From the start, when fiberglass boats came on the scene, I've always felt that they just didn't have the character, heart and soul of wooden boats. However, I have to admit, looking back at my last boat, Skipping Stone, a Pearson 530, she had every bit as much character, heart and soul as any wooden boat I can remember. She got us safely through some dastardly weather, and gave more than a hundred and fifty non-sailors an opportunity to venture to many places in the West Indies only a boat could take them. I grieve for her as she lays on her side, her final resting place the abyssal North Atlantic, completely intact and seaworthy. She was abandoned by her new owner in 50 knots of wind, a couple of hundred miles east of the Bahamas, apparently in fear, certainly not true danger.
There are those few boats that stand out, like the Wanderbird in Sausalito, allegedly the first private yacht to sail around The Horn, east to west. She had the most gorgeous interior of any sailboat I have ever seen. And my Seafarer, a Wm. Hand, Taunton built, gaff ketch, launched in 1909 (the year Joshua Slocum set sail from Massachusetts for the Orinoco) with a real tree for a main mast. Even after being capsized three times in a cyclone off Fiji, she got us safely back to an anchorage, uninjured. I never got to sail on Stormvogle, but I spent some time aboard with her captain/caretaker, in Antigua I believe, at probably the lowest point in her life, doing what little the finances and necessity required to keep her from sinking. She was far from her glory days as the star of the movie, Dead Calm.
Joshua is another boat I did not sail on, but with, instead. We spent a cyclone season together in Opua/Russel, NZ, after sailing from Tahiti, where we met, eating mussels off the wharf, fish and rabbits. I supplied the rice, but Bernard insisted on cooking, as he put it, "Americans are terrible cooks!" I didn't mind, the French certainly aren't! Joshua was probably the most seaworthy and uncomfortable sailboat I know. Bernard was just not into creature comforts, but I loved her lines and she was the one of the few double-enders I'd take to sea for pleasure. Deliveries don't count.
I guess that old saying, "You don't know what you had until it's gone" sort of counts when an old salt is grounded. Though my mind does not believe that I can't go back to sea, the consensus is that my body is just not able.
There are those few boats that stand out, like the Wanderbird in Sausalito, allegedly the first private yacht to sail around The Horn, east to west. She had the most gorgeous interior of any sailboat I have ever seen. And my Seafarer, a Wm. Hand, Taunton built, gaff ketch, launched in 1909 (the year Joshua Slocum set sail from Massachusetts for the Orinoco) with a real tree for a main mast. Even after being capsized three times in a cyclone off Fiji, she got us safely back to an anchorage, uninjured. I never got to sail on Stormvogle, but I spent some time aboard with her captain/caretaker, in Antigua I believe, at probably the lowest point in her life, doing what little the finances and necessity required to keep her from sinking. She was far from her glory days as the star of the movie, Dead Calm.
Joshua is another boat I did not sail on, but with, instead. We spent a cyclone season together in Opua/Russel, NZ, after sailing from Tahiti, where we met, eating mussels off the wharf, fish and rabbits. I supplied the rice, but Bernard insisted on cooking, as he put it, "Americans are terrible cooks!" I didn't mind, the French certainly aren't! Joshua was probably the most seaworthy and uncomfortable sailboat I know. Bernard was just not into creature comforts, but I loved her lines and she was the one of the few double-enders I'd take to sea for pleasure. Deliveries don't count.
I guess that old saying, "You don't know what you had until it's gone" sort of counts when an old salt is grounded. Though my mind does not believe that I can't go back to sea, the consensus is that my body is just not able.
