My friend and sailing instigator, Tom Gilmore, bought a Bristol Channel Cutter recently. This is a boat that you can order new today for about $300,000. I am not at liberty to mention the ridiculously low price Tom paid, but I think some refrigerators cost more.
Tom is the original bargain hunter. He lives aboard a Creekmore 46 that he built from a bare fiberglass hull, and he built it with scavenged teak (wood used for dunnage in a ship) salvaged bronze portlights and rigging and a truck engine that he converted for marine use. He has sailed this treasure to Maine and back several times, and I have had the privilege to make some of those trips with him.
The Bristol Channel Cutter is a legendary boat built in California originally. It is 28 feet on deck, with a very masculine bowsprit and a plumb stem that gives it the appearance it is thrusting its chest forward.
This BCC, which as yet has no name, has a sorry history, Tom says. It has had two other owners. The first one sold it but never was paid when the buyer took the boat from the west coast to Florida, where it was abandoned. The second owner (not the one who absconded with it) bought it unaware that it had suffered severe water damage while abandoned.
So Tom has a "project boat." But at the price he paid, why not? He sailed it from the Chesapeake Bay to his home in New Jersey last week and said it sails beautifully. His brother made the trip with him. Tom, the ever-thoughtful sibling, made a bunk for his brother in the gutted cabin by laying three or four two-by-eights athwartship on the bare fiberglass hull.
There are no head, no galley, no bunks, no engine (Tom mounted a 15-horsepower outboard on the transom) and no navigational equipment.
Tom is the one who introduced me to the Bermuda 1-2. He sailed it in 1979. He also crossed the Atlantic twice in a 13-month voyage a bit later.
I would like to cross the Atlantic, myself.
I would not like to do the work Tom faces with the BCC, however, in spite of the fact she's a pretty little ship.