Dick and Judy Kilroy spend many happy hours cruising and racing their Morgan 38, Vixen
Issue 12 : May/Jun 2000
They tore out of Red Brook Harbor and flew across Buzzards Bay under sail in 50-knot winds, picking up their mooring in Marion, Mass., while the boat was doing at least 12 knots.
That was the wind-up of Dick and Judy Kilroy’s first weekend with their brand-new Morgan 38, in July 1978. The transmission failed, but they had to hustle home in time to get to work.
“Morgan had put the transmission in at the wrong angle,” Dick recalls. “It never should have happened. A good friend had taken delivery of a Morgan in June, and he had a transmission failure, so I told them I didn’t want that happening. They said it wouldn’t. Then, when we got out, the thing would only go in reverse!”
Twenty-two years later, Vixen is still a member of the family and, better yet, placed third in class in the 1999 Marion-Bermuda Cruising Yacht Race.
“We looked, and looked, and looked,” Dick says, remembering their hunt for the perfect boat in 1978. “We felt the Morgan 38 offered the most boat for the money.”
That homeward flight across Buzzards Bay on the first weekend was too brutal to forget, but even then, transmission problems or no, Vixen performed nobly.
“I was afraid I would jibe it, and I didn’t know what the boat would do at those speeds,” Judy recalls. “I thought we’d lose the rudder and steerage, but it didn’t happen, thank God!”
It was also fortunate that Judy and Dick were accomplished sailors, well able to cope with the situation. Judy learned as an adult, but Dick, a manufacturer’s rep in power transmission and material handling, has sailed all his life.
“For the first 19 years of my life my grandparents had a cottage on Lake Chautauqua in New York. For my first 17 years, I would get out of school in June and go away to stay with my grandparents for the summer. I played on boats from the time I was a little kid,” Dick says.
Joint ownership
Dick’s first boat-owning venture was a partnership with a friend, Wes Holland. Wes owned the boat — a hydroplane he’d made himself — and Dick owned the motor — a 7.5-hp outboard. Later, Wes graduated to a Comet, but had to give it up when he married. Dick bought his friend’s Comet in 1961 and took the boat with him when he moved to the Boston area.
As Judy remembers it, Dick had bought the Comet shortly after they met.
“He had just bought a little wooden boat. He said to me, ‘C’mon out. You’ll enjoy this.’ ” Judy had never been sailing. She loved it.
Not only did she pass the sailing test, she also quickly discerned that Dick did not enjoy navigating, so she took on that shipboard task. A computer systems analyst, she enjoys the game.
After they married, they kept on sailing. A Tradition 23 — one of eight built by Ray Gaffey in Hyannis, Mass. — took the place of the Comet in 1968.
Meanwhile, the Kilroy family grew from two to three in 1964 (Karen), to four in 1966 (Kathleen), to five in 1969 (David). In 1973, they bought a Pearson Wanderer.
By the late 1970s, the Kilroy children were growing ever larger and so were the sizes of the boats their sailing friends were buying. Dick and Judy started the hunt for their own bigger, better boat.
The result was their decision to buy the Ted Brewer-designed Morgan 38 (or 382).
Charlie Morgan drew the lines of the first 38, a centerboard racer produced between 1969 and 1971. Seventy of these boats were built. During the 1970s, as the company looked for an entry into the fast-growing midsize market, Ted Brewer was called upon to design the model that became the 38-2 (or 382). This boat went into production in 1977 with 400 produced through 1981.
The 383 was introduced in 1982. It incorporated a taller rig with a shortened boom and lightened weather helm. The next year Morgan introduced the 384, a dressed-up version with lots of topsides teak. About 100 of each of the latter two models were produced before the line ended in 1985.
“It was a modern design,” Dick says of the 382, “with a modified keel with a skeg and attached rudder and a cutaway forefoot, as opposed to a fin or full keel. I felt the fin keel/spade rudder was too new. I didn’t feel confident about it. A full keel with attached rudder with no cut-away forefoot I felt would be a much slower boat. The Morgan 38 was a good compromise of the things available at the time.”
“And I liked the downstairs,” says Judy, an effervescent sailing lover with no time for salty terms. “The Morgan 38 was advertised as sleeping eight, so we figured each child could bring a friend.”
They also liked the galley. Coming from a smaller boat, it looked like heaven. The Morgan 38 had a two-burner stove, an oven, a huge ice chest, a double stainless sink, and pressurized water — not to mention hot-and-cold running water in a stall shower. “All that was new to us,” Judy says, the delight of that long-ago discovery animating her voice.
“It had good ventilation, wood paneling, and low maintenance,” Dick adds. “The other boats we’d owned were glass but had Formica inside. The Tradition 23 was a great boat with two quarterberths and two V-berths, a sink, an ice chest, and a stove. There was no enclosed head. I could sit on the toilet and brush my teeth and turn the bacon at the same time.”
Pure heaven
“When we saw the Morgan — a head with a door — it was pure heaven,” Judy says. “And now that the children have grown, the boat is perfect for two and comfortable for the times we invite another couple to cruise with us.”
The children, now 35, 33, and 30, still spend summer holidays with their parents on Vixen and have crewed on the Kilroys’ five races to Bermuda. “They all sailed before they were born,” Judy says.
The Kilroys are among the lucky few who have a mooring in Sippican Harbor, in Marion, where the waiting list is now in the decades. When they bought the Tradition 23, one of Judy’s college roommates recommended Marion as a nice place to keep a boat. Dick approached the harbormaster, Bill Coulson, who supplied a rental mooring immediately. No problem. As time went by, the Kilroys decided they’d like to own the mooring. For several years running, Dick tried to buy the mooring, but each year Bill would simply not respond to the request. Finally, in 1972, Dick says he pushed.
“Coulson said, ‘I can’t sell you the mooring. It’s a rock,’ ” Dick chuckles. “So I said, ‘Put in a mooring and give me space.’ I went to Bliss, bought a mushroom, and we’ve been sitting here ever since.”
Since 1995, the mooring has actually been a helix, mandated by the town for the crowded harbor following the multimillion-dollar disaster of Hurricane Bob, which flung yachts everywhere.
The Kilroys have made the most of their location. Virtually every weekend during the season they sail, preferring to cruise, although they have raced and placed well in five Marion-Bermuda Cruising Yacht Races.
“This is our first choice of activities. We use the boat every weekend barring other social commitments (weddings and funerals only). We come down Friday night, raft up with friends, and depart for somewhere on Saturday, where we meet more friends and raft up. We spend virtually every weekend somewhere — Quisset, Hadley’s, Vineyard Haven,” Dick says, naming lovely local harbors, popular among cruising-boat owners. “On longer weekends, we go to Chatham, Nantucket, Newport.”
“We love Gardiner’s Bay at the fork of Long Island, and Shelter Island, and Montauk,” Judy adds, naming more harbors in Connecticut and New York.
For years, the Kilroys traveled to Marion from their Holliston home to go sailing. A few years ago, they bought a house in Marion and now call Marion home. Judy has been intrigued to find that the residents of Marion are not necessarily aware of the activity in their harbor, and vice versa.
“There is a subculture of people who just float in the harbor. We know the boats which weekend and cruise and have no shore attachment. We all share things, help each other out. We’ll take someone somewhere if they don’t have a car. It’s a whole sub-community that uses the town dock but doesn’t know anyone ashore,” Judy muses.
A community of sailors
Members of the sailing community look after each other, she continues. “If a boat hasn’t been used for six weeks, we call and ask. In another case, a husband racing with friends died on the return race. His wife knew we were here and called, asking us to turn off the battery on their boat. We were glad to be able to help.”
The Kilroy children, growing up in this sailing world, learned to swim early on. “We told them if they wanted to be on deck without life jackets in the harbor they had to be able to swim around the boat twice while the boat was anchored or at the mooring. Then, if they wanted to sail without a jacket, they had to be able to swim from the boat to shore — a distance of about 300 yards,” Dick says. “Those were our rules.”
The Kilroys made a point of making friends with people who had children the same ages as the Kilroy youngsters, Judy says, “so our kids would look forward to sailing. That has paid off. We have a second generation coming along now. One grandchild — seven-year-old Heather — loves sailing.”
“Meeting people and having fun — that’s what it’s all about,” Judy adds, and then, watching Dick stroll down the dock in deep conversation with a couple he’s just helped tie up at the Marion town landing, “Dick is a dock talker, too. It’s the whole thing.”
If there is a high point of their many adventures with Vixen, it might be the time they sailed down the East River and through the Hell’s Gate to New York Harbor to see the Statue of Liberty.
“Dick didn’t want to do it, and I thought it would be the cat’s meow. He finally said, ‘OK, and you steer.’ So I read up on the harbor. I picked the perfect time. There were tugs coming up the East River at the end of the flood (tide). Hell’s Gate was as serene as Sippican Harbor on a windless day. We went under the Triborough Bridge and by La Guardia (airport), Riker’s Island, Roosevelt Island, the UN buildings, and the Guggenheim (art museum in New York City). He was saying, ‘How are you going to find the Statue of Liberty in this big harbor?’ I looked around, and there it was! It was so neat!”
The Kilroys have been incredibly lucky through all the hurricanes that have struck Sippican Harbor over the years. Just before Hurricane Bob hit the harbor, they had been sailing with Judy’s sister and her husband. They had heard a hurricane was on the way, but they were in a hurry to put the boat to bed and get home on that Sunday night. They stripped the sails and the dodger and went home after putting out an extra anchor.
But, once home, they began to worry. Judy was charting the progress of the hurricane, and it looked worse and worse. Deciding they had to haul Vixen, they jumped in the car and headed back to Marion, calling the boatyard on the car phone as they sped south.
“They hauled us at 1:30 a.m. and put us up at the bandstand (on a playing field by the Marion town landing). We tied the dinghy to a tree, and that was it. We went home,” Judy recalls. The entire field was covered with other hauled boats, Vixen in their midst.
Left standing
The next afternoon, the Kilroys headed back to Marion after the hurricane had passed.
“All the businesses were closed. They wouldn’t let you drive on Front Street (which leads to the town landing). We started walking down Front Street. We saw the Beverly Yacht Club committee boat stuck in the front door of one of the Tabor Academy buildings off Front Street. There were more boats on Tabor’s lawn. We were walking down the street, hand in hand. I’m crying,” says Judy, reliving the scene with a shudder. “We see there are still some masts standing — six of them. Ours was one of the six (out of more than 100) that didn’t get knocked over.
“We went sailing the following weekend,” Judy added. “We left very cautiously and felt guilty because boats were still strewn everywhere, and we got just one scratch. The powerboats all floated into the stands and the sailboats (on the field) fell over like dominoes. Since Vixen was in the middle, it didn’t topple.”
During Hurricane Gloria — another multimillion-dollar disaster in New England — the Kilroys left Vixen on the mooring and put out another anchor. Incredibly, no other boats in the crowded harbor crashed into the Morgan, and the gear held. The Kilroys — watching anxiously — could see Vixen was burying the rail on each wind-driven tack. Dick attributed the boat’s survival to reinforced chafe gear, and a more powerful anchor cleat and stemhead fitting he had installed.
During the most recent hurricane scare, they hauled Vixen to a boatyard in a cove off Sippican Harbor. Safely stowed 20 feet above high water, Vixen came through the storm without a scratch.
“Over the years, we really haven’t had a lot of calamities or gear failure. We’ve had no disasters. Not even near-misses,” says Dick. “And we’re not horribly cautious. We go out in anything.”
Now that they have a little more time to themselves, the Kilroys have bought a Catalina 38 for winter cruising to Puerto Rico and around the Caribbean.
“A lot of people we know bring boats up and down (the East Coast). That’s tough on you and the boat. So instead of spending extra money to get a bigger boat to do that, we just got another boat,” he says.
They looked for another Morgan 38 but were unable to find one for sale in decent condition. The Catalina fit their bill of requirements and was ready when they were.
“Vixen will be our northern boat and the new one will be the southern boat — God and the bank account willing,” Dick says. “It’s a wonderful life.”
Gail has been a freelance writer and photographer – primarily in the boating field – for 22 years and has been published in most of the major boating magazines (now including Good Old Boat, of course!). She is founding a stock photo company with another photographer.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
