Ted McElhinny and his wife, Stacey, were settling in one night eight years ago when he received an email on his phone. He read it and gasped.
“Oh my God, I think this email is going to change our life,” he said.
When Stacey read it, she agreed: “I think you’re right.”
The email was an offer to sell Ted the boat of his dreams, a Shannon 38, one of 99 built between 1975 and 1984. It wasn’t just the make and model he had been looking for, it was a specific boat he had a long history with, one he thought was lost forever.
He didn’t sleep much that night. He was in Maine within a few days, shaking hands with the seller to seal the deal.
Bearing hull No. 73, the classic bluewater cutter was laid up in Rhode Island in 1981-82. His parents, Wilson and Barbara “Bobbie” McElhinny, were its original owners. Ted knew the boat well, having raced from Marion to Bermuda twice in it with his parents and brothers, and having spent many happy hours sailing it in the Chesapeake Bay, near where he now lives in Easton, Maryland. The boat was so much a part of his life that it was a major factor in where he chose to live.
“We actually moved to a town that was convenient to my work and to my parents’ house,” he says. “My dad was working, so he only used the boat on weekends, but I was working a lot of weekends, so I sailed it during the week. I was almost sailing it more than he was.”
When he got the fateful email, Ted had a Pearson 35 but was searching for his “retirement boat,” something he could cruise to the Caribbean. He was pretty sure he wanted a Mason 44. Cruising during retirement had been a dream since he visited the Bahamas on a friend’s parents’ boat in the 1970s. Yet he had lived for years with the gnawing disappointment that he’d lost track of Garandara, the Shannon.
“When my dad sold it, I wasn’t in a position to purchase the boat from him,” Ted explains. It was 1990, and he was climbing the corporate ladder as an airline pilot with a succession of companies including Piedmont, USAir, and American. He and Stacey were just starting their family. As much as he loved the Shannon, it was not in the cards for him.
Fortunately, when his father sold it, the new buyer was nearby and happy to have Ted on board. His relationship with the Shannon continued, and perhaps it even deepened with the knowledge that the boat might slip away someday.
“Every time I visited, I’d tell the new owner, ‘If you ever plan to sell the boat, please let me know first,’ ” he says.
Over time, the man moved to Maine with the boat and Ted lost contact with him. Then the man died, and his family sold the boat. Ted thought he’d never see it again.
One day, his father called. He’d heard from the most recent owner, and the boat was still in Maine. That owner found Wilson McElhinny’s name in some of the original paperwork that was passed along with the title.
Ted told the Shannon’s owner that he would like right of first refusal if the man wanted to sell but was afraid to hope. The guy was young, was a real sailor, and might hold onto the Shannon forever. But a few years later, he was ready to move on, so he sent the email that fired up Ted’s imagination and put him on the road to Maine as quickly as possible.
Reuniting with the boat was sweet, as its subsequent owners had treated it well. Known as Garandara when his parents owned it, others rechristened it as Grace and Widgeon. When it became his, Ted decided the name Full Circle best suited the boat’s journey.
“Nobody liked the original name, Garandara. I asked my dad about it once and he said it was my mother’s idea. Garandara was the name of a pile of rocks in Ireland or something,” he says with a laugh.
Yet his mother’s memory and presence on the boat—especially at the nav station—is a critical part of Ted’s attachment.
“My mom was a celestial navigator,” he says. “When they were building the boat, that was where she had input, the nav station.” He keeps a black and white photo of her tucked into the trim above the desk. In it, she’s taking a sun sight with her sextant. (Her instrument now occupies a place of honor on his brother’s boat.) She died in 1991.
Bill Ramos, vice president of sales for Shannon Yachts, remembers working with the McElhinnys. He was impressed with Bobbie’s navigational skills and confirmed that she designed a unique feature for the boat. It’s a double door that, through an ingenious latch and hinge configuration, uncouples to become two doors that provide privacy simultaneously for the adjoining head and V-berth. She also had a small footrest installed below the nav station.
“I’m always hitting my ankle on it, but I won’t take it out because it was my mom’s,” Ted says. Hanging on the wall across the salon are the original clock and barometer that his father’s employees presented him with decades ago. Ted was thrilled to find the set intact when he reunited with the boat. Most original details were unaltered, including the brass portlights, the bifold salon table, and the rich teak interior.
“Aside from the connection with my parents, the sailing I’ve done with my brother, Ward, more recently makes it really special,” Ted says. When they make passages together, they reminisce about the Bermuda races, especially the time they took turns huddling in the protection of the dodger when they shared watch duties during a downpour.
Although he needed to replace the Perkins engine with a Kubota, take apart the cabin sole to replace tanks, and add a bimini and dodger, Ted has no regrets about reclaiming his parents’ boat.
“Every day I wake up and think of how lucky I am,” he says. “I could just pinch myself.”
Alison O’Leary is a sailor, author, and public speaker. See www.alisonoleary.com.
August/September 2025
