Former owners reach out across the years
Issue 103 : Jul/Aug 2015
There is a lot to love about sailing. Hal Roth put it simply when he wrote of “the pleasure and the freedom.” Lesser mortals talk about wind in their hair and spray in their faces. Others love being away from it all and setting off on adventures to unknown lands. Whether daysailing on lakes or crossing oceans, one of the pleasures of sailing is meeting other sailors. Always, someone has just come from where you are going or is going where you have just been. Invariably, another salty soul has seen the same problem with his gear that you are trying to solve; I have yet to meet a sailor unwilling to share that knowledge. A new sailing friendship unexpectedly formed from across the globe arouses particular delight.
Mary and I have been steadily working toward our plan to move aboard a sailboat and into a life outside the norm. I have always maintained that sailors fall somewhere on the spectrum between those who can afford boats and those who can fix them. I am on the “fix them” end of the scale. We have bought, restored, sailed, and sold project boat after project boat, moving from a 17-foot weekender to our current work in progress, a 39-foot Yorktown.
From our base in Ireland, we scanned the used-boat adverts for a bargain bluewater cruiser in Europe, with an emphasis on Britain for its proximity and its larger market. One evening, quite by chance, I discovered on an Irish trading website a boat for sale just 20 minutes’ drive away. Miles from the sea, this 39-footer looked huge and completely out of place, but Pendragon was just what we were looking for and miraculously within our budget.
The seller said this 1974 Yorktown 39, bluewater model, had been bought from an American couple who had lived aboard and sailed her for 12 years. The liveaboard layout did not suit the current owner’s needs and so — after sailing her for a season or two — he brought her inland for a complete overhaul. Sometimes life intervenes with projects such as this and Pendragon languished for seven years on a trailer, stripped to the bare hull and awaiting a rejuvenating hand. She has now sat in my garden, receiving daily attention, for the past nine months and I expect she will be sailing once again in another six. Almost daily, she has revealed more and more of her history to us, but it was not until a few weeks ago, when I received a large stack of long-forgotten manuals and folders that had belonged to the boat, that the full extent of her history became clear.
Among the folders and manuals was a little black-and-red hardback journal. Inscribed inside the cover were the words, “For Pendragon’s new family.” To us, this was like the unveiling of the tomb of Tutankhamun. We were receiving from the hands of the American couple, Linda Davis and Jim Rueff, everything we could possibly need to know about the boat. But the best was yet to come. Toward the end was an invitation to get in touch with them and an email address. As quickly as we could type it, we sent an email across the world to Washington state and the home of Pendragon’s former liveaboard owners.
Never had the time difference between our two continents seemed so long. Then, late in the evening, an email arrived that began: “We were just wondering if Pendragon would go on another adventure.” In a couple of clicks of a mouse, we had bridged the gaps, geographical and chronological. Within a few emails, all our questions about Pendragon’s history had been answered and all of our wonderings satisfied. Most important, we had made new friends with a couple who had gone before us and have since become mentors as Pendragon is restored, refitted, and reincarnated as Faoin Spéir, Irish for “under the skies.”
Leonard Skinner’s full-time job is the Faoin Spéir refit but, since it doesn’t pay, he makes a living writing and teaching engineering in an alternative-education school for teens. He and his partner, Mary, sail on Lough Derg, Ireland, in their 1969 Achillies 24. They’re working toward completing the restoration of Faoin Spéir with the intention of moving aboard in July 2016. For more about the project, visit www.faoinspeir.com.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
