STERNLINES

THE MUPPETS AND ME

In “Wild Things,” an article in our November/ December issue, seven yacht designers shared memorable owner requests, prompting me to revisit a few of my own. Mine was not a trip down memory lane, but rather Sesame Street, where I had a brief but interesting encounter with Jim Henson, visionary creator of the Muppets. Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog are beloved around the world, but have you ever heard the tale of Scooter and the walrus yacht captain?

It all started with Edgar Kaiser, Jr., grandson of Henry J. Kaiser, the American industrialist famed for building ships in assembly-line style during World War II. One of the elder Kaiser’s shipyards set a record by launching a ship just 72 hours after its keel was laid. His DNA was evident in his grandson, manifesting not only in the younger Kaiser’s business acumen, but also in his wide-ranging interests. He held an aroundthe-world speed record for small planes, owned the Denver Broncos and invented a vending machine for freshly prepared French fries. Prominent among his interests, however, was his varied fleet of boats and yachts, including a Gold Cup Unlimited hydroplane race boat that he kept at his home in the San Juan Islands, just for fun.

If ever there were a designer’s dream client, it was Edgar. He was a knowledgeable serial owner who had our shop pen several unrealized designs for every vessel he actually built—and he built a bunch. My first yacht with him was a sleek 77-footer that looked pretty normal until you attached the launch-andretrieval assembly to the transom for his seaplane.

Our second project together was considerably larger. In true Kaiser fashion, it started at less than 100 feet, but by the time he’d (nearly) finished his wish list, we were building Calliope, a 150-foot beauty with a pale blue hull. In Greek mythology, Calliope is the muse believed to have inspired Homer’s “Odyssey,” making hers an appropriate name for a yacht intended to wander the world.

After we’d completed Calliope’s design, when construction was well underway, Edgar came back with one more item: the need to accommodate a full crew of Muppets.

Really. It wasn’t long before we heard from Henson and his Creature Shop wizards, asking for a set of blueprints and providing us with their augmented specifications. Unbeknownst to us, Edgar had been working with Henson on a new children’s television series, an around-the-world adventure starring Calliope.

The yacht would be crewed by Muppets, including Scooter, the red-haired gofer from earlier shows, and introducing a walrus as captain, plus a lemur and a macaw as mates. The yacht would visit, the proposal said, “such varied wonders as the headwaters of China’s Yangtze, the volcanic kingdoms of Indonesia, the frozen vastness of the Arctic and the hardy peoples of Soviet Georgia” to “capture the spirit and energy of … diverse creeds, colors and circumstances.”

As Calliope’s designers, we’d already made sure she was capable of such a voyage, but now we had to ensure that she could also support the TV show, accommodating a scientist, guest stars, a cast of Muppets and, on occasion, groups of local children at her exotic ports of call.

The last-minute request turned out to be quite feasible—a sleeping Muppet doesn’t take up a lot of room—but in the end, it was all for naught, as the TV deal never came to fruition. Edgar still completed his odyssey, though, including an epic trip up the Amazon as far as Calliope’s draft would permit. Henson, for his part, recorded his recollections of the project in his “Red Book” memoirs, including sketches of the Muppet crew (www.henson.com/jimsredbook/2013/09/9161984).

That project was my sole brush with Hollywood, until invitations to the Cannes Film Festival and the Playboy Mansion came along.