Mystic sometimes hosts very special guests
Issue 114: May/June 2017
Our Mystic is no ordinary C&C 30. Not only has she been featured in this magazine uncountable times, she’s had two sailing luminaries at her helm: George Cuthbertson and Lin Pardey.
George, for those for whom the name doesn’t ring a bell, is one of the Cs in C&C. He and George Cassian founded the well-known Canadian sailboat manufacturer in 1969. (For more about that history, refer to our September 2002 issue, or read it on the website of the C&C 27 Association: www.cc27association.com/history.html.) As C&C’s chief designer for many years, George Cuthbertson had enormous influence on Mystic’s design.
Imagine our delight in the summer of 2005 when George contacted us and suggested he drop by and meet us at the marina in the town of Spanish, Ontario. We eagerly agreed, then got anxious. As we cleaned and polished our 30-year-old gal before she would meet the man who made her, we hoped George wouldn’t be disappointed in Mystic, or with any of the modifications we had made to her. Instead, we were pleased to learn that this legendary designer was down-to-earth and simply curious about a couple of Great Lakes sailors who’d started a sailing magazine for people who love their good old boats.
Lin Pardey needs no introduction. Over the years, she and Larry Pardey have visited us at our home in Minnesota several times. Two years ago, Jerry and I visited them at their home in New Zealand. Like George, they were initially curious about the couple who’d founded a sailing magazine. Unlike George, neither Lin nor Larry had ever visited us aboard Mystic. Not until the fall of 2016, that is.
Larry’s health is not good these days and he doesn’t travel much, but Lin is still active on the boat show circuit, offering seminars and promoting their books. Last September, driving east from the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival to the Annapolis sailboat show, Lin again stopped by for a visit. This time we invited her for a sail aboard Mystic.
Despite enjoying a close friendship with Lin, Jerry and I were again a bit anxious ahead of welcoming such a sailing celebrity aboard Mystic. Lin has circumnavigated aboard two boats as different as can be from our plastic and unremarkable C&C 30 (sorry George!), two boats she helped to build. What would she think?
Well, we needn’t have worried. A sailboat’s a sailboat, and Lin was up for a visit to Bayfield, Wisconsin, where her arrival caused quite a stir at our marina. As it turns out, Lin had never been on Lake Superior and said she’d only been on a boat on any of the Great Lakes once: a powerboat on Lake Michigan long, long ago. We needed to rectify that!
We had to tear Lin away from our dockmates, who were thrilled to spend some time with one of this country’s best-known cruisers. She and Jill Hetherington, her traveling companion from New Zealand, were on a tight schedule, but the four of us sailed around a nearby island for a few hours before they continued on their drive east.
Although Mystic (and her owners) may have felt rather important during that sail, we shrugged it off the next day and sprang into the prep work necessary for hauling her for the winter. Our work done, we headed home to begin our own trip east to Annapolis and the big sailboat show. Not a bad way to wrap up the 2016 sailing season.
I wonder who might drop by to go sailing aboard Mystic this season?
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
