How it started

I had been thinking about getting a bigger boat for about a year. My Catalina 22, Compass Rose, is much beloved. She is my first sailboat and has been faithful. I've enjoyed sailing her around Charleston Harbor, on excursions to Capers Inlet, and to Morris Island for four day weekends.

But the ability to move about and cook in a 22 foot boat is limited. Plus, I was beginning to yearn to sail along the coast to some other locations. Nothing too far, say Beaufort or Georgetown. I simply didn't think that it was a good idea to do this is a 22 foot boat.

So I began to look on Yachtworld and to compile a list of my top ten dream boats. I knew that I wanted a sturdy, blue water boat that would be able to do the type of coastal cruising that I dreamed about. As I perused the Yachtworld listings and did more reading, I began to see that some of my top ten boats were not going to be what I wanted. There was either too much teak exteriorly, especially on the deck, or the boats were just too expensive. I began to narrow my choices quite a bit. Shannon, Allied Princess, Cape Dory, and Island Packet were my top picks.

I also started narrowing my search to those boats that I could look at near Charleston. One that kept getting my eye was a 36 foot Cape Dory at City Marina. She was located at the same marina where I went most Wednesday evenings to row with the team. So I decided to give the broker a call.

He met me at the marina after my row, and that was when I first set foot on Sojourner. I liked her immediately. She was beautiful to me. So much room and such beautiful wood work. And nothing that I could see suggested any major problems.


I kept thinking about her, although I continued to look at other listings of boats. But I kept coming back to Sojourner. So after I retired in May 2010, I began to get serious. I just had a feeling that she was the boat for me.

So I talked to her owner, Jeff Wager and decided after listening to the history of the boat and the great care she had been given, to make an offer. More in the next post about purchasing.