Judy Waldman

In exemplifying why my job is interesting, I mentioned that I was in Vancouver last week to list a Cape Horn Trawler. This is the 3rd time I have sold this trawler – that’s unusual for Cape Horns and unusual for my trawler owners who tend to have ownership longevity far beyond the standards. Hmm, length of ownership is a subject for another post one day. So what’s the story and why did I fly to Vancouver for the listing if I’ve sold the boat twice previously?

Cape Horn Trawlers were built under the direction of Peter Sever and primarily in Nova Scotia. After successfully building a 58 for himself and subsequently two 52s and three 63s, he decided perhaps he could sell more boats if he had better “pedigree.” So Peter decided to build the Cape Horn 55s at the Kanter Yard in Ontario. Kanter was well known and respected for their sailboats and metalwork.

Billy’s owners were from Australia. He a doctor and she a nurse, they had done missionary work in Borneo and finally settled in Hong Kong for medical practice. They had a Cheoy Lee 66 that they used on weekends. They had 2 children and subsequently adopted 4 special needs children locally. They wanted to live aboard with the children and return to missionary work. A Cape Horn 55 was in their budget and was the perfect bullet-proof, go anywhere boat for the journey.

Launch of the Cape Horn is delayed. The wife flies from HK to Ontario to speed things along. She hires a mate and starts her way towards Fl. The husband flies with the 4 special needs children to Fl. to join the wife on the boat, provision, and head towards the canal on to their home port in Hong Kong.   Well, I was hurting for poor hubby arriving FLL with 4 special children all jet-lagged and instead of sleeping on their new boat, sleeping in a hotel. Any normal person would be sympathetic to the situation, but since my husband Howard and I share the blessing of having a daughter with Down Syndrome, we were “feeling their discomfort.” So impulsively, I offered for the husband and 4 children to stay at our house with us until the boat arrived.  And to make things worse, I got a contract on a boat and had to leave town for a sea trial and survey. So Howard took care of our Dina and the client with 4 special needs children for something like 4 days!

Billy arrives Lauderdale. The wife says the delays have used up the husband’s sabbatical time allocated for delivery so he was flying home with the children and she was continuing with the mate for the delivery.

To be continued…