Sketchbook

Sockeye 62: Pacific Nortwest Dreaming

- Sam Devlin

This month’s column is purely hypothetical, though I wouldn’t mind the story playing out this way. We all have dreams, and this is one of mine.

My customer and friend, Ralph, calls with good news: He’s finally sold his business and is ready to retire. I congratulate him on his good fortune, but the conversation isn’t over. Ralph has been thinking for some time that if his ship really comes in, he’ll order a new boat, the penultimate cruiser he’d dreamed about for years.

Fifteen years earlier, in this fantasy, I had built Ralph’s father one of my 45-foot Sockeye designs. They enjoyed it for many thousands of miles, cruising and exploring. I’m almost scared to hear what boat Ralph might want next. (I may have heard that he’s interested in a Steve Dashew FPB long distance cruiser built in aluminum.) When he tells me, my jaw drops to the ground.

Ralph wants me to finish the Sockeye 62, a design I’ve been whittling on for several years and a direct extension of the boat I built for his family. Ralph wants the 62 as his retirement home and cruiser. My head fills with the clutter of what needs to happen to see this project through to completion. Drawings galore to generate for the build team, and so many lists of equipment, parts and materials that to contemplate it from the start would not even blunt the edge of the final effort.