Francis (Pat) West Jr. Dies at Age of 96: Islander, Engineer and Man
of the Sea

Francis (Pat) West Jr., a major Island personality enjoyed by all
who knew him, died at the age of 96 at his Lake Tashmoo home on July
Fourth.

Mr. West was one of the founding organizers and commodore for life
of the Holmes Hole Sailing Association, which became the sponsor of the
now well-

established annual George Moffett Race. In recent years, he
organized a race exclusively for gaff-rigged boats to follow the Moffett
Race by a week. He was quick to extol the virtues of the gaff rig and
loved to debate its superiority over the Marconi rig. Friends later
decided the race should be called the Pat West Gaff Rig Race.

From beginning to end, Mr. West's life was involved in one way
or another with boats. Born in 1906 in Brookline, his family lived in
Falmouth and Pompano, Fla. As a child he accompanied his father fishing
from a sailing canoe as well as on Iona, the family's Crosby
catboat, making passages from Falmouth to their summer cottage in
Menemsha in the canoe and on one occasion transporting a cow, a family
pet, aboard the Iona.

In his late teens, Mr. West delivered yachts up and down the coast
and summers skippered the sloop Venture out of Vineyard Haven.
Eventually he was able to purchase the Venture from the owner, who
realized that he would care for her, after which he took fishing charter
parties out from Menemsha and raised money for his college tuition.

After graduating from the University of Miami with a B.S. in
physics, Mr. West worked on a patent for a remote-reading compass and
spent one winter living aboard the Venture on the Hudson in New York
city during one of the coldest winters in years. His interest in
remote-reading compasses and, later, steering systems led him first to
the Kelvin & Wilfrid O. White Company in Boston, where in 1938 he
married the boss's daughter, Isabel White. In 1940, the Sperry
Gyroscope Company bought his patent and hired him as a project engineer
developing compasses and steering devices.

The high point of his career came in 1950 when his lab at Sperry was
commissioned to install the steering system for the S.S. United States.
Under his direction a Sperry gyro-pilot was installed on the superliner,
and Mr. West and his engineers sailed aboard the ship during her sea
trials. The ship still holds the record for the fastest trans-Atlantic
passage. When Mr. West retired in 1970 and moved to the Vineyard, he
became the Island's compass adjuster.

He owned Venture for 40 years. When he could no longer keep up with
the maintenance of the old 38-footer, he turned her over to Nathaniel
Benjamin - who would rebuild her for his own family yacht -
and replaced her with a 23-foot Friendship sloop, Erda.

Ashore, Mr. West had a lifelong love affair with bicycles. He always
biked to work at the Sperry plant in Garden City, Long Island, N.Y.
Later he rode to the railroad station and took the train to New York or
Brooklyn. With his son, Danny, and a nephew, Frank Van Zandt, he
belonged to a cycling club that toured Long Island early Sunday mornings
and raced against other clubs in the metropolitan New York area. When
Sperry sent him to Paris for three years as an engineering liaison, he
daily pedaled his bicycle through the Bois de Boulogne into the city to
his office. Pat believed it was important to get your heart rate up
every day; until he was almost 90 he took a daily ride on the same
bicycle that he bought in Paris up and down the sandy Herring Creek
Road.

During the Paris years, deprived of his beloved Venture, Mr. West
contrived a folding rubber kayak with outriggers and a gaff-rig sail
from a Dyer dinghy to get afloat on the River Seine. When he had
business in Scandinavia, he'd make sure he snuck off to Sweden to
sail with a friend.

Mr. West was a great believer in the power of democracy and was an
ardent Democrat, beginning with FDR. When Bill Clinton was elected, he
got a group together and hosted an inaugural ball that was a great
success. At the ball, Mr. West proposed a toast that turned into a
lengthy speech on the importance of democracy.

Mr. West loved music: Louis Armstrong for dancing and Wagner for
listening. His daughter, Christine, made her operatic debut in Seattle
singing the role of Erda in Wagner's Ring. He admired the ladies
and was quick to turn on the charm and invite them to dance if there was
music handy. Growing up with three beautiful sisters introduced him at
an early age to the ways of the female sex. When meeting a young person
for the first time, he would ask, "Do you like to dance?" He
thought it was important for them to know the joy of dancing.

When Pat and Isabel West retired to the Vineyard they remodeled the
family barn at the Meadows for their home. They had been married at the
farmhouse across the road and scenes of the wedding appear in the film
This Is Our Island, which is still shown occasionally.

In the last years of his life, Mr. West was determined to have the
Coast Guard place a marker on the great underwater rock that lies
southeast of West Chop, for he, among others, had hit it while sailing.
He and Hugh Schwarz persevered for two years, dealing with agency after
agency, until they gained the necessary approval. He was proud to
announce that finally a tall marker had been imbedded in the rock,
warning navigators of the hazard now called Douglas Rock.

At the urging of his friend Tim Chilton, Mr. West told stories into
a tape recorder about his life and times aboard Venture. The result was
a book, The Sloop Venture of Vineyard Haven, Stories by Pat West,
published in 2001.

He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Isabel; a son, Nathaniel of
Friendship, Me.; a daughter, Christine Goessweiner of Vienna, Austria;
two sisters, Janet of Vineyard Haven and Sue Bruce of Menemsha and Ft.
Lauderdale; five grandchildren, Thomas, George and Peter of Vienna;
Christopher of Thorndike, Me., and Alexandra of Vineyard Haven; two
great-grandchildren; four nephews, and two nieces.

A memorial gathering will be held Monday, July 15, at 11 a.m. at Pat
and Isabel's home on Herring Creek Road. Please carpool when
possible; starting at 10:15 a.m., shuttle transportation service will be
available from the lower end of Daggett avenue to transport guests to
and from the West residence. In memory of Mr. West, sail your boat to
Tashmoo or ride your bicycle.