The renowned Santana has had 14 different owners in the 66 years it has sailed the Pacific waters. Some mariners used it to just get away. That's what the vessel's most famous owner, Humphrey Bogart, had in mind when he purchased the Santana in 1945. It was mainly just Bogie sailing alone on the Santana for the 12 years he owned it. Why alone? "You can't pee over the side when you have dames on board," Bogart once explained.
Other owners of the Santana were more adventurous. After all W.L. Stewart built the 43-foot schooner as a racing boat in the mid 30's. A few Santana sailors have had even bolder ideas. Hearty souls like restaurateur Charlie Peet purchased it to sail around the world. Unfortunately, Peet and his wife Marty failed all three times they tried. So much for the third time being the charm.
Eventually, all of the nautical mileage took its toll on Santana. When current owners Paul and Chris Kaplan bought it two years ago they knew it would be a full year before it would sail again. They were a determined couple, though. They remained steadfast in their goal to restore the sharp-looking boat to its original splendor.
During the restoration process they made one major addition to the boat's design: a state of the art audio/video system.
The Ground RulesForty-six year old Paul Kaplan, who docks in at the San Francis Yacht Club just outside of San Francisco, is no nickel-and-dimer. He owns the lucrative sailboat company Keefe Kaplan Maritime Inc. (KKMI), which sells and services the top-of-the-line Finnish made SWAN sailboats. So, saving a few bucks on a stereo install for Santana's restoration wasn't an issue. This being the only boat he actually gets to play with he wasn't going to cut corners. When all was said and done, Kaplan estimates he spent over $15,000 on the components of his audio/video system. "There's no point in doing this unless it's going to be flawless," he says, adding, "I'm a professional, and I only deal with professionals."
Luckily for Kaplan, one of the finest sailboat stereo installers around was only a short swim away. Kaplan had already seen Leo Monney do a superb job on one of his ships in the KKMI fleet, and knew he was right for the job. The question was would Monney, the owner of five Monney Car Audio's in the Bay area, have the time and patience for such a delicate project. Kaplan wanted more than just an elaborate twenty-first century sound and video system put in; he wanted the components to be invisible when not in use. After all, he wanted to show-off Santana's nautical features, not its subwoofers. Furthermore, Kaplan didn't want anything Monney put in to be permanent, "because as time moves on, the technology will change and it will probably need to be replaced," according to Kaplan.
Monney's schedule was tight. He had just two weeks for the project so he got two of his top employees (Marcus Favisch and Juan Mendoza) to help him speed up the process. "It's not very often you get to work on a boat this beautiful," says Monney. "I wanted to do it." Mind you, he is not a sailboat install specialist, per se. After all, his stores aren't called Monney's Sailboat Audio. But living near so many shipyards he has developed quite a reputation in this highly lucrative market.
He says the major difference between installing a stereo in a car and a sailboat is that: "A car has an alternator and a generator that are always running. A sailboat doesn't. So you have to rely on good outside battery systems and AC inverters." However, the obvious benefit of installing a sailboat is that you don't have to worry about engine noise, he says. "It's like your living room."