Sailing - Born Again

In the late 1960s our summer vacations up and down the east coast increasingly included visiting sundry boat yards and chartering sailboat rentals. I had learned to sail in the late 1950s while near Newport, California, and found the combination of wind, water, and wanderlust a powerful incentive to become captain of my own ship.
While inspecting a yard in Essex on the Connecticut River in 1972, we found a salvaged 35-foot wooden ketch that had been sunk in a collision with a power boat right at the Saybrook railroad drawbridge. The owner had not paid the salvage, the yard master said, and we could have it for $835, hole and all.
Friends and we borrowed a tractor-trailer and carted it up to the Berkshires, where we set up our own yard behind our apartment. Over the next 18 months we repaired the hole, and caulked and repainted the entire ship, renaming it Born Again. Because the owner had taken the sails, we bought sailcloth and made our own sails to the original dimensions. Then, with many willing hands and spectators, we loaded it back onto the borrowed tractor-trailer for its return to the same friendly Essex yard for launching.
Over the next two years we and our families and friends all sailed the ship between Essex, Duck Island Rhodes, Fisher's Island, and Long Island, honing our skills and acquiring experiences that have included sailing other boats on San Francisco Bay and Lake Lugano, Switzerland.
As land-locked sailors here in the Berkshires, we long ago had to sell the ketch and take up bare-boat chartering and helping others fix and maintain their boats in order to keep messing about in boats, the subject of future posts.