Introducing the Dragons

We started sailing in 1959 after launching SCUTUM, our 24-foot sloop that we built in Vancouver. She is a Richard D. Carlson-designed Cutlass M.O.R. Class. We sailed her year-round in BC and cruised in her over the summers while Jane enjoyed her teacher's holidays. Our cruising grounds were around Vancouver Island, and SCUTUM did win the odd race for us at the West Vancouver Yacht Club. She was one of the early fin-keel skeg-and-rudder light-displacement designs. We fitted her with a windvane/trim tab controlled auxiliary rudder, probably the first one on the West Coast of North America.

In 1963 I designed MAGIC DRAGON, because we had decided that if we spent much of our spare time afloat we needed more comfort than the 24-footer had to offer, with its single-burner cook stove and other simple amenities. MAGIC DRAGON was intended to be a practical and economical boat to build, maintain and cruise. I tried to get as much room and comfort as I could fit into a 40-footer so she would not be oversized for the West Vancouver Y.C. berths. Included was a large hold beside the cockpit where we stow our Honda 90cc motorcycle, outboard motor, scuba gear, fenders etc. For $125 Bill Garden drew a set of hull lines and topped them with the masthead sail plan of the Gulf 40 for us. He did not like the reverse sheer (why hog her before you even sail her, he asked) but he agreed that there were enough good ideas in the concept to try it out. He promised to design us a pair of suction cup shoes so we could hold ourselves aboard. He feared (unnecessarily it turned out) that her big volume and light displacement would make her wild at sea. In 1963, a 40-footer twin keeler with 14-foot beam, short ends, flush deck, high freeboard and a built-in intrinsic windvane steering system was a radical departure from the norm.

We built her in front of our house in West Vancouver in fourteen months, some 3500 man-hours plus untold woman-hours. The 2" red cedar strip-planked hull was built upside down on its own permanent bulkheads and heavily fiberglassed (1/4" minimum on the topsides, 3/4" for three feet at the waterline from the bow to the maximum beam). The flush deck is a sandwich foam and wood with 3/16" of glass covering. The interior is a combination of plywood structures and cedar trims. Simple and very practical. I did all our own woodwork, fiberglassing, wiring, plumbing and engine installation. I made the mast out of aluminum irrigation pipe and spliced our own rigging. Jane did all the sanding, varnishing and painting in her weekends and school holidays. The sails, fuel tanks and keels were built by professionals.

We launched her in August 1964 and cruised her in BC for a year. She was so comfortable that we felt that our dream house overlooking Howe Sound in West Vancouver had become obsolete. So in 1965 we sold it, and moved aboard. We have lived on MAGIC DRAGON ever since.

Our first winter we sailed to San Francisco and Hawaii, where we got a taste of warm winter weather and warm clear water to sail, swim and snorkel. MAGIC DRAGON had her teething problems. The asymmetric keels that Bill Garden had suggested turned out to be efficient brakes, and we replaced them with symmetrical ones in Guymas, Mexico on our way to the Atlantic in 1966. After a year in Mexico, three years in the Virgin Islands and a summer in Europe, we installed a bigger Isuzu Diesel engine in St. Thomas for the return trip to BC. The early seventies we cruised the West Coast, working in BC and escaping to California and Mexico for the winters. In 1973 we sailed through French Polynesia and the milk run to New Zealand.

We are lucky to have been adopted in NZ where we and MAGIC DRAGON became citizens in 1978. Since, we have sailed to the Northern Marianas, back to Canada, Mexico and Polynesia. During the southern winters we often sail north to New Caledonia, Tonga and some of the other islands like Australia. In the 1970s and 1980s Jane wrote many articles for American, Canadian, British, Kiwi and Australian yachting magazines. How many miles have we sailed? Not too sure, probably somewhere between one and two hundred thousand, but we have not circumnavigated. We've sailed for fun to enjoyable locations, chasing the good weather and making friends on the way everywhere. Now that we are both in our seventies, we content ourselves with even smaller challenges. The last two winters we found ourselves enjoying the "no brainer" cruising in Vava'u Tonga.

Contrary to Bill Garden's original fears, MAGIC DRAGON has proved to be a very comfortable boat, and she makes good passages. After she saw us through a couple of hurricanes, we gained much confidence in her ability to look after herself and us too. We have sailed her on long windward crossings and she is very tame on all points of sailing, always steered by the built-in windvane-steered rudder, or by autopilot when under power. Her fully enclosed cockpit convertible top allows us to stay out of the weather underway. Thanks to the space on deck we can stow a couple of dinghies, one a 14-foot outboard-powered very useful shoreboat. The diesel heater and good insulation keep us comfortable below, and with the gimballed gas fridge, hot shower and cozy interior, we have not missed the house a bit, so far.

We still hope to cruise to the palm tree latitudes while we can, but as always the plan is to have no plan, and we never know what we'll be doing until we are doing it.