Aboard WIZARD

The sloop Wizard hadn’t sailed for half a century when she entered the 2017 Eggemoggin Reach Regatta. She needed all those years of resting, perhaps, after making an incredible round-the-world voyage in 1959–62.

I’ve followed her closely since 1989, when my wife, Anne, and I ran across  her when she was named Patapsco II and lying afloat and abandoned in Patchogue, New York. I had heard about her exploits even before then from my neighbor Alan Bemis, who owned a sistership named Cirrus.

Upon hearing from us that she was available, John Dunbar and Doug Hylan, then partners of Benjamin River Marine (BRM) in Brooklin, Maine, purchased her on speculation. But their idea of a “corporate yacht” fell through, as did their partnership. So, for the next 22 years she stayed inside BRM’s shed until Brion Rieff and David Graham, inspired by a sail in Cirrus, bought Patapsco II, renamed her Wizard, and went ahead with a no-holds-barred restoration.

Off came the ballast keel, upside down went the hull, in went new steam-bent frames, new floor timbers and transom, and an entirely new white oak backbone, including the stem. Her garboards and the rest of her single-thickness longleaf-pine planks were renewed and her topsides were refastened. And after a substantial start on her interior, she was turned right-side up for completion.

The Herreshoff Mfg. Co. of Bristol, Rhode Island, built Wizard in 1930 as Surprise, hull No. 1156. Bemis’s Cirrus, No. 1157, came next as Kelpie, both being part of a five-boat batch of “special” teak-trimmed Fishers Island 31s (named for their waterline length) built that year. In all, 14 boats of this design were constructed beginning in 1927, with the final one, Memory (No. 1521), not delivered until 1946 as the very last boat in Herreshoff’s construction record.