By RALPH GARDNER JR.
Ralph Gardner Jr. gets a tour of the Navy’s smallest aircraft carrier, which has a new life in the civilian world
Alvin Trenk had a brilliant idea, or at least an interesting one, a few years back: Take the Navy’s smallest aircraft carrier, all of 136 feet long and 36 feet wide, and turn it into a floating heliport.
It would have been a place to move the West 30th Street heliport, run by him and his family. As it turned out, Mr. Trenk didn’t relocate the business, but he went full steam ahead and bought the ship.
“I have a bit of an adventurer in me,” he said.
So the 87-year-old Mr. Trenk laid out around $400,000 for the vessel, named the Baylander, a Vietnam War-era ship that the Navy decommissioned after years of service as a landing craft in battle, then a helicopter-landing trainer in Florida. The sum was more than double what the previous owner, a deep-sea treasure hunter, had paid at auction. Mr. Trenk has spent roughly $500,000 for improvements and maintenance.
After making his purchase four years ago, Mr. Trenk docked the Baylander at Brooklyn Bridge Park. In the spring, it was at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, serving as the launchpad for 2,000 pigeons that were part of a light show mounted by artist Duke Riley.
Dazzling as I understand that display was, I wondered whether the attendant pigeon poop presented a challenge for Scott Koen, the Baylander’s port captain.
“That wasn’t the problem,” said the skipper, who worked as director of operations at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum for almost 17 years. “Normally, every spring you’d paint a boat. After the birds were off, we pressure-washed everything.”
The ship just moved to the Hudson River and is berthed at West Harlem Piers Park, near the Harlem Fairway Market. It will be open shortly to the public on weekends.
Last week, Mr. Koen gave me a tour of the Baylander, which started its Navy service in 1968. We began at the bridge and then descended to the galley and finally to what the captain referred to the “jungle deck,” where he keeps a stash of Poland Spring water in a refrigerator marked “frozen plasma freezer.”
“All this stuff would be gone on another ship,” Mr. Koen explained as we stood on the bridge, where the controls and navigational gear looked pretty much intact. He said the Navy would typically strip the boat and use the hardware on other vessels as a cost-saving measure. “We even got all the navigation charts.”
Ironically, the Baylander hasn’t seen a single helicopter land on it since Mr. Trenk bought it. “We wouldn’t do it because of the community relations issue,” Mr. Koen said.
It didn’t even make the journey from Brooklyn to Manhattan under its own steam. “We brought it with a tugboat,” he said. “We only move it once every year, once every other year.”
What do Mr. Trenk’s children think of the Baylander, which is owned by the Trenk Family Foundation? While I can appreciate the bragging rights associated with owning the Navy’s smallest aircraft carrier, the novelty might wane as expenses mount.
Mr. Koen suggested I pose that question to Michael Trenk, Mr. Trenk’s nephew, who had just come on board. “This is definitely a family hobby,” said Michael Trent, a restaurateur. “They’re in the helicopter industry as it is.”
Michael Trenk was joined by his wife, Alison, who holds the title of Mrs. New York America. She’ll be competing for the Mrs. America crown at an Aug. 27 pageant in Las Vegas hosted by Florence Henderson, who played the mom on “The Brady Bunch.”
If a pint-size aircraft carrier is striking, even more so is a pageant contestant taking publicity photos on its deck.
Ms. Trenk denied that her husband’s connection to an aircraft carrier added to his allure.
“We’ve been married eight years,” she said as former Mrs. Nevada Ann Pennington, her friend and professional stylist, powdered her forehead and lowered a crown onto her head. “The military vessel came long after we signed the contract.”
PHOTO:RALPH GARDNER JR./THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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Source: WSJ
