By Donna Lynn Gambino
Boats are like potato chips, it’s hard to have just one. My husband Jim and I have lived aboard boats for decades and at one point we owned three boats of 40-feet or greater (yes, we have the boating bug badly!) However, in the last few years we whittled our “fleet” down to just one 40-footer, a Willard trawler.
I recently retired and we decided it would be nice to have a second boat as a winter home in Florida. After a long search and many miles of driving to view boats, we bought a 1993, 32-foot BHM, Flye Point. This “downeast” style boat is often called a “lobster yacht” since the same hull is used by the lobstermen in Maine.
As fate would have it, the new boat was called “Blue Moon” which is the same name as our Willard trawler so we started to refer to her as “baby Blue Moon”. Having two boats of the same name helps reduce the confusion when someone asks the name of the boat. I’ve been on the VHF radio calling a drawbridge tender for an opening and had to wrack my brain as to which boat I’m on and what type, motor or sail.
When we bought the boat back in April she was located in Maryland. Since the boat was set up as a weekend cruiser, there was work to be done to make her a long term live-aboard vessel. Plus, like any 30 year old vessel, there were upgrades needed as well, so we decided to motor her to our home port in Connecticut for the summer where we could work on her. We created our to-do list which was quite extensive even before we left the dock (upgrade electronics, add bow-thruster, rebuild the dinette and add more storage in the galley), but there would be more to come!
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