Paul Reck spent much of his long life thinking small. Reck is a man of many parts, some tiny, like his models of deck cleats and winches on yachts. But he’s also been a contractor, a sailor, a shipwright, a historian and a veteran of the Korean War. He sailed in the crew of the famous yacht Santana, once owned by Humphrey Bogart, and when his friend Paul Kaplan bought the boat, Reck helped him restore and rerig the Santana from a ketch to a schooner.
One of Reck’s major projects on land was the restoration of the Golden Gate Theatre for Shorenstein Properties. It had been a movie theater, and Reck helped bring it back as a stage venue, the way it was in the 1920s.
Reck’s role in the larger world ended years ago when he retired from full-time work. He will be 97 in June and has no plans to quit his model life. He spends most of his time in what he calls his “Boatyard,” a garage on a quiet street in Mill Valley that Reck converted into a workshop full of tools, rolled-up plans of yachts and small boats. It’s a marvelous place, full of sunlight, wood shavings, sawdust and various model projects, some still in progress. It has the clutter of a real boatyard, only in miniature. Reck usually works on a scale of a half-inch to a foot…