A Salty Genius Who Makes Peppery Waves

Robert E. Derecktor, carpenter, yacht builder, naval architect and ocean racer, stands at parade rest on the defense side of a heavy oak table on the second floor of the municipal building in the village of Mamaroneck, N.Y. He has on moccasins, white cotton socks, black work pants held up by rope suspenders, and a clean white shirt, which is to say he is dressed up. Standing with him is Clinton Loyd, a longtime friend. Loyd, a white-haired man in his 70s, is an architect and engineer. He has designed, among other things, New York's West Side Highway and Belt Parkway and the Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River. Derecktor built his first aluminum boat, the 42-foot yawl Sun Dance, for Loyd. Trading on their friendship, Derecktor has asked him to redesign and beautify the front of his Mamaroneck boatyard.

It is 10 p.m. Derecktor and Loyd have been waiting an hour in the small, stuffy hearing room used by Mamaroneck's architectural review board. They had sat patiently while the board pondered a variety of signs proposed by town merchants who came before it, one by one, for lectures on esthetics.

When Derecktor and Loyd approached the table, the chairman smiled expansively, a schoolmaster greeting a discipline problem. "Well," he said, verbally rubbing his palms together, "that was a nice story about you in the Times last week after you won the Annapolis-Newport race."

"Yeah?" Derecktor said. Derecktor often replies with a question.

"Yes, very nice, especially if the reader didn't know you. But knowing you, I could see the subtle digs the writer was getting in."

"Oh yeah?" Derecktor said. He was still smiling, and he began chuckling in a mild way, but sitting behind him one could see his ears move slowly up and down. When Clint Eastwood is about to waste somebody, the close-up shows his jaw muscles twitching. With Derecktor it's the ears. Up and down they go as the gray matter overheats.

The man from the architectural review board was falling into the trap: the fastest gun syndrome. When a top gun shows up on local turf, there is always a guy who has to call him, especially if the guy thinks he has an edge.

At one time Derecktor might have picked up the table and thrown it out the window. After contemplating tossing the chairman after it, he would have walked out. But Derecktor has mellowed, so everyone says. His image is changing. However he still has his crane.

The details are hazy, but this much is known: a few years ago Derecktor got a good deal on a 130-ton crane that he thought would provide the quickest and safest means of hauling and launching boats. So he made the proper applications. The paper work proceeded, but there were the usual bureaucratic hang-ups, and with four new aluminum boats to launch in the spring of 1974—including the Britton Chance-designed America's Cup contender Mariner, the new maxiboat Ondine (also by Chance) and a 125-foot party fishing boat, the largest boat ever ordered from him—Derecktor installed the crane on verbal go-aheads and launched his boats on schedule.

Halfway through the installation, the town said no crane. By then its feet were already buried deep in foundations substantial enough to support a large building. Messages containing court orders, proposals, counterproposals and hearing dates began passing between city hall and the yard. One hearing was held two weeks before a launching of Mariner in July of 1974, an event critical enough to bring Skipper Ted Turner and some of the crew to city hall. Said Turner to the village fathers: "The defense of the America's Cup is on your shoulders—you must let Bob have his crane. Bob has been a bad boy, but if you give him his crane he will put trees out front, dress the place up and be a good boy."