LIFE ON THE WATERvideo
Ron MacAnnan's Pursuit
July 16, 2026 · 26 min · 8K views · Marin Ship, Sausalito
What this video covers
Ron MacAnnan, 87 years old, sails and maintains Pursuit, an 82-foot steel-hulled vessel he bought for $30,000 — half the asking price — after it had been owned by Burt Lancaster and Harold Hecht.▶ 6:05 MacAnnan describes the boat's construction in detail: a steel skeleton with inner and outer steel plates bolted with bronze fasteners he replaced with stainless, and a three-layer deck of western red cedar, Bruynzeel sapele mahogany plywood scarfed into a single continuous 82-by-14-foot sheet, topped with three-quarters of an inch of teak.▶ 17:25 He rewired the entire boat himself, drawing on electronics training as a B-29 command gunner.▶ 19:51 MacAnnan recounts the 1969 Transpac to Hawaii, in which Pursuit lost its main rudder three days out of Los Angeles and finished fourth out of 70 boats after seven days of steering on a small spade rudder, breaking the main boom and both spinnaker poles en route.▶ 15:03 He also describes a cruise to the Tres Marías islands and Puerto Vallarta with crew.▶ 13:10 Now managing two synthetic knees, a synthetic shoulder, a crushed spine, and a list of nearly 500 boat maintenance items, he continues sailing from Sausalito.▶ 4:04
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