Hans Christian 39 Pilothouse

How she came to us

We almost didn't look twice. The first time Never Land came across our screen she was buried under a previous life's worth of clutter, with a deck leak the photographs couldn't hide, and we scrolled past. A couple of weeks later we were in Annapolis for the sailboat show, where we stepped aboard a few boats nearby, most of them asking far more money. Then her listing surfaced again — cleaned out this time, the cabin sole finally visible — and we looked closer. The broker called the next day, catching us somewhere on the long drive home. They hadn't been able to get the engine to start, he said, and had dropped the price by twenty thousand dollars. We bought her over the phone, sight unseen, before we'd reached our own driveway. A few days later we drove to Peekskill, New York. We knew her the moment we stepped aboard — the pilothouse, the original teak decks, the bronze hardware. Exactly the blue-water boat we'd been picturing to live aboard.

She carries a history we're still piecing together. A previous owner, Joel, had sailed her across the Atlantic — to the Azores and into the Mediterranean — and when he passed he left her to Jerry, one of the crew from that crossing. Jerry kept her for many years. Remarkably little has changed since; she's almost entirely original, down to the solar panels fitted at the factory — only the Westerbeke 10 kW generator and the pilothouse helm seat have left her over the decades. We bought her as she sat at Peekskill Yacht Club and are having her trucked west to Cleveland, where the refit will begin.

We're taking it one system at a time, with a bias toward saving what can be saved. The original teak decks will be restored rather than ripped out, and the deck leak that nearly scared us off will finally be chased down and sealed. The rest is the honest work a forty-year-old boat is owed: new electrical throughout, new electronics, new sails and rigging, the fuel tanks pulled and replaced, the engine serviced. Original where she can be saved, modern where she has to be.