Good Old Boat Issue 142: Jan/Feb 2022

and their baby, Maverick, who sail a 1988 Bayfield 36 named Lumos . Another Good Man Gone We were recently informed of the death of Bill Sandifer, 82, who will be remembered by the earliest readers of Good Old Boat as a frequent and excellent contributor. Because Bill’s background and technical expertise were profound, and because he loved working on his own good old boats, he had much to offer readers as our

magazine grew following our first issue in the summer of 1998. Bill was a marine surveyor and boatbuilder who began sailing around the age of 8, taught sailing through high school and college, and later cruised in the Far East, the Mediterranean, the U.S. East Coast, and the Gulf Coast. Consider this common-sense advice from one who had spent many years in boatyards: “The Thinking Chair is the tool you should use before you subject yourself to the frustration, heat, and body-abusing contortions that accompany the quest for the fully renovated good old boat.” This knowledge was gained at least in part through a complete renovation of his beloved Pearson Ariel and then later as the owner of an Eastward Ho 31. Bill’s first articles began in our second issue (September 1998), and we gave him the honorary title of contrib- uting editor in the same issue. That title did not require him to write something for every issue, nor did it obligate us to publish all he wrote. Nevertheless, he had articles in most issues for the first 10 years, although space was tight, and an increasing number of excellent authors competed for a place in each issue. While he wrote mostly technical pieces, Bill occasionally wrote a humorous piece, such as “Why July?” noting that almost all boat breakdowns

occur during the hottest month of the year. The article that resonates the most with me, however, was written following Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, where Bill and his wife, Genie, lived. Bill and Genie lost nearly everything except their lives in that hurricane of August 2005. Bill’s comments a year later in our September 2006 issue about that storm brought the tragedy home to those of us who have never experienced devastation of this nature. He compared the sudden loss and the storm’s lasting effects to post-traumatic stress disorder. It was heartbreaking to read. Bill and Genie moved from their home on the Mississippi Coast and started over in Louisiana, but while he continued to write for Good Old Boat , his contributions became infrequent, and eventually he told us that he had Parkinson’s disease and would not be able to write in the future. He asked that his name be removed from the list of contributing editors in the fall of 2015. Bill Sandifer was missed then and will be missed even more now. Fair winds, Bill, and following seas. — Karen Larson , Good Old Boat founder Decisions, Decisions… I just finished reading Hal Wells’ account of his boat’s encounter with a bridge (“A Bridge Too Close,” September/October 2021), and it reminded me of a similar experience but with a different ending. My wife, Mauri, and I own a 1995 Olson 34 sloop named Watermark . Several years ago, we spent a night in a marina in Ganges Harbor on Saltspring Island, British Columbia. Ganges is a lovely town, but sometimes the wind funnels down the narrow bay and creates some challenges for sailors. We had spent a quiet night aboard with plans to leave mid-morning, but we noticed the wind starting to develop much earlier in the day than usual. The forecast was for it to continue to build. It had already quickly developed from a moderate breeze to a very brisk one. As luck would have it, the wind was dead abeam and putting us firmly on the dock. Our particular position in the marina was a side tie in a U-shaped dock, with our boat in a line between one boat at our bow and one at our stern running along the bottom of the U. The left and right branches of the U were short lengths of dock running perpendicular to the portion

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January/February 2022