YACHTS yachtsinternational.com
INTERNATIONAL
26
STERNLINES
BY DUDLEY
DAWSONMy strangest design request featured a puppet at the wheel.
The Muppets
and Me
I
n “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 around-
the-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-and-
retrieval 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 mythol-
ogy, 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, whenconstruction 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 blue-
prints and providing us with their augmented specifi-
cations. 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, includ-
ing 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 pro-
posal 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.SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS OR ANY TOPIC
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