News & Events

The Amelia Marie/Joie de Vivre relaunched with a champaign splash on Sunday, April 23, 2023 Five Star Marina – the old Stephens Boatyard

Contact: Carrie Sass, SASS! Public Relations (209) 612-5478 • Carrie_sass@sasspr.com

The Stockton of 1902 was an isolated rural hamlet with an emphasis on farming. The rare family had a phone. Bridges were few and crude, and the rugged roadways were slow. The most effective way for the farmers to get their produce to market was by boat on the Delta. Two young men, brothers, eighteen and twenty-years-old, Roy and Thod Stephens, grew up mesmerized by the different styles of boats they saw competing for business. They went to work in their backyard on Yosemite Road and built a 33-foot sloop - the Dorothy - familiar with one mast and an ability to move through the water with dexterity and efficiency. They sailed their boat to Santa Cruz as the best form of advertising. The reward was a thousand dollar down payment to build a vessel for a client. The company they founded, Stephens Boating Company, would stay in business for eighty-five years and be one of the great success stories of Stockton. Able to adjust to different eras and changing needs, Stephens Brothers and their heirs would produce spud boats for moving potatoes, sail boats, speed boats, runabouts, boats that assisted the military in wartime, and private yachts that are accurately called stunning pieces of artwork.

Sixty-three years ago this month, the Stockton Record ran a story of a 56-foot luxury vessel being given a traditional champagne baptism and sliding into the Stockton Channel at the Stephens Boat Works.

The Amelia Marie was a year-long project commissioned by Theodore Brix. She was his fourth boat, all named in honor of his wife, who by most accounts preferred not to be on the water. Such is the push and pull between husbands and wives and their boats. An airplane pilot in his twenties, Theodore Brix was his own sea captain when he bought the Amelia Marie in his late fifties. He outfitted the boat as a home afloat and planned to cruise as far as South American waters.

Brix could afford the best toys. He accumulated a fortune selling his tire company to Goodyear, figuring out how to earn enough to be called an ‘oil-man’, and amassing a significant real estate portfolio in Fresno and Coalinga. By the time he commissioned the Amelia Marie, he was described as a charming dilettante with deep pockets. How long he kept the boat is lost to history, and the Amelia Marie herself disappeared for decades.

The Stephens Boatyard has a unique place in the heart of Stockton’s Haggin Museum. The curator is proud of the twenty-seven-foot boat on display and can boast they have the complete Stephens Brothers’ archives. He says he receives twelve to fifteen requests a year from all over the world from women and men who want to restore a Stephens’ boat. They believe to do anything less than be faithful to the original architectural design and building notes would be a sacrilege.

One of those calls came from Rusty Areias. A popular former legislator, adventurer, excellent storyteller, and successful businessman, Areias had already partnered in the restoration of two Stephen’s boats. He saw pictures of the Amelia Marie years before he was able to find her. She was not even the Amelia Marie anymore. Her name had been changed to Joie de Vivre, the French expression for delighting in living your life.

Areias and his friend and business partner, Ted Harris, bought the Joie, originally intending to complete the restoration in Los Angeles. Instead, adjusting to the rigors of the pandemic, they towed the boat to the Delta. More than two years and considerable funds were spent restoring the boat the Stephens built for Theodore Brix to her original glory.

They listened closely as the curator turned the pages of the early documents of the Amelia Marie with his white-gloved hands. He explained the nuances of the vessel, the materials used, the fidelity of her lines, and the disputes and agreements that are part of her lore. They decided to keep the new name. The result is that a brilliant memory of Stockton that sleeps nine comfortably, has a displacement of 42-tons, a top speed of 20 miles an hour, and a cruising range of 1200 miles will find its fit again in the water.

“Nothing ever goes right when you start hearing words like dry rot, and termites, and electrolysis is degrading the metal,” Areias explained. “There is nothing but stress until every rough moment dissipates when you see her exactly as she was meant to be.”

“The boat is a source of incredible heartache and expense,” Areias admits. “However, she also brings real joy to our families and the people who can’t help but stop and look at her and recognize the genius of the workers and the artisans and the dreamers who made her possible.”