Reunited and it feels so good

A recent sighting of the editor’s former Pearson Commander, Good Buddy, on the hard. Will he own her again? Stay tuned. Photo by Bob Muggleston

August 2023

By Bob Muggleston

It’s weird how inanimate objects can sink their claws into you and make you miss them even after they’re gone. This is the case with my 1966 Pearson Commander, which I only owned for five years. But everything that happened with this boat – from me purchasing her sight-unseen from a guy in Long Island for $800, to me selling her for $800 to a total nutjob, and everything in between – evokes such vivid memories that I can’t shake the feeling that this piece of plastic and I are somehow connected and should be together. And I say this despite the shady behavior she seems to bring out in other humans.

Some backstory before I describe the behavior I’m talking about: I was obsessed with Pearson Commanders because I thought they were pretty, and in the late ’90s a guy named Zoltan Gyurko sailed one – a boat designed by Carl Alberg as a daysailer – most of the way around the world. I bought the first one I could afford, which happened to be Good Buddy.

Here’s where the first instance of shadiness occurred: As a sweetener for buying the boat in late December, when it was still in the water, the seller told me I could just leave Good Buddy on his mooring. It was an exceptionally protected harbor, he said, and people did it all the time. Guess what? The harbor wasn’t that protected, it wasn’t his mooring, and the mooring itself parted sometime in March leaving Good Buddy on the beach.

Shady behavior.

Fast-forward five years. I truly loved the boat and had made many amazing memories aboard her with my young family, but the costs around owning her had become prohibitively expensive. I made the painful decision to sell.

Here’s where the second round of shadiness begins.

I found an excited buyer who paid cash for the boat, but after we shook hands, he said it might be as many as six weeks before he could come get her. Good Buddy – déjà vu all over again – was still on a mooring. Then one day, when only a few boats remained in the harbor, Good Buddy was suddenly gone. The buyer had hitched a ride out to her on the barge the marina was pulling moorings with, and then he and a woman he’d just met, and her dog, sailed over the horizon.

Several weeks later I visited Good Buddy at her new home, at a small marina about 30 minutes away by car. The new owner had moved a considerable amount of personal items aboard, as though he might occasionally live there. Which he confessed he might do from time to time.

The following spring I received a voicemail from the owner of the marina telling me to come get my boat.

Say what now? What boat?

I called the woman, who informed me that the gentleman who sailed Good Buddy into her marina had never paid her a dime, and beyond a month of slip fees he owed, she’d had to haul the boat and store it. The man was ghosting her. He was ghosting me, too. The boat was still technically registered to me. It was a bad deal.

I kept in touch with the woman, always with this crazy thought in the back of my mind: “Selling Good Buddy was a mistake. Maybe I can get her back.” The yard fees eventually exceeded $4k. For a boat that realistically was worth $800. By then I had to concede that she was gone and pray that the wingnut who bought the boat suddenly reappeared. Yes, he was shady, but he’d left all his stuff aboard. He’d have to come back. Right?

The next time I stopped by the marina the boat was gone. And stayed gone for two years.

That is, until about a month ago.

There she was, suddenly, on jackstands. A section of rubrail was missing, and absolutely nothing had been done maintenance-wise since I sold her, but other than that she seemed . . . okay. The registration sticker on her was current.

Phew.

If only she could talk. I’d love to know where she’s been, and what she’s seen.

And yes, whether she’s okay.

Because despite her tendency to bring out the worst in others, I still want that boat.