Sailing on the Land

Welcoming our newest addition to our Journey, our first airstream.  While sailing on water is still apart of our package, we added a big bouncy silver can to our lives.

We drove to Real Ale Brewing Company, and next door picked up our new additional living quarters, a 19 foot Bambi Airstream Trailer.  It was an easy transition from the boat.  Wally Byam, the creator of the Airstream, was a sailor so his first Airstream models were named after sailboats like the Clipper.  In the Airstream the terms are the same for the galley and bulkhead.  We use port and starboard, and head.  Read more from Airstream's blog about Wally Byam's love of sailing or joining the Order of Trident:

Any Airstream aficionado knows Wally and Airstream used nautical names for products: Clipper, Tradewind, and Land Yacht are but a few. Within the trailers, you’ll find bulkheads and a galley. Wally envisioned his gleaming travel trailers as if they were land-based ocean craft.

In 1955, while scouting for the next year’s Caravan through Europe, Wally’s wife Stella wrote to Helen Byam Schwamborn from Marseilles. “Wally is quite the sailor,” she wrote. “We went out sailing for the afternoon, and I was impressed by his knowledge in our excursion.”

Wally also had great interest in the sailing adventures of Irving and Electa Johnson. They were a married couple who circumnavigated the globe seven times, were featured in National Geographic, wrote a number of books, and later gave a series of touring lectures.

So he decided after he retired he wanted to sail. He had an attorney and friend, Jack Garmhausen, procure a yacht before he left for Africa, and as it was prepared, Wally would communicate with Jack at mail stops as they traveled across the continent.

When Wally returned to the States after the Caravan, it was full steam ahead on his ketch. It was aptly named the Caravan.

The design was complete, and there is a target date for the main-mast stepping. In ancient times, the tradition was to place a coin underneath the ship’s mast. It was believed that if the ship sank, it was payment to Charon, the fare paid to cross the river Styx. As legends go, it was placed under the mast as a tribute to the gods for the ship’s successful construction.

The Schwamborn family asked Wally if we could furnish the coin, and he agreed. I remember the day my mother and I went to Wickersham’s Jewelry in Bakersfield, California to purchase the gold coin.

Unfortunately, Wally became terminally ill. The Caravan had passed all trial runs and was ready to sail. But when the time came to sail across the Atlantic, through the canal, and up the western coast of the Pacific to Los Angeles, it was too late for Wally to come aboard.

When the ketch arrived in Long Beach, there was a picture of the boat on the freighter Esperanza with a short description. It read,

$195,000 YACHT – The 52-foot 40-ton ketch Caravan just built in Amsterdam for Wally Byam, owner of Airstream Trailer Co, was brought here piggyback on the Hamburg-America Line’s Esperanza. The yacht is designed to sleep 11 and is the latest in luxury, costing $195,000. It is air conditioned, has an all-electric galley, is steam heated even to bathroom towelracks, has deepfreeze, hydraulic anchor lifts, hinged masts which lower flush with the deck to allow it under bridges and diesel auxiliary power. It was designed by Sparkman and Stevens, designers of the America Cup defender Columbia, and has teakwood decks and steel hull. It was unloaded at Berth B12 in Long Beach under the direction of Capt. O. W. Hay of San Pedro and will be kept at Southwind Marina.

Wally was able to make one motorized ride on the Caravan around the harbor. He passed away on July 22, 1962.

The night that we got Bambi, our Jefferson, big puppy, was so excited that he exploded with excitement and threw me to the ground.  I had him and held on. Well it was the Texas hill country with lots of limestone.  I got my first stitches, liquid, basically crazy glue stitches, a shot, and a hefty hospital bill.

From Dale "Peewee",

Need a road trip about the creator.  Check out more history at the Baker Heritage Museum in Baker City, Oregon, hometown of Wally Byam.

Airstream Factory Service Center, 419 West Pike St, Jackson Center, Ohio, with the Gold Airstream that Wally Byam crossed Africa, 877-596-6111