Once when I was traveling to Canada with my Uncle Hunter, a 20hr trip all in one day, he began to tell me a story about John Jay Hooker. He said ” well to make a long story short” I stopped him there and said “we have a 20 hour trip. Take all the time you need. Well Uncle Hunter was a good storyteller. So for 10 hours he told the story. Left the other 10 hours for another story. Well this is a long story. Here we go.
I spent 6 months looking at every Marina around for a boat. There were some good ones but not the right one. Finally I saw an online ad for a boat in Kentucky.
She was stripped bare and been on the hard for 10 years. She needed extensive amounts of work but great bones. She was a Morgan 36′ design. Love at first sight.
We drove up to Rottering Marina in Kentucky to look at her on a Sunday. I called the owner the next day to say I wanted to meet and see her. I met a woman named Sue.
The next week I offered full asking price but was informed I had to pay quickly because of a pending bankruptcy. I decided to wait until that was settled. Six months went by. She was still available and I made the same offer. Now there was a divorce to be settled with the owner. I waited another 6 months. Finally that was settled and I bought her!
A long journey was to inSue.
This boat had a pedigree. She was first purchased by Morris Truman in Ft. Myers, Florida. He raced her with great success. He really loved this boat he named Remote. Sue was college roommates with his daughter and sailed her and loved her. Truman aged and donated Remote to a Wesleyan college in Kentucky where a sailing program was started. Sadly the school did not take care of her and she went up for sale. Sue bought her. Her X worked on the boat for 10 years and did needed work but never sailed her.
As soon as the sale was finalized we started to sand the bottom and repaint her for a voyage to Harbor Island Yacht Club in Nashville where I grew up a father was Commodore in 1971.
I worked on here there for three years. Putting back all the hardware and rigging and learning to race her.
I had wondered about a name change. Then I had a dream one night I was sailing her down a waterway in Canada with rocky shores and dangerous turns. We pulled into a dock with great relief when she turned into a horse a flew away. She returned and I knew her name was Shadowfax (after Lord of the Rings). I saw that same boat name several times in the next month and shortened it to Shadow.
