Pilot Sloop, 1962 (3-min video)

[Christian Williams]

I recently found this 8mm movie. I was 19. My father said, sure, take the boat with your pals on a three-day cruise to Jones Beach inlet, down Raritan Bay, past the Statue of LIberty and past Sandy Hook to an inlet with a five-knot current.

I knew everything then, even more than I know now, and I knew that I knew it with much more certainty than I now know what I know and don't know.

Some evidence of how much I knew about anchoring is evident.

"Say, why are all these boats anchored together over here, when there is so much more open water over there?"

The boat, Xanadu (the dinghy's name was Alph), was a Pilot 33, an S&S design. All wood. No idea where she is now, I prefer she lives forever in digital.

 

[Loren Beach]

Since the purpose of the anchor is to attach the boat to the bottom, using the keel as well is even more secure... !

 

[Alan Gomes]

You had a great dad.

My friend also had a great dad. He gave us the run of his Cal 20--which to us was a really substantial vessel compared to our sabots and the Lehman 10 in which we used to knock about. It was actually a battleship gray "Cal 20+," which was an apparently factory-modified Cal 20 with a masthead rig and a small bowsprit. We sailed the heck out of that thing, doing frequent trips to the Isthmus, subsisting on pork and beans cooked on a Sterno stove. We were living large.

Having the run of a boat as large as the one in that video would have been beyond all reckoning for us. Super cool. (The dad of another one of my friends had a K-40, and we got to crew on that one occasionally. But no way would he have ever handed us the keys and said, "Have a good time!")

 

[goldenstate]

Epic!

 

[supersailor]

Funny you should mention the huge boat. In 1976 I went with a San Juan 26. The common reaction was "What do you want that bloody big bastard for?". How times have changed!