It came with 40 years of someone else’s memories
Issue 119: March/April
Over the course of 45 years we had purchased eight sailboats in what we assumed was the natural progression of boat ownership: start small and gradually move up in size, comfort, and complexity. In all those years, each purchase brought excitement and new adventures, but we were more attached to sailing than to any one boat. That all changed when we purchased our ninth sailboat.
Her name was Essence. She was a 40-year-old custom-built 35-foot Yorktown sloop, the dream child of neighbors Jerry and Bobbie Burnett. We had only to scan the broad deck or stand in the handcrafted teak interior to know this boat had been a labor of love.
The Yorktown is a kit boat dating back to the late 1960s. A company in Long Beach, California, sold sailors the unfinished hull-and-deck kits and owners finished the assembly, the interior, and the rigging on their own. For Essence, Jerry had brought his fine-tuned engineering skills and Bobbie her many artistic talents. The young couple spent 13 months finishing the construction and rigging, finally launching the boat in San Diego in 1974. A few years later, she was transported to the Gulf of Mexico and then sailed to Chesapeake Bay by way of the ICW.
Essence had been berthed in our community marina for as long as we had lived here, but we had never been on board. At 78 years of age, Jerry was in failing health, yet it had still taken him years to agree to sell Essence. It was a perfect late-summer evening when Bobbie invited us aboard for a glass of wine to “just have a look at the boat” before it was put up for sale. We were not in the market for a sailboat at the time, a fact I reminded my husband of before we accepted their invitation. But it took only one glass of wine and one look inside the teak-lined cabin and we were sold!
We spent the following summer pointing Essence toward our favorite anchorages on the Wye River, where the broad, open Chesapeake sky meets the low-lying farmland of the Eastern Shore. We reveled in the spacious deck and cabin, the ease with which the Yorktown handled the wind, and the wonder of roller furling. Gone were the years of changing the headsail while tripping over the bow and yelling instructions into the wind to a spouse on the helm who couldn’t hear a word. And while I worked hard on my descriptive entries to the daily log, when I needed inspiration, I would randomly choose one of Bobbie’s from earlier years, enjoying her tales of long-ago adventures.
One year after we purchased Essence, Jerry Burnett passed away. At his memorial, Bobbie displayed enlargements she had made of photos from their life together. Most of the photos were of Bobbie and Jerry on Essence. Most of the tributes were by people who had sailed on Essence, and her name came up again and again throughout the memorial. She had truly been an important focus of their life.
That was when it struck us that we hadn’t bought a boat as much as we had inherited a legacy. Essence was her own life force, having embodied the dreams and adventures of one couple over nearly four decades of exploring. Now she would transition to embody our dreams and adventures, taking on the essence of our life.
Essence sails well to windward despite the wide beam that accommodates her roomy interior. Her original Perkins diesel still gets us through the midsummer doldrums and the Yorktown hull design still handles Chesapeake wind and waves beautifully. There is a lot of life left in this boat and more than a few new adventures. But whatever our future ports of call, we have learned something we never truly understood before, that when you purchase a boat, you become a caretaker of its history. We know that Essence has led a long, fulfilling life and we are proud to carry on her legacy.
Christine Olsenius has been sailing for 45 years, including a nine-month voyage through the Caribbean, cruising Lake Superior, the San Juan Islands, the Bay of Fundy, the southwest Coast of Ireland, and Chesapeake Bay. Her photographer husband, Richard, has taken a small boat up the Inside Passage from Seattle to Glacier Bay, and in 1988 crewed on Belvedere, the first American yacht to sail the Northwest Passage West to East.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
