Moonfleet Pt 2

[Justine]

Ok after all the phone calls and web searches.  Having finally finding the owner of Moonfleet was a relief.  I really don’t think the broker want to sail her to us.  We also offered such a low offer on her that he didn’t think it was worth his time.  He had others that offered way more but were turned down.  I think we hit him at just the right time.

We also did tons of web searches for Newporters.  We had never heard of them before.  We found, at that time, there was next to no information.  I did find a few email addresses for owners and started sending emails out.  With fingers crossed I was surprised at how helpful everyone was with information.

After purchasing Moonfleet,  we were added to the family of owners and everyone was so useful with information.  That fell into many forms from history, repair advice, and answering all my silly questions.  A few were even nice enough to help with sailing terms.  Believe it was taken as a huge help and  made it so much easier to speak in terms that people understood.  Kind of hard to ask about, you know that wire, over there, by the front.  Hehe   I’m sure everyone was glad when I could ask something in a way they knew what I was trying to ask a question about.  I will always remember everyone for all their help!

After we finally had all the paperwork done we couldn’t wait to crawl over, thru and in every cubby hole we could find.  After get to the boat for our first, “She is ours”, we spent our first weekend on her.  There were quite a few beers being drank and a whole lot of cleaning. 

Moonfleet was owned by one person.  He was also the man that ordered her, she has the only galley layout that was unique.  She had an L shaped galley but everything was in the right place and was lot safer than one would think.  Lee Patterson was my next web search between cleanings and on the days we had to be away from her.

Lee Patterson was born Vancouver, British Columbia.  He always wanted to be an actor.  He did become one in the USA and in Canada.  He did his most work in England, Surfside 6 was one of his well-known works.  It is pretty easy to do a Lee Patterson web search I’ll leave it to anyone who is more interested on his film work to do that themselves.

 Lee lived on Moonfleet,  always. She was his home.  He sailed here all the way to England at least twice that I’m aware of.  He also sailed her to Vancouver quite a few times.  So if anyone ever says a Newporter is not a blue water sailor tell them they are wrong.   He lived in New York, California, New Orleans and Galveston, Texas

 He kept her in really good shape most of her life.  He was in New Orleans for a show he was doing (never did figure out what it was) when Hurricane Katrina started headed that way.  He sailed her to Galveston to get out of the path and barely made it.  They then went thru Hurricane Rita.  She rode the storm out in fair shape.  She had a pretty long scratch down her starboard side. I would was told she came untied on that said and rubbed against a pylon.  She almost punctured her side on that same pylon in Hurricane Ike.  She came thru that storm looking pretty too but that is another part.

 

The sad party of this story is that his Wife died of cancer when they were in Galveston ( this is what I was told but could never find out for sure)  He then contracted cancer too.  He was alone in Galveston but he made tons of friends that loved him dearly.  He passed away in Galveston.  I believe he passed away on Moonfleet, where he loved to be.  It would be where I’d want to live my last days.  Be the silly girl that I am I could always imagine him sitting there with us on Moonfleet for the short time we actually owned her.  I hope he knew we loved her as much as he did and would try to do the best for her that we were capable of doing.  I know very many people miss him.

 

                                                                  

[bob mitchell]

TERRIFIC - GREAT READING, THANKS, AND KEEP UP THE INTERESTING WORK!