Issue 4 : Jan/Feb 1999
Ben Stavis is the kind of person who turns good ideas into reality. In fact, he turns good ideas into really good ideas. Ownership of a 41-foot Rhodes Reliant led to the development of an informal group of owners … to the creation of an extensive maintenance manual for sailors (check out his website listed elsewhere in this article for a look at this) … to the creation of a website for owners of Rhodes Reliants and Offshore 40s … and eventually to the development of a plan to match the right kind of sailors with neglected and salvageable boats.
Ben couldn’t foresee what was to come at the beginning of this excursion, and perhaps that’s just as well. But the future is now, and Ben has just unleashed a very useful idea. Let’s start at the beginning.
Ben grew up sailing on a series of sailboats owned by his parents. The last of these, Astante, a 41-foot Rhodes Reliant, became his with the death of his father. Seven years later, Ben says his father is still with him in spirit when he sails or maintains Astante.
Ben has always watched for other Rhodes Reliants on his summer cruises to the Block Island and Cape Cod area. The informal trading of maintenance and upgrade information and addresses led Ben to the development of an owner’s network.
But he didn’t sit back and wait to discover sisterships on his cruises or for their owners to contact him. He contacted Cheoy Lee, the builder, looking for others; ran announcements in sailing magazines; searched the web; and finally launched a website. He has now located approximately 90 of the 156 Rhodes Reliants built between 1964 and 1976.
Occasionally sailors looking for a neglected and available Rhodes Reliant contact Ben through the website to see if he knows of any boats in need of TLC and available at a reasonable price awaiting only the additional investment of sweat equity and do-it-yourself skills.
“From the web page, I occasionally get inquiries about boats for sale,” Ben says. “Frequently (people are looking for) boats in very poor condition, available cheaply, and needing extensive reconstruction. I’ve been around boatyards enough to realize that every boatyard has its abandoned dreams, and I knew that some of our sisterships must be abandoned also, just hoping to be discovered by the right person. In fact, at the boatyard I use, a sistership had been completely taken apart for restoration, stayed in that shape and deteriorated for years, and then, unfortunately, the owner died suddenly. It took several years for the right person to find her and start rebuilding her.”
This launched something on the order of a crusade. As Ben tells it, “I knew there must be other sisterships in this condition, looking for the right person to fix them up. I realized that these boats are so far gone that no one would advertise them, and the way to match the boat with the dreamer was to try to get information from the boatyard owners, who were wondering how to get rid of these abandoned hulks. So I took out advertisements in Professional Boatbuilder and the American Association of Boat Builders and Repairers newsletter.”
Ben reasoned that making a match between the do-it-yourself sailor with more enthusiasm than money could benefit both the new owner and the boatyard where these boats eventually became a storage and disposal problem. He also realized that the parts on these boats might help in the restoration of other boats. The next time he looked up, this idea had grown. Ben suggested that Good Old Boat magazine facilitate the matching of fixer-upper boats with fixer-upper sailors, offered to make boatyard contacts to help locate the boats in need of TLC, and became a matchmaker for dreamers and neglected boats.
The October Good Old Boat newsletter ran introductory information on this concept and asked people who know of abandoned or neglected boats in back yards or boatyards near them to contact Good Old Boat with more information. In the magazine and in the newsletter, we’ll keep you posted as contacts are made, boats are found, and things begin happening.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
