The first time I ever saw her, she was veiled in white shrinkwrap, high on her cradle where she had spent the bitter Vermont winter. In fact, her owner Joel Bradley said, she hadn't been in the water in three years. It was late April, 2003. I had been searching for the perfect S2 35 foot center cockpit boat since the previous December. On this particular jaunt I had already looked at two other 35C's near Baltimore, but this one, Seaductress, was of particular interest because she had been so well kept. Joel was her original owner, and freshwater Lake Champlain her only home. Only 35 of these sailboats were ever built, and she was hull number 32, a perfect 1987 vintage.

In all we looked at eight different 35C's: two in Florida, two in Maryland, one in Texas, one in Tennessee, and Seaductress in Vermont. I made a spreadsheet listing points for this feature or that, but in the end I just had a gut feeling Seaductress was the boat. I called Joel, negotiated a sales agreement, and started looking for a marine transport company to move the boat from Vermont to Tennessee. I submitted dozens of online forms and made phone calls, but few transporters seemed eager to make a firm commitment for Vermont. Finally I hooked up with Atlantic Marine Transport out of Florida, who were taking a boat up to New York and looking for a return trip. By this time Annie and I were so tired of staring at airfare and hotel rates that we decided to go for broke: during a flurry of phone calls and faxes on a Thursday afternoon, we contracted to move the boat and bought airfare from Atlanta to Boston for Saturday, planning to drive up to Burlington that afternoon.

Joel was the perfect host, even putting us up at his "camp" (actually a very nice home near the lake) and taking us for a great test sail on Sunday.

We had seven people aboard for the sail, which was a "farewell" for Joel and his family. It was a perfect sailing day on Champlain. Annie and I hadn't seen so many sailboats in action since visiting San Francisco Bay.

We made one tack in order to get through "the cut" and then circled around a large island, making 7-8 knots under a reefed mailsail and genoa. I tried to explain to Joel that although the season was certainly longer, we just didn't see that many days to match this one back on Lake Chickamauga. We found no real problems during the test sail and so immediately began preparing the boat for loading soon after we got it back to the dock. Annie and I worked two long days getting the boat ready, padding and securing everything down below. Champlain Marina's Manager Bruce and his right-hand-man Bentley removed the mast, then hauled the boat and had it hanging in the lift, waiting for the truck before Annie, Laura, and I had to drove south to Boston to catch our flight home the next day.