{"id":9335,"date":"2018-12-06T10:54:40","date_gmt":"2018-12-06T15:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=9335"},"modified":"2023-09-22T20:25:14","modified_gmt":"2023-09-23T01:25:14","slug":"hey-honey-lets-buy-a-boat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=9335","title":{"rendered":"Hey honey, let’s buy a boat."},"content":{"rendered":"

It was the late 70s, and we still practically newly weds, when I said something like “hey honey, let’s buy a boat”.\u00a0 \u00a0 Brenda and I had been sailing together since our junior year of high school when we sailed aboard a Carl Alberg Typhoon out or Norwalk with our friend Chris.\u00a0 It was from Chris that I caught the sailing bug.<\/p>\n

Well, Brenda must have said yes, or is perhaps guilty of not putting up a better fight, but one way or the other, we settled on our first boat.\u00a0 \u00a0Somehow we found a tiny, although it didn’t seem particularly tiny to us at the time, Cape Cod catboat, a Mystic 20 built in Groton CT named Tao.\u00a0 \u00a0 She was named, as are so many “cat” boats, after a cat.\u00a0 In this case, the Siamese cat in the Disney story “The Incredible Journey”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We looked at her in Mystic CT and it was love at first sight.\u00a0 Our very first boat.\u00a0 \u00a0I believe this is a shot of her in the marina, the day we took delivery.
\n\"\"We headed out, aboard Tao, with our friends, Chris and Pat for the run back to Bridgeport where we planned to keep her.\u00a0 \u00a0 I was a happy guy.\u00a0 \u00a0Happy to have a boat that was better looking than my hat.\u00a0 \u00a0 Well, this shot wasn’t taken on that exact day, but it illustrates my point.\u00a0\"\"Brenda, perhaps happy as well but only until she discovered, to her extreme distress, that she was prone to nausea when things got bumpy.\u00a0 Which on a small boat, is nearly all of the time.\u00a0 I wish I could say that she eventually got over it, but not completely, even to this day, 40 years later.<\/p>\n

Look at her. Her expression is very nearly “come hither”.\u00a0 Worked for me…<\/p>\n

I guess it was a calm day on the water.\u00a0 Nice sweater,\u00a0 she knitted this one and many, many others, over the years.\u00a0 Hundreds?\u00a0 Quite possibly.
\n\"\"Well, we finally made it to Bridgeport where I had arranged for a mooring to be installed off of the beach, down the street from the duplex apartment that we were renting at the time.<\/p>\n

That arrival day, when we tied up to the mooring off of the beach,\u00a0 was not a calm day.\u00a0 Not at all.\u00a0 Once we were secured to the mooring, Brenda leaped overboard, foul weather gear and all, and waded ashore.\u00a0 \u00a0I don’t recall what she said or perhaps thought exactly, about that first cruise but I am pretty sure it isn’t printable.\u00a0 \u00a0 Not a great way to begin our sailing life together.<\/p>\n

Shortly after that horrible beach landing, perhaps the very next day, I moved the boat to a more sheltered mooring in a nearby harbor.<\/p>\n

From that day forward there has been an ongoing quest to find calm anchorages.\u00a0 Sometimes we were actually successful.\u00a0\"\"We hung out with our friends Chris and Pat along with others, nearly every weekend.\u00a0 \u00a0No outboard engines on our dinks in those days.\u00a0 Chris and Garrett with me in the bow.\u00a0 Good thing it was a calm anchorage.\u00a0 \u00a0Rub a dub, dub…<\/p>\n

Chris and Pat’s Sea Sprite 23 had an outboard.\u00a0 Way to small for an inboard.
\n\"\"We joined the Catboat Association and were members for many years.\u00a0 Eventually, Brenda and I ended up on the board, or “steering committee”.\u00a0 Get it “steering” the association, like a boat?\u00a0 Clever?\u00a0 We thought so.<\/p>\n

We also participated in many catboat races in those days.\u00a0 \u00a0However, like today, back then, if you ask Brenda what her favorite part of sailing is, she will say, predictably, “being anchored”.
\n\"\"And anchor we did.\u00a0 I particularly like this shot of Brenda.\u00a0 \u00a0What a dish.\u00a0 I’d totally date that girl.\u00a0 \u00a0To starboard, a mop, or some bleach blond chick.\u00a0 No, a mop, really.\u00a0\"\"However, anchoring alone was rare for us as we nearly always rafted up with other small boats.\u00a0 Somehow three tiny boats tied up together don’t seem, well, so tiny.\u00a0 \u00a0That became even more important when we all started popping out kiddos.\u00a0 \u00a0 However, we weren’t in a rush, as while we were “yacht owners” we didn’t want to bring kids into the world until we were really settled.<\/p>\n

To us, being “settled” meant a microwave and garage,<\/span> which weren’t in place until we’d been married for nearly 8 years.\u00a0 Actually, there was more to it than that as we were pretty much kids ourselves when we got married, our early 20s.\u00a0 Kids having kids doesn’t always work out so well.<\/p>\n

Here’s Tao rafted with her bigger sister Lady Bug, a Legnos 10-3 and Petrel, a sister ship to Tao owned by Toby and Martha Forbes.\u00a0 \u00a0We met them. along with their son and his family that owned Lady Bug in Port Jefferson.\u00a0 \u00a0We became long time friends and eventually moved into the guest cottage on their estate Oak Knoll, in Ridgefield not long after this shot was taken.\u00a0\"\"This is where Toby and Martha lived, in the main house.\u00a0 It was built by Frederick Remington, the artist<\/a>, as a summer home.\u00a0 \u00a0We loved it there and lived on the estate for, I think, three years.\u00a0 \u00a0Oak Knoll<\/a> was designated as a historic site in the 60s.\u00a0\"\"I was a really charming little cottage, once the home of the estate gardener and also built by Remington.\u00a0\u00a0\"\"It was a great spot and the deck, nearly as large as our cottage, provided a spectacular view.\u00a0\"\"I loved working out in the yard, or should I say, the South 40, clearing brush and cutting dead wood for the wood stove.\u00a0 \u00a0Toby and Martha were very happy to have the help, I think.\u00a0 I am not absolutely positive about that, but they were always very gracious.\u00a0 \u00a0They left us pretty much alone and it wasn’t until years later that we really became good friends.\u00a0 We all wished we had spent more time together when we lived in the cottage.<\/p>\n

Toby and Martha met during WWII in SanDiego.\u00a0 Toby was a PBY Catalina amphibious airplane Navy pilot.\u00a0 Martha love to tell the story of how she was smitten by him when she first saw Toby in his uniform and went right up to him and took his arm.\u00a0 They were a wonderful couple.<\/p>\n

Here I am with my college buddy Tom, driving the tractor.\u00a0 “Bob, let me drive, let me drive!”\u00a0 Tom now lives in Marblehead MA and is an active sailboat racer with his wife Lisa.\u00a0\u00a0\"\"It was a lovely cottage.\u00a0 I believe this is a shot of the living room.\u00a0 Want to guess what time of the year it is?\u00a0 That’s right Christmas.\u00a0 Gold star for you.<\/p>\n

Notice the stuffed decorations on the tree and the skirt.\u00a0 Brenda sewed them all.\u00a0 We also sewed those lovely covers for the chair cushions.\u00a0 Not a bad pattern.\u00a0 Since then we’ve upgraded.\u00a0 No more vinyl sling chairs for us.
\n\"\"It was aboard Tao that we learned to enjoy gin and tonics, perhaps from Toby and Martha.\u00a0 It must have been too early in the day for that when this shot was taken.\u00a0 \u00a0We are still in regular touch with Chris and Pat, to this day.\u00a0 Our youngest is named for Chris, actually.
\n\"\"We fished but once caught, we had no idea what to do with our catch on on such a small boat.\u00a0 Besides, who actually eats bluefish?
\n\"\"In those days, no protection from the weather so foul weather gear was in use nearly all of the time.\u00a0 Brenda just loved being coated with salt, even on a sunny day.\u00a0 Tao was a wet boat and to make matters worse, no shower.\u00a0 \u00a0There’s that hat again.\u00a0 I guess it was on sale.\u00a0 I can’t think of any other reason I’d buy it.\u00a0 Heck, perhaps it was free.\u00a0 Had to be…
\n\"\"Not sure about how this shot fits in.\u00a0 I just like it.\u00a0\"\"We sailed as late into the season as we could and I can still remember the one Memorial Day Weekend when I couldn’t get the boat ready in time.\u00a0 I wasn’t happy at all about that.\u00a0 Mechanical problems, I recall.\u00a0 Isn’t that always the reason?
\n\"\"I guess Brenda hadn’t yet seen “Jaws”.\u00a0 \u00a0Thanks Stephen, I never really got over that, myself.\u00a0 \u00a0DUH DUH…DUH DUH…DUH DUH DHU…\"\"However, I have always been fairly sure that sharks don’t eat clammers.\u00a0 \u00a0Well, mostly sure.\u00a0 Don’t you just love the speedo?<\/span>
\n\"\"We sailed Tao, far and wide, farther and wider than was reasonable, in such a tiny boat.\u00a0 Oh, did I mention that it had an even tinier 5hp one cylinder diesel?\u00a0 When it was running, it sounded like someone rattling a stone in a coffee can.\u00a0 Bang, bang, bang… I still have the prop on my desk as a paper weight.<\/p>\n

We covered a lot of ground from Bridgeport to Nantucket and down to Barnegat Bay NJ.\u00a0 Brenda was not amused when we went through NYC, Hell gate sideways and into a snotty SW wind under the Verazanno Bridge with a full ebb against the wind and a huge chop.<\/p>\n

After that experience, it wasn’t until we headed south in our SAGA 43 Pandora, that she went through NYC again, more than 20 years, or was it 30 years later, declaring “Well, that wasn’t so bad”.\u00a0 You go girl!\u00a0 She is such a sport.<\/p>\n

Once, we even sprung for spot on the dock at Bannister’s Wharf in Newport, behind the famous ocean racer Boomerang.\u00a0 For a 20′ boat the cost of dockage, by the foot was about the same as a fixed rate mooring.\u00a0 \u00a0It was a really long way down from the dock to the deck at low tide.
\n\"\"Remember Buzzards bay Light near Martha’s Vineyard?\u00a0 \u00a0 It’s now a tall flasher but no longer manned or with a chopper deck for switching crew.
\n\"\"We passed the light on our way to the Vineyard and Nantucket.\u00a0 It was a really long way to go in a 20′ boat.\u00a0 \u00a0Perhaps easy to get there, with the SW prevailing winds but tough to get back in time to go to work after our two week holiday.\u00a0 \u00a0And, when it got foggy, no radar, GPS, just dead-reckoning in pea soup, not sure what was coming our way.<\/p>\n

And, there was always a lot of commercial traffic coming our way.\u00a0 This freighter pre-dates the current container ships that dominate world trade.\u00a0 This sort, the type that sports it’s own cranes for loading and unloading, are still used in some really small ports but most have been scrapped.\u00a0\"\"Our one trip to Nantucket aboard Tao was to visit the Opera House Cup, an annual gathering of classic yachts.\u00a0 \u00a0This is the original Malabar class schooner, by the same name, designed by John Alden .\u00a0 I tried my best to get a spot on this boat for one of the races.\u00a0 No luck.\u00a0\"\"Back in the early 80s, there we still a lot of older fishing boats out on Block Island Sound.\u00a0 That was before the modern draggers that decimated the fish population.
\n\"\"And, there was no fishing village more charming than Menemsha, Martha’s Vineyard.\u00a0 This is an old style sword fishing boat.\u00a0 A spotter would stand on the cross tree on the mast, supported by the hoops.\u00a0 When they saw a fish swimming along the surface, they’d go up on a long bowsprit and harpoon the fish.\u00a0 \u00a0 A lot of swordfish were landed at these docks.\"\"However, adventures aside, and there were plenty of them aboard Tao, we had some of our best times just lazing along on a calm summer evening, G&T in hand.
\n\"\"And it was on this very evening, when this shot was taken by our artist friend Chris, while aboard his own boat, that he immortalized Tao and her crew in the painting that he did for me as a gift on my 25th birthday.\u00a0 For me, that painting immortalizes those wonderful times along with those famous words, “hey honey, let’s buy a boat”.\u00a0 \u00a0\"\"I’m pretty sure that sometimes Brenda still wishes she had said, “let me think about that for a while”.<\/p>\n

Setting that aside, and I do, it’s been a great ride.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was the late 70s, and we still practically newly weds, when I said something like “hey honey, let’s buy a boat”.\u00a0 \u00a0 Brenda and I had been sailing together since our junior year of high school when we sailed aboard a Carl Alberg Typhoon out or Norwalk with our friend Chris.\u00a0 It was from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_s2mail":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9335"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13575,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9335\/revisions\/13575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}