For sale
Renegade
Bear #35, San Francisco Bay
$4,500
Fully equipped and ready to sail, with sails, running gear, interior cushions, an electric bilge system and a Mercury 5 hp four-stroke outboard.
Renegade needs someone who wants to look after a wooden classic: regular haul-outs, paint and varnish, and plenty of time on the water. We also hope her next owner will take part in the class, joining the other Bears for fleet sails, races and work days. That matters more to us than the price.
Renegade has spent 2026 in the hands of some of the Bay’s best wooden boat people, and she is back in her Berkeley berth with fresh paint, a freshly worked bottom and an outboard on the transom. What she needs now is someone to sail her.
A shipwright who has looked after her for years led the structural work, with experienced Bay Area yard crews alongside.
Back to the yard so her shipwright could track down her last weeping seams. He stayed with it until she was right, and on October 30 she went back in the water very dry.
The aft end of the garboard at the transom was cut back and scarfed with a new section of fir, with cheek doublers fitted and the area refastened, faired and caulked.
Every soft spot found in the transom, bow and topsides was dug out, dried and treated with penetrating epoxy. Seams were filled, the hull sanded and primed, and three coats of Rochelle Red Toplac went on.
Prepped and finished with two coats of SeaHawk Sharkskin black antifouling.
Non-skid decks and a newly painted cabin top and hatch, with repairs to the beams below decks.
An updated electrical system, and a Mercury four-stroke outboard so she can leave the dock on her own.
Under the new paint is a boat that has been steadily rebuilt. Her keel bolts were replaced with stainless in 2009. In 2010 she was taken to bare wood, recaulked and refastened with about 1,500 bronze screws. Purpleheart keel floors followed in 2012 and 2016, along with sistered frames and new stem bolts. New garboards forward and half a new transom came in 2018. She also has a new boom, cabin top, cockpit seats, companionway and forward hatch from those years.
“Something a little out of the ordinary in the Bear Class.”
Local sailing column, May 1947
George and “Tack” Johnson started Renegade the week after the 1946 Vallejo Race and launched her down the Nunes ways almost exactly a year later. She was shiny and black then, full of the Johnsons’ own ideas, including a deck slide that sent ice straight into the ice chest.
She has raced in the Master Mariners Regatta, and she turns eighty in the spring of 2027.
In the early 1980s, Dave Bacon, a Sausalito schoolteacher on a year’s sabbatical, took this boat, then sailing as Dancing Bear and without an engine, singlehanded from the Golden Gate to the Sea of Cortez, some 2,400 miles. He harbor-hopped down the coast, made a thirteen-day passage from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas, and worked north past La Paz and Mulegé to San Felipe at the head of the Gulf. There he sailed her onto a trailer on the beach and had her trucked home to the Bay.
It was a hard trip as well as a beautiful one, with a pilot whale and dolphins for company and phosphorescent nights at anchor. He came home calling a Bear a thoroughbred, and he tells the whole story candidly in his 2018 memoir, Sailing From Behind the Curve.
Find the book on AmazonA Bear is simple, manageable and a very good first keelboat, and a sound one rewards regular care rather than heroics. Renegade is ready for daysailing now, and her varnish is the natural first project for someone who wants to make her their own.
Five Bears are based in Berkeley, the fleet is planning more meetups and short-course racing for 2027, and the owners share parts, advice and work days. Few boats this size come with that much help.
Renegade needs someone who wants to look after a wooden classic: regular haul-outs, paint and varnish, and plenty of time on the water. We also hope her next owner will take part in the class, joining the other Bears for fleet sails, races and work days. That matters more to us than the price.
$4,500
Fully equipped and ready to sail, with sails, running gear, interior cushions, an electric bilge system and a Mercury 5 hp four-stroke outboard.
She is afloat at Berkeley Marina, near other Bears, and an updated survey is being arranged.