PRESIDENTIAL YACHT SEQUOIA – Janice Anne Wheeler, Sparring With Mother Nature
There’s a lot of US history in this Spar; I appreciate my many international readers for the indulgence. I imagine pieces of history are treated similarly worldwide— are they worthy? And what happens to them next? If you just dove into our very engaging little community, please read SPARS & SPARRING, .….it introduces my wonders and my wanders. ~J
“I really don’t know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it’s because in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes, and ships change, it’s because we all came from the sea.(**) And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears.(***) We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea – whether it is to sail or to watch it – we are going back from whence we came.” [Remarks by US President John F. Kennedy at the Dinner for the America’s Cup Racing Crews, September 14 1962]. I absorbed this quote long ago and remembered it, perhaps, because of my immense affinity for COASTLINES. Now, living with water beneath my feet, the words have even greater impact. JFK’s final birthday celebration, his 46th, was held on Presidential Yacht SEQUOIA in 1962 just months before an assassin’s bullet took his life. The 1925 SEQUOIA lies within sight as I write this, settling dejectedly into an occasionally mown, weed-riddled field in Cambridge, Maryland. She’s been here, on Richardson Maritime Museum property, longer than I have, which at this point is saying something. Oddly enough, I saw SEQUOIA languishing waterside in Belfast, Maine, 2021, when I became STEADFAST’s innocent, oblivious wooden boat caretaker. She sported a similar stifling plastic cover, and I can remember looking at those exposed planks, all of which clearly need replacing, and thinking what a tremendous undertaking that would be. I have yet to experience what is underneath her shroud, but I’ve peered up at deteriorating wood and curved glass through the doorways on special occasions when someone pays a modicum of attention to that soulful vessel. No notable action has been taken to save her in the last four years, even though her acquisition cost was zero and I presume (I know, it’s dangerous) promises were made to the judge who transferred ownership in 2016.
She was stunning. She’s rotting away.If walls, bulkheads and bunks could talk… we’d have more stories than I could print here, and some that probably shouldn’t be. SEQUOIA transported Presidents and officials of all sorts until President Carter either experienced or created the budget cuts that led her to be sold to private citizens. At that time, my Sailor’s father, Steven D. Uhthoff, Shipwright and Marine Surveyor, was chosen to assess the vessel. He felt that perhaps the wine cellar was as important an asset as any. (Now, that, I would have liked to see…). Highlights of the SEQUOIA’s Presidential Yacht days include the aforementioned birthday, President Nixon reputedly played “God Bless America” on her piano (I have to wonder if that’s still there!) after deciding to resign over his Watergate scandal, and President Lyndon Johnson pressured Congress to pass civil rights legislation while aboard, among dozens of other diplomatic ventures. Don’t let Google or the current very wealthy owner(s) tell you she’s being restored because that is in fact not the case. SEQUOIA is owned by Equator Capital’s Equator Collection, which, according to its website, provides funding for preservation of historical maritime assets. She was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1987 and that may, ironically, be her demise, as some of those designations become a hurdle rather than/in addition to a badge of honor when such extensive restoration is required. Every year they delay, the worse the situation becomes. Ironically, now I better understand those requirements, and while I criticize the fact that the promised, promoted work on the Presidential vessel has not yet begun, I understand, to scale, the logistics and finances of such an undertaking. Immense. I was much of the labor, and to find someone willing to do twenty times what we did, with the skills absolutely required. Difficult. Complicated. 
Decades of neglect have taken their toll on the century-old Trumpy design. In 2025 there was a reunion of the final 1970s crew and we could hear grand memories in the laughter trickling over to where STEADFAST was undergoing what SEQUOIA’s condition most certainly requires. She has iron sickness (the steel fastenings are rusting), exacerbating enlarged seams and natural degradation of the old growth long leaf yellow pine. Somewhere, rumor has it, is the 100,000 or so board feet to make her new again and we inquired about purchasing the modest amount we needed, 1,400, when our own repair needs arose. Our request was denied. We have heard that they are in the process of acquiring all the specific resources necessary and I hope that information is accurate. The inactivity is disheartening. This her third time in Cambridge, the first in 1935 with Franklin Delano Roosevelt aboard, to celebrate the first bridge to span Maryland’s Choptank River, named originally for Governor Emerson C Harrington. You’ve seen its higher, four-lane 1987 replacement, now US Route 50, in many a sunrise photo since STEADFAST arrived. 
I had to wonder why an off-the-beaten path bridge opening attracted a Presidential visit; this particular accomplishment merely made beach access easier; apparently, it was a little bit about politics. When asked, FDR confided that his good friend Senator George L.P. Radcliffe had a home nearby and therefore he felt it was prudent and a sign of friendship that he make the trip and honor the then-remote Eastern Shore of Maryland; FDR struggled with physical handicaps and limited his public appearances accordingly. Ninety years later I have spent time at Choptank Writers Group with his grandson, also George Radcliffe (middle initial M), a retired teacher, bird aficionado, historian and author who modestly discusses his family’s considerably weighted history (since 1663) in this nation’s capitol and the region. Just two hundred yards northeast of SEQUOIA is an iconic little sailboat named TENOVUS, reportedly Equator Capital’s only other maritime asset. 
This 1931 vessel raced and recreated with the Kennedy family aboard. (first photo Courtesy WTOP.com) TENOVUS is a 31-foot Seven Seas yawl built for Joseph P. Kennedy (JFK’s father) and now sits completely unprotected just yards from where we brought STEADFAST back from her own demise. TENOVUS was named for Kennedy’s then-ten-person family (Edward was born later). His two sons, Joe Jr and John, went on to race her in the first Martha’s Vineyard Race, among others; if you’re old enough, you’d recognize a plethora of photographs taken aboard that graceful little vessel with secrets of its own. Sporting the original hailing town of Hyannis Port, Massachusetts she most recently came from Castine, Maine, and was delivered rather unceremoniously late in 2024 to Yacht Maintenance Company, reportedly “just for a little while.” There she sits, biodegrading, underneath a rowdy, shedding pair of cottonwoods, exposed to all Mother Nature’s elements without even a scrap of canvas or shroud of plastic, her masts on the ground nearby. “He’s a boat killer,” my sailor says of the owner, and we question what runs through his veins as we watch two historically important US vessels lose innumerable Spars with Mother Nature right before our eyes. ~J Share SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE ** I’ve recently been enthralled by the sheer volume of the Great Lakes, (20% of the planet’s fresh water); with no visible shoreline, they can be equally captivating. *** In regard to the JFK quote: this does not appear to be completely true; blood has .9% salt and the ocean somewhere around 3.5% on average, but Oceanographic Magazine claims there is a 98% match between human blood and ocean water. In case you missed it, Opposite Latitudes, Parallel Attitudes introduces you to a unique sailing connection between myself and Shellphone Chronicles.
Catch part two of the four-part series this week and about our life—It’s definitely not for everyone! I so appreciate your support of my work. Have a wonderful week!
© 2026 Janice Anne Wheeler
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