SOLD – 21′ 6″ Sparkman & Stephens Manhasset Bay One Design Sloop of 1994 Email Listing to a Friend

Commissioned by the Manhasset Bay Yacht Club in 1928 as S&S Design #1, this replica was built by the Landing School in Maine in 1993/4. She’s named 23 SKIDDOO and has the best of both worlds: recently built, and very classic. You can read more in Woodenboat magazine #132 and on the Internet, but let’s face it, it’s Olin Stephens’s first professional design and it’s got those Roaring Twenties lines!

It’s an easy boat to sail. It’s my first boat and three seasons later I still don’t have a motor, just an old wooden paddle in case the wind dies. The boat has a full cast iron keel, beautiful brightwork, and a nice open cockpit with solid bulkheads. She seats four comfortably. She’s rigged for single-handing and points like a dream. I went three weeks without pumping, and there was maybe two quarts of water in the bilge. Nothing a hand pump and sponge couldn’t fix in about 5 minutes.

She was a rescue boat when I got her and looked to be in bad shape, though most of it was cosmetic. With the help of a professional shipwright, I completely removed everything from the interior: coamings, benches and sole. The interior was scraped, sanded and painted with two coats of bilgekote. The rest was refinished or refashioned and replaced, very sturdily. The rubrail was entirely replaced. I fabricated and installed an entirely new aft bulkhead from marine grade plywood drenched in epoxy. I sanded and painted the entire hull, top and bottom, and revarnished the transom. Two years later, she looks absolutely mint—from 20 feet away.

So what happens when you get closer? She needs a coat of paint on the deck and some touchups on the brightwork and topsides. I’ve got matching paint. A new canvas boom tent would help, too. Inside, she has two or three frames with stress fractures. Likely from having the standing rigging cranked too tightly by previous sailers. Her iron keel is flaking some bottom paint and could be cleaned up with rust inhibitor and faired with epoxy and paint. There’s never nothing to do on a wooden boat, but just as is, she’s in great shape to sail and certainly turns heads. So, yeah, the sails work, they aren’t crisp by any means, but they work.

So why am I getting rid of her? I’ve got two toddlers, and my wife and I want a bigger boat. That’s it.

There are a handful of prospective buyers who might consider this boat. There’s the nut, like me, who’s never owned a boat, has read a few wooden boat mags, used some tools before, and wants to jump right in. There’s the racer who lives either around Oyster Bay or Manhasset Bay and wants to sail against other MBODs or join in the classic races, and would have to to do very little to bring her up to speed. Then there’s the one who will do her the justice she deserves—perhaps a downsizing couple who summer in Maine or on Shelter Island who can drop her off at a full service shop and have her made Bristol by June. Really give her a new lease on life. I’d happily sell 23 SKIDDOO to anyone, but I know there’s just the right buyer out there looking for this great deal.

I’m asking $4,500. She comes with a sponge, bilge pump, and a wooden paddle. She’s currently on the hard, resting on her own trailer—which is included. Sweet dreams!

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