Go ahead. Tell me who you love most in this world. I’m willing to bet that your boat makes the top five, perhaps the top three—even number one, depending upon where you are in your life at the moment.
You can admit it; this is a safe space for this kind of giddy, largely privileged irrationality. Love ruins everything, we all know that, and boat love is particularly hard to explain to people who don’t get it. Especially when your boat was born maybe even before you were. Or when it’s an absolute money pit, a former beauty that has fallen on hard times, and you know it’s a desperate and foolish thing and still, you can’t resist.
There’s a Cal 40 that I’ve had this problem with for several years now. It’s sitting in a backwater Virginia boatyard, forlorn, its topsides tinted a mossy green. Trees aren’t quite growing out of the cockpit but it’s a close thing. I saw her first from a distance, a gaze across a crowded, smoky room, as it were, and like something out of a weird Hitchcock film my vision tunneled down and suddenly I was beside her, gobsmacked. Awed by her elegance, saddened by her solitude.
A Cal 40. A legend. Just sitting here, dying slowly. I took photos. I showed them to my husband, who rebuilds, restores, and upgrades sailboats for a living.
“We could do it!” I gushed. “She’d be perfect for us! She’d be fantastic! She sails like a witch!”
Of course, he already knew that last bit—name me a racer of a certain era who doesn’t know the Cal 40 and get a little lust in their heart. The second time we visited her, it was enough to lure him to do a cursory hull inspection; he wasn’t displeased at the result. For a moment or two, I thought maybe I had him…
He talked me down. He talks me down every time I drop by to look at her again, take more photos. He talked me down after I asked the yard to put me in touch with the owner, who would give us the boat because her father, dazzled by the design and the possibilities of the boat’s restoration, died before he could start it. He even talked down a mutual friend who got onboard and took more photos—and oh, is she rough—and suggested we team up, restore her to her former glory, and race her (and if you think that’s crazy talk, see Stan and Sally Lindsay Honey’s St. David’s Lighthouse division victory in the 2022 Newport Bermuda Race with their rejuvenated 56-year-old Cal 40, Illusion).
We have the skills; all it would take is gajillions of hours and dollars. If we had both in abundance, I have little doubt we’d rescue her. But cooler heads have prevailed. So far.
Instead, we have poured our time, talent, and money into another great older design, a Peterson 34, and even though in many ways she is impractical for the kind of sailing we plan ultimately to do with her, she also sails like a witch. More than that, our feelings about her are not rational. She’s not just an aggregate of fiberglass, epoxy, metal, and wood. She was our very first honest-to-god adult boat. Our kids grew up on her. She has hatched a thousand dreams, some of which have come true.
If we were being practical, we’d stop this; we know we’d never get the money out of her that we put in because she’s too aged, she’s too uncomfortable by today’s standards (for gods sake, she doesn’t even have an indoor shower let alone a dishwasher!), she’s too old school, despite being updated with the latest and greatest. Still, we love her, and we know we probably always will.
I know we are not alone in this affliction.
So, in the March 2024 issue of SAIL, we’re starting a new section called Boats and Their People to tell more of these stories, to highlight some of the great boats and designs that many of us are still sailing, to celebrate the crazy love we feel and the blood, sweat, tears, and commitment we pledge to them. We begin with Laurie Fullerton’s story about John Stone and his Cape Dory 36, Far Reach, a bluewater cruiser, healer, and fulfiller of dreams.
One more change you’ll notice in the March issue is that Andy Schell’s excellent “At the Helm” column will now occupy the final page in the magazine—prime writing real estate and a worthy place for Andy’s seamanship insights gained from his boundless enthusiasm and bluewater adventures with 59° North Sailing.
Keep on sailing,
Wendy
