More First Boats

Dan Taylor on the pain and pleasures of owning his first boat

by Dan Taylor

I acquired my first boat in the early summer 1967.  My fiancée was going to college in Boston and I wanted to be near her, so I got a job as an entry-level city planner in New Bedford, Massachusetts.  Though I was 31-years-old this was my first 9-5 office job, having spent three years in the Marine Corps, six years getting an undergraduate degree, three years in the Peace Corps and a year as a paying crew member on a barquentine traveling most of the way around the world.

On weekends I would go up to Boston or my fiancée, Janet, whom I had meant on the barquentine, would come down to New Bedford. But during the week I had lots of time on my hands. I needed a project and I needed a boat.

Just a couple of the boats I was originally considering building

I had a strong interest in building a boat, partly because I assumed it was the only way I could afford something suitable. I looked at lots of plans and was settling on the San Francisco Pelican, but the task just seemed overwhelming. I was even getting hung up on the need to build a strongback. So when a friend mentioned he knew someone who was selling a sailboat that just needed some TLC, I decided to take a look.  The owner was a Naval Reserve officer who had the boat in his driveway, wasn’t getting around to working on it, and his wife wanted it out of there.

It was a 21’, carvel-planked, centerboard sloop with fore, aft and side decks. It wasn’t a design I recognized then, or since. To me it most closely approximated John Alden’s Indian, except this boat had its rudder hung on the transom with a slave tiller fastened to a tiller post protruding from the forward end of the aft deck.