Bottle Yacht Program Helps Keep Golden Gate Park's 128-Year-Old Club Afloat
A Fiji water bottle idea hatched during the pandemic has helped the 128-year-old Model Yacht Club in Golden Gate Park produce 56 boats and draw 46 families to Spreckles Lake.
On a recent Sunday inside the Golden Gate Park clubhouse, the next generation of mariners and their DIY yachts were in full production mode. The setting was the 128-year-old Model Yacht Club, home to a collection of handmade wooden vessels that can cost thousands of dollars and years of labor to complete. The boats being built that afternoon cost about $40 and started life as Fiji water bottles.
The bottle yacht program grew out of a pandemic-era school request. When a school asked the Model Yacht Club if it could develop an activity for students, the club began brainstorming. An early idea, building personal watercraft from cardboard boxes, was ruled out. That's when Bruce Ettinger, a longtime club member, looked closer to home for a solution.
"My dad looked around the house," his daughter Kate Ettinger recalled, "and said 'oh actually I have this unlimited supply of Fiji water bottles."
What began five years ago with four families has since grown into a program the club now calls its own version of reinvention. Since the launch, 46 families have crafted 56 boats. Materials for a beginner build are provided free through the program, making the bottle yacht an accessible entry point into a hobby that has traditionally demanded significant investment.
Most beginner boats are free sail, meaning they run entirely at the mercy of the wind on Spreckles Lake. More experienced builders have advanced further, adding remote control systems to their vessels. Jason Ford and his young son Tom have been regulars at the clubhouse builds, working their way up to RC sailing, a progression the program actively supports.
The contrast with the club's traditional craft is stark. The handmade wooden model boats that line the Golden Gate Park clubhouse can represent years of skilled work and thousands of dollars in materials. A bottle yacht, by comparison, gives families a tangible, seaworthy result in a single afternoon session.
The program has drawn families into a clubhouse that might otherwise remain unfamiliar to most San Franciscans, giving the century-old institution a foothold with a new generation of builders who may one day graduate to the intricate wooden vessels on display around them.
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