Some boats are love at first sight, while others steal your heart despite their flaws. For Jack Dexter and his wife Carol, their first boat, Instead, was a little of both—an 18-foot Duxbury Duck with broken ribs, chewed-up sails, and a leaky bottom. But what she lacked in seaworthiness, she made up for in adventure, transforming a young couple with barely a dime to spare into lifelong sailors. This is the story of how Instead became more than just a boat—it became the beginning of a lifelong passion.
In 1968 my wife Carol and I returned to Maine. We were 25 years old, had almost no savings, and I was starting my first real job after earning my masters degree. Carol was to be a stay at home mom taking care of our month old infant son Scot. We moved into a nice duplex in Portland.
My father had been a sailor as a kid. When he was transferred to Maine in 1955 he bought a boat and joined Centerboard Yacht Club. By 1968 he was on his third boat, an O’Day Daysailer, and racing in the clubs open class. He asked me to crew for him and I quickly accepted. Carol and my mom visited and took care of Scot while my dad and I spent every Saturday afternoon racing on Casco Bay. During that summer I got the sailboat bug really badly.
Carol had only sailed once in her life. It was when we were dating and my father and mother had taken us for an afternoon sail to Jewell Island. Carol showed up for the sail with proper foot wear but not nearly enough warm clothes for a day on the water. By the time we returned to CYC she was wearing every piece of clothing on the boat. She looked like the Michelin man!
I offer the above background to put the rest of the story in context. We had, as noted, almost no money, an infant son, and Carol was not a sailor. Nevertheless at the end of that summer I proposed that we buy a sailboat. She agreed! The hunt was on.
We determined that if we used the money that we had put aside for a down payment on a house and other emergencies we could spend $500 on a boat. Even in the fall of 1968 that wasn’t much. We haunted boat yards and classifieds. Finally a friend of my father’s suggested we look at a boat he had stored under his porch. A sensible person would have walked away. We didn’t.
The boat was a Duxbury Duck, an 18’ fractional sloop designed by John Alden. The first one was built in 1925 and there were once 60 of them. Most had been lost in the hurricane of 1938. Our Duck was a survivor ….but barely. She had 13 broken ribs. Someone had done a poor job of fiberglassing her and she needed 31 patches on her bottom. She had three suits of Egyptian cotton sail, two of which had squirrel holes chewed in them. What paint was on her was falling off. About the only solid thing about her was her trailer. WE LOVED HER!
I spent the winter of 1968-‘69 putting her back together as best I could. Our landlord gave me half his two car garage for a workshop. I made templates so he could cut steel sisters for the broken ribs which I bolted in beside the broken ones. I sanded her inside and out and put 31 fiberglass patches on the bottom. One night while I was working my wife came out to the unheated garage where I was working and said “You get in here this minute! It’s 12 degrees out!!” I hadn’t noticed. In the spring I painted her red. We named her “INSTEAD” because we’d used our down payment to buy her instead.
We launched her on April 1 of 1969. It was raining and I assumed that’s why she was filling with water. What I didn’t realize was that I should have caulked around her centerboard. She eventually swelled up but she always leaked a little. We owned INSTEAD for three years. We raced her every Saturday in the Centerboard Open Class and cruised Casco Bay. My crew was (and still is) my wife Carol. Although I did many dumb things to scare her while I was learning to be a captain (some of those dumb things would make a story by themselves) she has stuck with me and has become a competent sailor in her own right.
In our last year with INSTEAD we actually won the open class at Centerboard. In one race we actually beat a Cal 20 boat for boat. Although I’ve raced many times since, this was still the most thrilling race of my life. We approached the finish line at a 90 degree angle while the Cal was coming straight at it. At the last minute I tacked inside the Cal while my wife yelled “Don’t! Don’t!” When she stopped shaking she calmly said, “I never saw a look like that in your eyes before.”
You never forget your first boat.