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Five
Paceships - and still counting...
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| By
Bob Johnson
Click on a pic to see a larger version! |
| Hi,
fellow Paceship Owners. I'm Bob Johnson, probably the latest Paceship
owner to join the Paceship web site. I just bought a Paceship, P20,
hull no. 112. I bought it in Kansas City from a naval officer who
is being transferred to overseas. It has a repainted navy blue hull
and is in very good shape for a 1974 boat. I'll include pictures
after I've cleaned it up a little.
This will be my fifth Paceship. Not sure if that's a record but
it certainly says something about my interest in Paceships. I saw
my first Paceship at a Washington, DC boat show in February, 1970.
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Its
sleek, C & C design was like nothing else in the show. My
friend and I bought the boat on the spot for $6,000. It was
hull no. 3 and was nicely equipped with genoa, spinnaker and working
sails. Paceship Yachts did not intend to sell this boat at first.
The sales manager was supposed to take the boat on to Florida and
race it to develop interest. However his wife took ill and they
had to return to Nova Scotia so he let the local Paceship dealer sell
it. We took delivery in early March, 1970. Harold Hutchinson,
the boat dealer, operated his dealership from his property on the
Tred Avon River near Oxford, Md. My partners and I learned to
rig and sail the boat there. Harold was an interesting man.
He had been in the Royal Canadian Air Force as a fighter pilot during
WW II. He married later in life and had a batch of small children
running around his property. |
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Paceship
P23 Hull #3 |
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| An interesting sidelight is
that Harold also sold a P23 to John Dean, President Nixon's lawyer who was
to become famous in the Watergate affair. Harold was cautioned that
if a phone call came in claiming to be from the White House, it really was
the White House on the line. |
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I stayed in
the three-way partnership for about a year. The next year, one
of the partners wanted to sell his share. And, it turned out
that my wife got very sick on boats so I also sold my share at that
time
That led to by purchase of my second
Paceship. In 1971 I purchased a left-over 1970 Mouette also
from Harold Hutchinson. It was hull #472. It had a bright
yellow hull and was a great boat for a single sailor. I kept
the boat for four more years, sailing it out of the Magothy River
onto the Chesapeake. As my children grew, we enjoyed the boat
during the summers.
The Mouette was sold in 1974 when
I entered into a partnership to purchase a Pearson 30. We
kept that boat for a few years, later trading it in for a C&C
38 which was a heck of a nice racing boat. |
Mouette, Hull #472 |
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I have also owned a Vanguard 470, a Tanzer 16, a Starwind 19, a
Gallille 15, a Sailfish and a WeeSort. Two of my frequent
boat partners and I even bought a derelict Chesapeake Skipjack on
Tilghman Island, MD. and spent several years restoring it to sailing
condition. It was too much for us to keep up so we ended up
donating it to a Maritime Museum in Baltimore, only to have them
sell it to raise cash. A couple of years ago, we spotted it
in an outside beer garden.
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My next Paceship was bought
in Cincinnati, Ohio from a local sailor. It was the PY23 centerboard
model, hull # 240. That was a great boat as well. With
the centerboard, I was able to trailer it around a bit. I kept
it on the Chesapeake for a year while I commuted from Ohio to use
it. I also took it to Florida in the winter. Most of the
pictures below are from the Chesapeake. |
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Red Sky PY23
on Brookville Lake, IN |
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PY23
Red Sky, Hull #240 |
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| A couple of
years later, while sailing around various local lakes, I came across
another Paceship, this one a PY23K model. I remembered the stiffness
and sail-ability of my original P23 and had to have it. By know
you realize that I have a Class A addiction for sailboats. A
major part of the addiction is that I am particularly attracted to
classy boats that are in need of restoration. And this newest
Paceship needed lots of help. |
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Thirteen, PY23K On the Hard |
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The trailer
was shot; the boat hull badly sun-faded and it had a major deck leak.
After several months work, repainting and restoring, I got the boat
ready for a one-time trip to Florida. I believed that
it would be a perfect boat to sail the on the west coast of Florida.
And, since we were staying in Florida for the six winter months, I
planned to leave the boat there year round. This was my fourth
Paceship and my thirteenth boat overall so it was named Thirteen. |
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| Last
year my wife and I decided not to spend so much time in Florida.
We were missing our grandkids too much so we came back north to
Burlington, KY. Looking for a smaller, daysailer, I started
checking the Internet. There I came across a P20 in Kansas
City. I drove out there and bought the boat on the spot, however
the trailer wheel bearings were so bad, I had to rebuild them before
I could bring the boat back. A picture of the, as yet unnamed,
P20 is shown below. I also discovered the Paceship web site and
thought other Paceship owners might enjoy my strange tale.
If for no other reason, you can always use me as an example to your
spouse that there are even nuttier sailors out there. |
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| P20
Hull # 112 |
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If
you care to comment or just have an interest,
you may Email me at:
robertmjohnson@fuse.net. |
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