Used Boats

In 2001, Ed and Vivian Steele sold their business and started looking for something to do for a few years.

So many boats, so many ways to get out on the water. For Allan and Sally Seymour, it was trailer-boating with a 19-foot Boston Whaler, covering the East Coast from New England to Norfolk, Virginia.

When a couple has logged a lifetime’s worth of boating, they know what they want out of the lifestyle; they know how to be comfortable in, and on, the boat of their choice.

You can’t get much closer to the water than you do in a kayak. That kind of one-on-one feeling is what got Vickie Silvia started on boats.

The dream was always there. “For years, I would go past marinas on beautiful summer days, full of boats that no one ever seemed to use,” says Peter Clarke.

Steve Ehrler and Jan Murphy wanted to try the liveaboard lifestyle. They were looking for a good boat, about 10 years old, well equipped and well maintained, says Ehrler, 63, a former Navy submarine officer. “It also had to feel like home,” he says.

The seeds of a boating life are sown early. Brian Torrance has been on the water for as long as he can remember.

Designed by Bruce King and inspired by L. Francis Herreshoff’s Ticonderoga, Whitehawk’s 105-foot, cold-molded hull launched in 1978 from Rockland, Maine.

We all know the feeling. Walking off the dock after a day on the water, you can’t resist turning around and taking one last look at your boat.

Life doesn’t stay the same. Boats don’t, either.

You start out small in a skiff or a runabout, exploring the local waters: the river, the bays and the coves close to home.

It’s called “Andy’s Rock,” but you won’t find it so named on any charts of the Connecticut River. Still, it’s legendary  in the fishing lore of the Roussel family and their boat, Annie B II.

Forty-eight boats. That’s the fleet 73-year-old Rick Anastos had owned during a lifetime of boating.