Through a long friendship of sailing and writing, a particular boat weaves a steady thread.
Issue 146: Sept/Oct 2022
I wasn’t in the market for a sailboat. I already had one, a Pearson Ensign, to be exact, sitting up on the winter hard in Portsmouth, Rhode Island—winter being the main reason I was here in sunny Florida, having done the snowbird thing tooling up and down the state’s Gulf Coast with my bike and kayak in the bed of my pickup.
August West, the Pearson 365 Herb purchased from Dan’s son, Steve, sits at her dock in Florida.
En route, I had decided to make a call to my best boat mate, Dan Spurr, who lives on Longboat Key. But it was his son, Steve, who had snagged me, and while we have always been fond of one another, I have to say I was rather gobsmacked when we again reunited and his first words were not, “How’s it going, dude?” but, “You’re just the man I wanted to see. I’m going to sell you my boat.”
It’s possible I was even more stunned when he talked me into it—a shoal-draft Pearson 365 (a rare sloop-rigged version of the Bill Shaw design, most of which were split-rig ketches) called August West.
But I probably shouldn’t have been. After all, the boat was a Pearson. The guy was a Spurr. And the story of me and Dan Spurr, Steve’s dad, is one that is woven around writing and boats, nearly all of them Pearsons.
It started with a lovingly cared-for Pearson Triton called Adriana, named after Dan’s daughter. He’d brought it to Newport, Rhode Island, through the freshwater canals from his home waters on Lake Michigan, to take a job at Cruising World magazine, where I’d landed my first job out of college answering phones and running film to get developed. (Yes, I was the receptionist.)
The dude smoked a pipe, its smoke swirling aromatically in the breeze. He sported a moustache/goatee combo that, at least at one time, was called a Van Dyke. Though he hailed from freshwater, he was pretty much the saltiest character I could imagine.
When I got kicked upstairs, literally, after a promotion to editorial assistant, Spurr and I became colleagues. And Spurr took me under his wing. Both of us landed book contracts at the time, and in the years since we’ve both authored a few. But you have to start somewhere, and it was in our office late at night that we shared a motto (“Misery loves company”). Spurr taught me a few things, but what’s lasted is his work ethic, something I barely knew existed. He personified that old saying: If you want to write, son, you need to put your butt in the chair.
Dan’s daughter, Adriana, on the namesake Pearson Vanguard.
On the water, literally and figuratively, he also showed me the ropes. My experience to that point was mostly comprised of serving as rail meat on beer-can races out of the Newport Yacht Club with the father of a highschool bud who owned a Pearson 26 and then a Pearson 32 (yes, more Pearsons).
For perhaps obvious reasons I was rarely allowed near the tiller when racing, but Spurr started taking me out regularly for afternoon sails on Adriana, and while by no means was the stately, full-keeled Triton a rocket ship, it was the perfect ride for a greenhorn like me to begin acquiring some skills and experience. Spurr was a wise and gentle teacher. And this sailing thing, I soon learned, had many elements I cared deeply about: fun, travel, adventure, and after I got better at it, even competition. Anyway, I was hooked.
I “graduated” from the Triton to my own J/24, and meanwhile, Spurr moved up to another Pearson, a 32-foot Vanguard from the design board of Phillip Rhodes that he also called Adriana, which he fit out for extensive voyaging. And while the Vanguard pales in comparison to the voluminous accommodations found in beamy, contemporary sailboats, to me it was astounding how much more room and comfort could be created in a vessel just 4 feet longer than the Triton.
I spent my birthday in 1988 on a cruise with Spurr to the Bahamas on Adriana with a couple of other pals, my first crossing of the Gulf Stream to go along with a whole new revelation: Sailing turquoise waters and hopping from one tropical island to another is a goal to which everyone should aspire. Once again, Spurr opened a new door for me to a world I very much wished to inhabit.
We both strayed from the Pearson theme for a bit—when Spurr became editor of Practical Sailor, he chose a C&C racer/cruiser called Greybeard as his platform on which to test and evaluate new gear and equipment. When he required something bigger and beefier for the same purpose, he moved on to a powerful Tartan 44 called Viva, and I was more than happy to take Greybeard off his hands.
The Pearson Vanguard Adriana anchored on the Intracoastal Waterway.
With each of Spurr’s new sailboats, I always learned a few new things myself, and such was the case with the Tartan, an ex-IOR warhorse from the renowned design house of Sparkman & Stephens with a massive sail plan offset by a deep, 7-foot-plus fin keel that totally and absolutely hauled the mail, particularly when scorching upwind with the whole shooting match sheeted home. It was here that I came to truly understand and appreciate how loads and power increase exponentially the bigger you go and the longer the waterline, and that the thrills and chills also correspond accordingly. As an extremely fortuitous chap, I can honestly say there are lots of things I’ve loved in my life, and taking the wheel of Viva in a fresh New England summer sea breeze is one of them.
Pearsons returned to the story during the next chapter, when Spurr moved to Montana, and after a while, the notion of a wintertime escape from the snow and ice seemed like a pretty attractive idea. He found the Pearson 365 August West in Newport, and though not enamored of the name—the slovenly character and protagonist in an old Grateful Dead tune called “Wharf Rat”—after adding up the costs and time it would take to sand off the old handle and paint on a new one, he said the hell with it and left it as is. Then he replaced all the standing rigging instead and had the boat trucked to Florida to serve as his Rocky Mountain getaway.
It was a good plan but turned out not to be a longterm one. For in Florida after a season or two, he sold August West to his son, Steve, who’d outgrown his Pearson 30. (Did I mention we’d be invoking Pearson Yachts? Just to put an exclamation point on it, it was around this time that I found and purchased a classic 23-foot Pearson Ensign. It all gets a little bit creepy, right?)
And then, earlier this year during my southern sojourn, I’d called on Spurr on Longboat Key, where he’d finally put down a new keel, this one a Grand Banks 42 called First Light. (My man has transitioned to what sailors call the “dark side” of powerboats, but the fact of the matter is we’re both of the mind that the important thing is being on the water, no matter the conveyance. Besides, he needed something after selling his Pearson 365, no?)
Dan and Herb, best boat bros, stop somewhere
on the Intracoastal Waterway while taking Dan’s new trawler up the East Coast from Florida to Rhode Island.
And as it turned out, First Light was in the same marina on Longboat Key where Steve tied up August West, which is more or less where this tale begins, with another Spurr selling me another Pearson. A fine sailor, Steve these days is a hardworking man with minimal leisure time, and when he does nab some, what he loves to do is hop on his center-console rocket and roar into the Gulf of Mexico to catch fish, another activity at which he excels. Which meant he had two boats. And one of them had to go.
It made no difference when I told him no, that after all, I did have that Pearson Ensign back home. Steve turns out to be pretty persuasive. Like Marlon Brando in “The Godfather,” he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. And really, shouldn’t every committed sailor own at least a couple of sailboats?
So, what do you know, now I have my second Pearson tied up just down the dock from my longtime boat bro. Kismet? I believe so. Times have changed, of course (though my friend still slings marine journalism, and these days is a contributing editor to this very magazine). Spurr’s pipe vanished long ago. The bottom half of his Van Dyke has also been bid sayonara (though the ’stache is still there).
But our adventures continue, and we are, in fact, in the midst of one even as I type, pecking away at this story from the saloon of First Light while northbound on North Carolina’s Alligator River on the Intracoastal Waterway heading from Florida to Newport. And while this cruise is not unfolding under sail, but on a trawler for cryin’ out loud, some things are lasting, too, and that goes for Spurr and me. Boats, even Pearsons, come and go. Mates we remain.
Award-winning sailing journalist Herb McCormick is the author of five nautical books. He lives in his hometown of Newport, Rhode Island.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
