{"id":8892,"date":"2018-06-01T09:39:40","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T14:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=8892"},"modified":"2018-06-01T09:40:26","modified_gmt":"2018-06-01T14:40:26","slug":"to-be-a-little-vigilant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=8892","title":{"rendered":"To be a Little Vigilant…"},"content":{"rendered":"

For several months last winter, Brenda and I cruised aboard Pandora through the Windward Islands, in the south east Caribbean.\u00a0 Along the way happened upon a lovely steel trawler in Le Marin, Martinique, Little Vigilant<\/em>.\u00a0 I mentioned that sighting in a prior post but my only information was a brief glimpse and a quick photo as she motored by.\u00a0 I was bummed to only get a quick shot of her as she glided by and hoped that our paths would cross again.\"\"As luck would have it, we did see her again, a number of times actually.\u00a0 When we spied her in Bequia, I was able to get aboard for a tour by captain Earl MacKenzie, who was running her for the winter.\u00a0 He knows her particularly well as he had recently been the project manager for the first stage of her refit at Front Street Shipyard<\/a> in Belfast Maine in 2017 and was clearly proud to show her off.<\/p>\n

Little Vigilant<\/em> has an interesting history.\u00a0 This is what her\u00a0Facebook page<\/a>, has to say about her.\u00a0 It’s pretty interesting.\u00a0 \u00a0It seems that she was originally\u00a0conceived by her first owner, Drayton Cochran of Oyster Bay, NY in the late 1940’s.\u00a0 \u00a0She is named after a much larger 110′ Vigilant, built in the 1930s, a sailboat I think, that he cruised widely.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find out much about Little Vigilant’s<\/em> big sister but it seems that Cochran decided to downsize and\u00a0 commissioned Walter McGinnis of Boston, MA to design a trawler for summer use on the European waterways.<\/p>\n

She was built and launched by Abeking & Rasmussen in Bremerhaven, Germany in 1950, and used by Mr Cochran extensively during the next ten years.\u00a0 As an interesting footnote, Cochran is described by some as the “father of the Concordia yawl” as he was the one that approached A&R about building these lovely little yachts that remain so popular today.<\/p>\n

Clearly, he had a very close relationship with yard as he launched both Little Vigilant and his own Concordia yawl, both built by A&R in the same year,\u00a0 Shelia, now Duende<\/em>, Concordia yawl hull #5<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0This photo is of one of her sisterships of this iconic design.\u00a0\"\"<\/span>Little Vigilant<\/em> was sold in the early ’60s to her second owner, a wealthy British businessman and sat in a storage shed, I am tempted to say “barn find”, until 2004 when she was discovered by the present owner. She has a lot of work done on her since that time both in 2005 and again last year, the first stage of a multiyear refit.<\/p>\n

She presently hails from South Darthmouth, MA, which is doubly interesting as that’s where all the Concordia yawls were launched between the late 30s and 50s.\u00a0 \u00a0As an aside, the history of the much loved Concordia Yawls has been very well documented by marine historian Waldow Holand, son of the founder of Concordia Boat Company in Padanaram, MA.\u00a0\u00a0There’s even a wonderful book about the class that’s worth reading.\"\"<\/span>However, I digress.\u00a0 So, back to Little Vigilant, also a product of the same builder that produced the Concordia yawls.\u00a0 This video about her most recent refit, is worth seeing.\u00a0 If this video seems a bit familiar, that’s because I used it in a post where I referred to Little Vigilant<\/em> back in mid February.\u00a0 I guess I’ll just say if it’s worth posting once, it’s worth posting again as this is one pretty boat.