Longtime sailors Ed and Cory Muir were looking to navigate to the next phase of their maritime life aboard a power cruiser. They set their sights on a Pilgrim 40. However, only 41 of the Pilgrim 40s were built during its seven-year production run at Ontario, Canada’s North Castle Marine, with the last boat splashing 36 years ago.
Muir’s book, A Squadron of Characters: The Story of One Couple’s Journey to Find and Buy for Them the Right Coastal Cruising Boat takes readers from the Chesapeake Bay and southern California to New York and Canada’s inland waterways, all in search of their dream boat.
The author, who is willing to conduct exhaustive research to get what he wants, writes insightfully about the highs of finding a rare Pilgrim for sale and the lows of walking away from several boats for a myriad of reasons, and then starting the search anew.
The book’s title is taken from a Pilgrim owners’ forum.
A commenter referred to Pilgrim owners as “characters.” Muir says he could “tell I was about to join a community of people I could relate to … where I’d fit right in.”
After a multiyear process, the couple, via the owner’s forum, bought Encore, their Pilgrim 40, thus joining the squadron. $18. edmuir.com
This article originally appeared in the September 2025 issue of Passagemaker magazine.
