boatinternational.com • 06 2019PHOTOGRAPHY: STEPHEN R CLOUTIER/PHOTOGROPUP.US
OWNERS’ CLUBshorts on the aft deck. Rose, whom he calls Posy, has
just arrived and she offers to show me around their new
home on the water while Charlie goes below to change.
Contraband is unconventional, refreshing and
absolutely charming. The interior is full of sun,
practical and warm with white bulkheads, comfortable
seats, nautical brass lamps and pictures of sailboats.
There are no televisions or high-tech gadgets. The
decks are painted for easier upkeep, and outdoor tables
can be wiped clean with a moist rag. Fresh air circulates
around the two decks, with doors open to the breeze.
The layout is split between forward cabins and a first
galley, and guest and master cabin aft with a second
galley. The engine room space in the middle is large,
and it’s easy to move around two heavy-duty Mitsubishi
engines, Charlie’s choice.
Just as we finish the tour, Charlie reappears wearing
a light pink button-down shirt and comfortable tan
slacks and we sit in the salon for a chat. That is one of
his favorite spaces on board, he tells me, along with the
pilothouse where a picture of the boat’s namesake, the
original Contraband (framed in red to match the
banquette) hangs on the wall. The Owens brothers-designed cutter belonged to
Charlie’s stepfather and he
reckons he was but six years
old when he got aboard.
“It was called Contraband
because he felt that, coming
out of the Second World
War and starting a law
practice, he really didn’t
deserve it. To him it was
controversial,” Charlie says.
“He was the one that
instilled the love of boats in
me. And so I guess all these years later it’s me tipping
my hat to my stepfather and saying, ‘Thank you.’”
Charlie says his family showed very little interest in
boating. “My father was a golfer and couldn’t care less
about it,” he says. Born in New York, Charlie left the
East Coast for Colorado to study at the University of
Denver and then worked for a company that handled
projects ranging from building the Vail ski resort and
Denver’s biggest office building to managing 15,000
acres of groves in Florida. “I was like a Guy Friday,”
Charlie says. “It was a wonderful place to work.” He
took that experience with him back east and continued
doing a variety of projects, mostly in property
management. “I always like to say we were jacks of all
trades and master of one, which was painting.”
One memorable project Charlie led was the
transformation of the home of John Nicholas Brown
into Harbour Court, the Newport home of the New
York Yacht Club, in 1987. Then in 1998 he purchased,
with a group of investors, the last piece of Newport’s
working waterfront before a real-estate developer
could turn the shipyard into condos. Newport
Shipyard is now a family-run business and an integralHOME TIES
The Danas’Newport
Shipyard (opposite
page, bottom)and
the new Contraband
(top). Thispage,
from top: Harbour
Court, homeofthe
New York YachtClub;
the Dana familyin
Newport in 2018 to
greet Nickduringthe
Volvo OceanRace;
St Roque, theDanas’
first motoryachtNEWPORT SHIPYARD
IS NOW A FAMILY-RUN
BUSINESS AND AN
INTEGRAL PART OF
THE CITY’S LIFE49