SailingFamily’s Weblog

This is the fabulous boat that we’ve owned 2 years now. Her name is Apogee – we keep meaning to change her name to Josefine, who was Jack’s girlfriend of 40 years and one of the reasons we own this boat. But we haven’t – there are so many more important things to do than change a name.

This is boat #3 since we were married 13 years ago. Number 1 was a 19 foot O’Day Mariner named Metanoia (from the Greek: a change in one’s way of life resulting from penitence or spiritual conversion). She had lovely lines; a pretty, classic sheer line. We rescued her from a driveway in Marion, MA, brushed off the pine needles, put her into the water at Wareham. We sailed her up to Portland ME a few weeks later. A sweet boat, but the cabin was a cuddy, and not really closeable, though the previous owners had made a cabin bulkhead out of 3/8 ply, then painted it in a lovely silver paint that peeled all summer in paper size flakes. It was a 3 day sail to Maine. We crossed Massachusetts Bay at night with no radar reflector, with unbelievably little shipping traffic. Reaching Cape Ann at dawn, Nat asleep, I decided to take the inside passage, which is wicked shallow. I am normally a night owl, but on a boat, the best time is dawn. We drifted through the rocks. Later that day we headed innocently up into the Merrimack River, not having read a thing about it. We were lucky and did well, despite the large standing waves, the wind against us, and the outboard whining and whirring each time she lifted out of the water. We crossed out of the middle of the channel and sailed over to the side, where it was very shallow, out of the fury of wind and tide. That O’Day draws 4 feet as I recall.