Fixing up his father’s pier

Alex Coolman

BALBOA ISLAND -- The time has come for Andrew Glassell to do a little

maintenance on his pier.

The 84-year-old Balboa Island resident is putting in some redwood

flooring and guardrails this week, replacing the weathered wood that used

to be there. But the structural heart of the pier -- a 90-foot-long trunk

of solid fir that was once the mast of a schooner -- isn’t going

anywhere.

Besides an occasional coat of gray paint, Glassell said, the massive

trunk hasn’t needed any maintenance since his father, William, put it

into place in 1925.

“This is the first time we’ve had to redo it,” Glassell said. “I hope it

will last for 75 more years for my two boys.”

William Glassell found the mast, which was just one of three from an old

schooner, at Fellows and Stewart yacht maintenance yard in San Pedro.

Recognizing its potential use, he obtained the enormous log for the sum

of $25. Another $5 paid for a fisherman to tow it down the coast.

Originally, Glassell noted, the mast had another 30 feet of wood attached

to it. The upper section, which included a crow’s nest, was sawed off and

turned into the borders of a sand box.

When the tide was high, Glassell’s father floated the rest of the log

onto the U-shaped, concrete “cradles” that hold it in place.

And that’s where it’s been ever since.

“In 1983, because of El Nino [wind-driven storms], a lot of the piers

lifted up and floated away,” recalled Larry Capune, who lived on the

island for decades and now resides in Newport Beach.

Glassell’s pier, however, remained essentially in place.

Hurricanes? No contest for the bulk of that massive beam, Glassell said.

“We had a couple down here in the ‘30s, and it never moved.”

“I remember Glassell said it’d take an act of Congress to get that thing

out of there,” Capune remembers.

In an old photo album, mounted on pieces of black paper, Glassell has a

photograph of himself and his cousin mugging it up on the pier in 1926.

He was 10 years old at the time.

“In those days,” he recalled, “the island was bare of people in the

winter.”

And even when it was “busy,” it was still a pretty empty place. The faded

old photograph shows nothing but sand surrounding the house, where today

buildings press in on every side.

Glassell said he isn’t a huge fan of the changes that have taken place on

the island over the decades -- all the “modern” improvements that have

made life more crowded and noisy.

But he doesn’t get too worked up about it. The pier, after all, is likely

to last through almost anything.