I’m not quite sure when I surrendered to the sirens. It began early, taught by my father on a series of runabouts, a Chris-Craft Catalina and a Bertram 28. On those boats and my Alden 40 Hardtop Express, I realized that great boat designers strive toward functional mastery while complementing the ever-evolving beauty of the water.
On the Alden, I was a liveaboard for extended periods, enjoying the deep gratification of minimalism while exploring the Eastern Seaboard. Time on the wheel offers perspective. I knew that as I got older, I wanted to maintain a sense of purpose. I needed my life to expand through experience and challenge. From the helm of my Alden, I determined the functional requirements I’d need to get across the Bahamas, north to the Thousand Islands, around the Great Loop and perhaps beyond.
A larger passagemaker would be my next, and likely my last, vessel for nautical exploration.
I narrowed my wish list to pedigree builders that have worked out production kinks over decades and that focus on the highest-quality building standards. I questioned the notion of paying up for speed when the whole point was to slow life down. Ultimately, I decided that the option to cover more ground or outrun bad weather justified the incremental expenditure. I wanted the ability to run at 18 knots or better when time became a bigger consideration than fuel cost. Some non-negotiables were a flybridge for better visibility and an easy tender-launch system.
A tender is a tool for exploration. If it is difficult to launch, then too often, you limit new experiences. From my perspective, the tender must also be stable enough to cast a fly rod from, and must serve as a clean and dry evening transport to take four people to dinner. Catching fish and maintaining friendships are essentials, too.
Because some short-listed models in my vessel search are no longer in production, and because I had no intention of spending $3 million on a boat, I knew I would be refurbishing and likely repowering. Taking on a refurbishment project, you can write endless checks until the yard manager tells you the boat is ready, or you can carefully select mechanics and craftsmen to handle whatever you can’t do yourself. On the latter path, you get dirty, contorted and kinked, and you may still feel like you’re writing endless checks, but you develop a deep intimacy with your vessel that will serve and possibly save you along your journey.
I have had some experience with this. In an early restoration effort, I brought a Dyer dinghy back to life for my daughter and renamed it after her favorite princess. My father’s Bertram was my first broad-scale restoration. Its name was supposed to be Whichcraft, settling an argument in 1984 between my mother and father about whether they should choose the 28- or 31-foot model. A family friend assumed a spelling error and painted her name Witchcraft, which remained for the next 34 years. My restoration of Witchcraft was a commitment to my father to finish a job they wouldn’t let him complete from hospice.
“You know, it’s going to cost you about ten grand to finish her,” he said. I knew it would cost me a lot more. Days later, he died. I used the restored Witchcraft to spread his ashes off Matinecock Point in Long Island, N.Y. That boat never looked so good.
I sold the Alden in March 2021. Then, in January 2024, I made my next and, as far as boats go, largest commitment to date: a Grand Banks 47 Classic.
The GB 47 Classic had a short production run beginning in 2007. Only 13 hulls were built, so the 47 never fully distinguished itself from the legacy of the 46 Classic. To this day, people think of them as the same boat, but a foot bigger. They are not.
The Sparkman & Stephens-penned 47 Classic was made to go fast while staying true to the traditional Grand Banks lines. A takeoff modernist version of the original GB46, the 47 remained respectful in form and function to passagemaking trawlers. Classic and Europa versions were offered.
The less-expensive 47 Europa garnered nearly twice as many orders. Interestingly, in the years since, comparative resale pricing has inverted, and the Europa typically now trades at 15 percent higher. Its entertainment-centric floorplan anticipated today’s combined cockpit-salon cocktail hours. The trade-off? The master stateroom is stuffed into the bow, eliminating any chance of privacy with guests on board. Precious engine-room space is also reduced. In my view, a fool’s trade.
By comparison, the 47 Classic catered to the solo mariner who understood that most of the journey would be made alone, and that the forward VIP would be an extra room for doing laundry and hanging the one dinner jacket that may be needed to secure an overpriced steak ashore. The 47 looked slow, went fast and had plenty of space if you could persuade a mate to join you on the ride. Either way, you were going.
A 2009 production feels young in comparison to my Bertram project, so calling my work on this 47 a restoration seems a stretch. However, she was run hard along the Southeast coast and through the Bahamas. Mistakes were made. Her engines were prematurely worn out at 1,900 hours, and an overly aggressive sander destroyed her decks. It was sad to see a sunburned and tired girl of only 14 years, but the bones and beauty were still there if you looked hard enough. This project was a reimagining of how an iconic Grand Banks model might have fared if not for the Great Recession.
Replacing the engines was a ship-in-the-bottle exercise of engineering and patience. The only point of access, the middle salon window, required removal. A hoist-and-rail system was constructed in the salon. The original Cummins QSCs were dismantled to the blocks and lifted out. The replacement motors were also broken down, forklifted to the rails, slid into the salon, and then lowered and reassembled inside the hull. While Grand Banks provided a 4-by-5-foot soft patch, I don’t think the builder fully considered the practicality of lifting it out. Four jacks, three men, a splintered sole joint and another forklift later, the job was accomplished.
“Not a chance we are doing that again,” I remarked as we loaded the panel into my pickup for transport to my shop. There, it was redesigned into a two-panel, three-layer system including aluminum engine-room ceiling panels and 4 inches of sound-deadening insulation. Redesigned, the sole hatches are now easily removed from above. One-man, full-engine access in about 12 minutes.
We replaced the engines with Cummins ReCon QSC8.3s, upgrading from 550 hp to 600 hp in hopes of achieving the originally advertised 26-knot top speed. (We succeeded.) In the process, the entire drive system was addressed. Shafts were removed and realigned, and new cutlass bearings and seals were installed. We found that the propellers were different sizes and needed to be recut, balanced and repitched. While the engines were out and access was as good as it would ever get, a new 13.5-kW Onan generator was installed, the original air conditioning was replaced, and legacy fluorescent lighting became slim-line LEDs. I also retrieved the screws, nuts, bolts, hose clamps and zip-tie clippings that had been lost during the past 14 years.
In the original design, the tender-and-davit system was problematic. The fixed cradle mounted atop the aft deck was a dangerous tripping point, rendering that valuable area otherwise unusable. Also, having the tender on the aft deck detracted from the boat’s beautiful profile. I also was not keen on swinging a 650-pound tender over my shipmates.
The obvious solution was a more substantial swim platform. I researched tenders and found numerous solid-hull options that met the maximum size and weight requirements: 11 feet long with a 5-foot beam, weighing about 500 pounds. I went with a TNT Lifts hydraulic system matched to a custom-fabricated aluminum platform frame, to which a contoured teak platform was mounted. The deck in the fixed position is approximately 14 inches above the waterline, keeping the platform out of the water when underway and making the climb up to the aft deck less daunting.
In the interest of cost and practicality, we removed the original teak decks and refaired the underdeck, followed by Awlgrip nonskid. To preserve the boat’s elegance, we refitted all the hatch covers, bench seats and stairs with solid teak. Flybridge cushions were reupholstered, and the two bridge helm seats got replacement cushions directly from Stidd at a fraction of the cost of new chairs. Not yet ready to completely disconnect from the grid—and inspired by the March 2024 Passagemaker article “The Go-Anywhere Office”—I decided to install Starlink.
This GB 47 CL is named GiGi, a family nickname for the woman I persuaded to accept the first-mate position. Never quite finished, but nautical miles from where I found her, GiGi is resurrected and reimagined. She is cleaner and faster, and her profile is elongated and better proportioned.
From the wheel, I often return to my thinking about what more I can do. Perhaps I will rig the now-obsolete davit crane to lower and raise the mast in between the bridges en route to Lake Champlain. In deeper waters, maybe this boat will take me a few nautical miles closer to my own resurrection, reimagination and purpose.
This article was originally published in the November/December 2024 issue.
