Saving each other

Cathleen’s all-wood interior gleamed like glass on Newport Harbor as workers hurried to put the final touches on the restoration aboard the 1959, 50-foot sailboat one recent afternoon.

Phil Rowe, 71, has been working long days on the vessel for the past month to ready Cathleen for its first trip — out to sea to scatter the ashes of his wife of 47 years.

He caresses a stanchion on the deck of Cathleen each time he passes by — that’s the place a young crew of sailors secured a rope to haul Phil out of the cold waters off San Diego in 1962.

Cathleen saved Phil from drowning when he and Mickey Rowe were newlyweds. Decades later, the couple would rescue a neglected Cathleen from sinking in a San Diego boat slip. Now the boat is saving Phil again, this time from his grief.

Phil met Mickey while the two were students at UC Santa Barbara.

She was a sorority girl. He was a “hasher,” or a cook at the sorority house.

Black-and-white photographs show a young Mickey with sporty bobbed hair and a wide, easy smile.

Before Phil asked Mickey to marry him, she left Santa Barbara to become a flight attendant for United Airlines.

“The day she left was the worst day of my life,” Phil said. “Little did I know the worst day would come 50 years later.”

The couple were working together to restore Cathleen when Mickey collapsed at a Corona del Mar postal supply store and died in April.

Boat saves man

Phil thought the ocean might swallow him up that day in February 1962, when he and Cathleen first met.

The waters off San Diego were choppy and cold, and Phil was getting tired after treading water for an hour.

He tried to keep his new Topsider shoes on for as long as he could while paddling in the frigid water. A gift from his new bride, the shoes had cost $8, and Phil and Mickey did not have much money. Phil had been piloting an old wooden, 8-meter boat in bad weather out of San Diego Bay. Both Phil and Mickey were avid sailors, and Phil spent his weekends as a crew member aboard local yachts. He had just come around the turning buoy when the mast of the old vessel broke. Phil dove over the side of the boat to avoid being hit by the large column of wood and soon lost sight of the vessel.

Although several other sailboats were racing in the area that day, no one stopped to pick up Phil. He waved his arms, but all of the sailboats had their spinnakers up, and the wind was carrying them too fast to stop.

“I think they all thought somebody else would pick me up,” he said.

He fought to keep his head above the 54-degree water, but was getting tired after almost an hour in the ocean.

Just as Phil was kicking off his Topsiders, he felt a presence behind him.

The crew of Cathleen, a 50-foot wooden, sloop-rigged sailboat, decided to forfeit their race that day and pick Phil out of the ocean.

A San Diego jeweler named Joe Jessop owned Cathleen at the time. Jessop was fond of taking out crews of area youth to teach them about sailing. One of the boys tossed Phil a line.

“I was sick all over that boat,” he said. “For a 25-year-old who thought he was invincible, it was as close to death as you would ever want to come.”

Man saves boat

Jessop died in 1996, and Cathleen exchanged hands several times over the next decade, but stayed in the same boat slip in San Diego Bay, its wooden hull slowly deteriorating.

Over the years, the old sailboat with its classic lines became something of a floating icon in San Diego Bay.

“We always knew we wanted to have that boat,” said Phil, who tried to buy the old vessel once before, but was told he would have to pay extra if he wanted to remove it from San Diego, where it was a landmark for area sailors.

By the time Phil and Mickey acquired Cathleen in 2008, her wooden hull was slowly splitting apart, and she was starting to sink.

The couple had hopes of fixing Cathleen up to spend their retirement years sailing up and down the California coastline.

They set a goal to have the boat finished for opening day in spring 2009 at Newport Harbor Yacht Club, where the couple had been members for the past 30 years. Opening day at the club symbolizes the official beginning of the boating season, and is marked with parties, races and trophy presentations.

The project, which started with plans for just a few repairs, quickly turned into a full-scale restoration.

“The joke became, ‘Boat saves man, man saves boat, boat kills man,’” said Tresa Holloway, one of Phil and Mickey’s two adult daughters.

The couple spent six or seven months working a few hours a night on the boat, cleaning up the vessel for the small crew of cabinetry and wood workers and electricians working on Cathleen, to cut down on restoration costs.

Mickey picked out swatches of beige and white fabric for Cathleen’s interior and began working on turning a small storage area into a cozy play nook for her grandchildren.

“She loved boats and sailing,” Phil said. The couple remodeled several boats together during their nearly 50-year marriage.

Everyone at Newport Harbor Yacht Club knew about Phil and Mickey and the story of Cathleen.

“People who knew Phil and Mickey knew it was a labor of love, and the time they spent together this past year working on the boat was time they enjoyed being with each other,” said Tom Gilbertson, the yacht club’s general manager.

Boat saves man again

Mickey had just bought a single stamp to mail in a small, cash donation to the American Cancer Society when she collapsed at a postal store in Corona Del Mar on April 16.

“That was so like her — buying one stamp to mail in her little donation to the cancer society,” Holloway said.

Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian physicians later said 71-year-old Mickey’s heart exploded.

She died at Hoag after some 20 hours on life support. Her aorta, the largest artery in the body, had ruptured with no warning.

“When doctors saw what had happened, they knew there was no way she was going to make it,” Holloway said.

A few days later, the envelope Mickey was trying to mail came back to the couple’s Newport Beach home because it was mailed with insufficient postage.

The stamp she purchased that day had a picture of a heart on it.

Although Mickey’s death came just weeks before opening day at Newport Harbor Yacht Club, Phil knew he had to finish Cathleen.

“For Mickey,” he said.

Working on the boat sometimes up to 18 hours a day, Phil, his family and a crew of workers managed to get Cathleen almost finished in time for opening day at the club a few weeks ago.

Some electrical wiring and a few other finishing details still needed to be put on the old yacht, but Cathleen was in presentable shape to compete for a trophy on opening day.

“It was good therapy for me to work on the boat, it’s a way for me to work through my grief,” Phil said.

Helping put the final touches on the furnishings aboard Cathleen, Holloway came across her mother’s sketches for what she hoped the interior of the boat would look like — simple and elegant in neutral tones with a few nautical-themed knickknacks strategically placed.

“It looked just like the sketches, just how she envisioned it would be,” Holloway said.

Phil thought Cathleen might win a trophy for best vintage yacht, but instead took home best-in-show honors.

“I think there was an emotional connection as the announcement was made that Cathleen was the winner,” Gilbertson said.

“The applause was loud and genuine.”

Accepting the grand-prize trophy, Phil said two words.

“Mickey Rowe.”

About Cathleen

 Cathleen is a Calkins 50 vintage wooden sailboat, built in 1959 in San Diego.

 Phil Rowe believes there are as many as 22 Calkins 50s in existence and wants to start a club for other owners. E-mail phil.rsm@gmail.com for more information.