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I have just become the latest owner of the 54' motorsailor "Glory B".

Construction of the "Glory B" began in 1962 in the warehouse of the Nelson furniture company in San Jose, CA, as a project of the owner, Robert Nelson. He purchased a surplus US Navy 90 man motor launch, made of Honduran mahogany over grown oak frames, and dissasembled it for the material. He bought additional oak and mahogany so as to be able to build the 54' boat he wanted. The keelson of the original boat is a single full length baulk of oak heartwood, over 40' long. Such a timber was almost impossible to find even in the 60's, and would be simply unobtainable today.

For a design, he started with the then well known 50' motorsailor sloops designed by Wendell "Skip" Calkins of San Diego. Skips first boat to this plan, the flush decked "Legend", had won the 1957 Transpac a few years earlier, and he had then modified the plan to add a large saloon to produce a luxurious yet fast cruising yacht. The modified boat was featured in the March 1963 edition of "Sports Illustrated"...March '63 Sports Illustrated

Robert Nelson went to Skip with sketches of the 50' sloop extended to 54', with its pointed stern changed to a transom. The extra four feet, plus the added room of the transom stern, allowed for the addition of an aft stateroom in "Glory B". Calkins drew the conversion drawings as Nelson was starting the construction. Drawings are dated from 1962 right up to the end of 1965. The massive full length oak keel of the original motor launch was retained, with a 3 foot deep steel box fin keel below that, the bottom half of which is lead filled.

Nelson did not launch the Glory B until 1996, 34 years after he started. The boat was never really finished. The mast, as the most important example, was never stepped, and has been lost over the years. Regretably, Robert Nelson died just a few years after launching the boat, and she has been owned since then by a liveaboard, sitting at one dock in Berkeley Marina. Her 120HP Ford Diesel, bought and installed brand new in 1977, has only 206 hours on it!

I picked her up for a song, and intend to finish her the way she was meant to be, as a beautifull example of late 50's / early 60's wooden boat design.