to moor

John Blaich, Special to the Pilot

The motor yacht P.T. Joe was homeported at Balboa from 1946 to 1955.

Boat number PT 695 (P.T. Joe) was built by the Annapolis Yacht Yard Inc.

of Annapolis, Md., in 1945. Plans and specifications prepared in England

by the Vosper Co. were used.

She was 72 feet long, with a 19-foot, 2-inch beam and a draft of 5

feet. PT 695 was powered with three Packard gasoline engines of about

1200-horsepower each.

These engines could drive the boat in excess of 40 knots. PT 695

carried 3,000 gallons of aviation high-octane gasoline. Her armament

consisted of four torpedo tubes, two twin 50-caliber machine guns, a

20-milimeter gun, depth charges and a smoke screen generator. Eight men

and two officers manned her.

The boat was built for the Russian Navy under a lend/lease agreement.

She arrived, as deck cargo, at Los Angeles Harbor at the time of the

Japanese surrender at the end of World War II. PT 695 was offloaded and

her armament removed.

Judge Joseph Marchetti acquired the brand new boat through war

surplus. She was painted white and became the yacht named P.T. Joe.

Marchetti moored his yacht, for and aft, off the Christian’s Hut

Restaurant on the Balboa Peninsula, between Fernando and Cypress streets.

P.T. Joe became quite an attraction in the harbor. Her six large

engine exhaust pipes protruding from the transom gave the impression of

power and speed. It is rumored that the fuel cost to run Catalina and

back was about $1,000 -- we seldom observed P.T. Joe underway.

A white canvas awning was added over the bridge deck area. However,

the entire original PT 695 configuration was maintained.

About 1955, P.T. Joe left Newport Harbor for Long Beach Harbor. In

1979, the P.T. Boats Inc. Assn. acquired her. She cruised to San Diego on

her own bottom, with a group of enthusiastic World War II ex-PT boat

officers on board. They hoped to get the Navy to transport PT 695 to the

PT boat museum at Battle Ship Cove in Fall River, Mass.

The plans never materialized. P.T. Joe was sold to a man that may have

had plans to use her in a smuggling operation. However, he was put in

jail.

P.T. Joe, now unattended, languished at anchor in lower San Diego Bay.

She sank, then was raised and used as a fishing boat.

In August 1991, P.T. Joe was donated by the San Pedro Boat Works to

the Sea Scouts of Rio Vista, Calif. These enthusiastic, hard-working

young men have restored P.T. Joe to her original PT 695 condition

(without the armament). Painted Navy gray and designated PT 695, she

operates out of the Rio Vista Sea Scout Base on Sea Scout training

missions on San Francisco Bay.

* EDITOR’S NOTE: John Blaich is a Corona del Mar resident and

volunteer at the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum. About once a month, he

writes histories of interesting boats that graced Newport Harbor.