Paul Reck is a master at building detailed boat and ship models from scratch in his Mill Valley garage, which is packed with tools and ship plans.
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The size of a model deck cleat in comparison with a dime.
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Detail of a Lewis gun on a British patrol boat.
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Paul Reck demonstrates his skills in building a model ship.
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Detail of the winch and deck on a model ship built by Paul Reck.
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Paul Reck spent much of his long life thinking small. Reck is a man of many parts, some tiny, like his models of deck cleats and winches on yachts. But he’s also been a contractor, a sailor, a shipwright, a historian and a veteran of the Korean War. He sailed in the crew of the famous yacht Santana, once owned by Humphrey Bogart, and when his friend Paul Kaplan bought the boat, Reck helped him restore and rerig the Santana from a ketch to a schooner.
One of Reck’s major projects on land was the restoration of the Golden Gate Theatre for Shorenstein Properties. It had been a movie theater, and Reck helped bring it back as a stage venue, the way it was in the 1920s.
Reck’s role in the larger world ended years ago when he retired from full-time work. He will be 97 in June and has no plans to quit his model life. He spends most of his time in what he calls his “Boatyard,” a garage on a quiet street in Mill Valley that Reck converted into a workshop full of tools, rolled-up plans of yachts and small boats. It’s a marvelous place, full of sunlight, wood shavings, sawdust and various model projects, some still in progress. It has the clutter of a real boatyard, only in miniature. Reck usually works on a scale of a half-inch to a foot.
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The completed models, beautifully detailed and sparkling as if brand new, are to be found elsewhere — on display in yacht clubs or in private collections. Reck has built at least a hundred model vessels, but only a few are on public display. It is as if this entire model fleet exists in its own private world, just out of public sight.
Paul Reck’s model of the schooner C.A. Thayer is displayed at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in San Francisco.
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Some of Reck’s models are on display at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park visitor center on Jefferson Street at Fisherman’s Wharf.
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Reck’s model of the sailing schooner C.A. Thayer is a showpiece of the visitor center.
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Until recently, the real schooner was tied up at the Hyde Street Pier just across the street, but a few months ago the real C.A. Thayer and other historic ships were moved to Mare Island while the Hyde Street Pier is being rebuilt.
A comparison of the two — the real ship and Reck’s scale model — shows how carefully Reck works. Everything has to be exact.
“I want to get it right,” he said. “Right down to the gnat’s eyebrow.” Is he a perfectionist? “When it comes to boats, I am,” he said.
Paul Reck built a model of the Arctic Patch, a Grand Banks yacht.
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Reck escorted a friend and me on a tour of his models at the St. Francis Yacht Club, where he pointed out the details on a model of a big sailing yacht. He pointed out the deck planking, each tiny plank individually cut and laid leading aft from the bow from a king plank.
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“That’s a piece of work,’’ he said, “done very carefully.”
He was also proud of a model Grand Banks yacht called Arctic Patch.
“Look,” he said, “look at the cockpit. I have all the controls there, the dials that show the fuel level and oil, the shift levers, all that.’’ He even had detail inside the boat’s cabin. “I took my time on this,” he said.
Paul Reck, who turns 97 in June, shows his model of a British patrol boat.
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Back in Mill Valley, he picked up a model he’d just finished. It was a World War II British Royal Navy patrol boat built for service on the English Channel and the Mediterranean. The British built 200 of these boats, which were very fast — maybe 45 mph — and heavily armed with small cannon and Lewis guns, which were light machine guns.
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Reck read about these boats in books but had never seen one. Fascinated, he wrote to Royal Navy historical societies and asked for complete scale plans. “They were very helpful,’” he said.
Reck held his model up. It was about 18 inches long, an exact piece of a past he’d never seen in person. “These were the model for our own wartime PT boats,” he said. “Very fast. Quite a boat.”
Reck said he doesn’t have a favorite among the hundreds of model vessels he’s built. But he is very proud of the gunboat Philadelphia, which fought in the Revolutionary War on Lake Champlain 250 years ago. The Philadelphia was a 54-foot vessel that carried three guns and was pitted against a British fleet at the Battle of Valcour Island in the fall of 1776.
Paul Reck has the gnarled hands of a shipwright.
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The boat lasted only one day in combat when a single British cannonball sent it to the bottom. The wreck lay at the bottom of the lake for more than 100 years, largely intact.
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It was raised and put on display, a famous local attraction.
That was the kind of sea story that intrigued a man from New England like Reck. “I love history,” he said. “I’m a history nut.’’
Reck obtained the detailed plans of the boat and built a model at his former shop at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. He used the same material as the original vessel — white pine and white oak — and set up the rigging on the Philadelphia’s single mast. He made the boat’s cannon with his small lathe. There is even a small brick open enclosure where the crew cooked meals.
Paul Reck has built at least 100 model vessels, but only a few are on public display.
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Reck presented the model to the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, which was delighted to get it. “A gorgeous model,” the curator there called it.
Reck still keeps photographs of his model vessels at his home, the way one keeps pictures of a love that has moved away.
Reck has been building model boats for a lifetime, and he has his first model to prove it — a small sailboat diorama built inside a kitchen matchbox. “I built it for my father back in Connecticut 87 years ago,” he said.
“I can’t remember when I wasn’t building something.” He has the gnarled hands of a shipwright and the determination of a master craftsman. “I’ll keep doing this until I run out of gas.”