Comments & Curiosities:

It’s old, it’s big, and it’s falling apart. No, not me. We’re talking about Shawnee, a 72-foot sailboat built in 1916, which might as well have been 93 years ago.

Shawnee was a sleek, stylish ketch that took all the marbles in the first California-to-Tahiti race in 1925. Some 80 years later, in 2006, Shawnee was hating life, a lot.

She was riding low in Newport Harbor, as in really low, as in about to sink, a faded, tattered glamour girl of sailing history about to slip beneath the surface and disappear below the muddy bottom.

Enter Dennis Holland, Newport Heights resident and master shipwright. Holland became a one-man rescue team for Shawnee, taking possession, snatching her from her watery grave and hauling her to his Newport Heights backyard to be restored, rebuilt, fluffed and folded. But this wasn’t some weekend woodshop warrior with a dream.

In the 1970s, Holland built a full-size replica of an 18th century privateer that sailed during the American Revolution. After 12 years and a whole lot of money, the 118-foot tall ship that Holland dubbed “Pilgrim” was launched. Today, she lives as the “Spirit of Dana Point.” You’ve probably heard of her.

Holland also had a personal connection with Shawnee, which he first saw in her home port of San Francisco at age 8 on a summer trip with his grandparents.

He maintained his passionate love affair with her from a distance over the years, first in San Francisco, then in Orange County. In 2006, when he learned that Shawnee was on life support in Newport Harbor and they were about to pull the plug, he stepped in, stepped up and saved her life, so to speak.

Most admirable, say Holland’s neighbors, and they wish him nothing but luck. But they also wish he hadn’t brought the boat back home and more specifically, to his backyard.

If you’re anywhere near Holland’s Newport Heights home, you cannot miss Shawnee. She looms above the street out front and his neighbors’ yards out back.

Earlier this year, the neighbors turned to the city for help only to learn that there was nothing in the municipal code that specified which backyard boat repairs are allowed, which kind are not, and above all, just how big is a backyard boat if a backyard boat is big?

It took the city a while to sort it all out, but at last Tuesday’s Council meeting, the verdict was in: Shawnee is a grand old dame, and everyone wants to see her resplendent and dazzling once again, but she needs to have all that cosmetic surgery done somewhere else.

Major repairs on a 72-foot ketch are a little beyond what your basic backyard can bear, to say nothing of the neighbors. Holland has six months to pack her up, pick her up and ship her out.

But here is what I want to know, being a nautical illiterate. How big is big when it comes to boats? As it turns out, the Shaquille O’Neal of sailboats is the “Maltese Falcon,” which is 289 feet long, which is 11 feet short of a football field, which is big.

The Maltese Falcon was launched in 2006 and built by Tom Perkins, a wildly successful Silicon Valley venture capitalist. The smallest sailboat ever built? I’m sure there is a totally functional tiny miniature sailboat in a display case somewhere, but the smallest sailboat to ever cross an ocean has to be “Yankee Girl,” which was built by a Minnesota man named Gerry Spiess — in his garage, out of plywood.

How small was it? Yankee Girl was 10 feet long, with a beam of 5 feet, which is small. In 1979, Spiees sailed Yankee Girl from Virginia Beach to Falmouth, England — a trip of 3,800 miles that took 54 days — all alone, across the North Atlantic.

Two years later, Spiess decided to try something that was hard. He and Yankee Girl shoved off from Long Beach, and arrived in Sydney, Australia five months and 7,800 miles later.

When he arrived in Sydney, Spiess told reporters that he was sick and unable to eat much of the time because he has always been prone to stomach problems.

“I get ulcers and things,” Spiess said.

Well, see, that all makes sense…chronic stomach problems, ulcers, and sailing alone in violent seas for five months at a time in a 10-foot sailboat. If that doesn’t settle your stomach, nothing will.

I hope things work out for Dennis Holland, Shawnee and the neighbors. And as for Gerry Spiess, if you’re still out there somewhere, it’s none of my business, but a different hobby might be a thought, doesn’t matter what, just something without a 10-foot boat and 25-foot waves. I gotta go.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at [email protected] .