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The parade of southbound boats didn’t let up this week and more seemed to be stopping in than ever. One boat that turned a lot of heads — and sent a lot of feet down to the Town Dock to get a closer look on her approach Saturday afternoon— was probably the oldest of the bunch.



Ayuthia out of Vineyard Haven, MA is a gaff-rigged ketch dating to the 1930’s. Jay Wilbur, who is also out of Vineyard Haven, where he is the harbormaster, was delivering Ayuthia to the Abacos.

Jay says she was built in what was called Siam (now Thailand) where her first owner had a teak plantation. As a result, says Jay, the boat is ‘all teak, and the best teak’. Even the hull and keel. Though he thinks the masts are spruce.

Ayuthia draws about 4 feet — and 8 with the centerboard down. She is about 50 feet overall and by today’s beamy standards, narrow. Jay’s father, Jack who is making the trip as the ‘naviguesser’ described her to some at the Tiki Bar as having ‘no comfort’. For example, he cited the lack of a dodger. Jay laughs at hearing this and says that his father is ‘used to a Grand Banks trawler’.



Boat and crew had left Martha’s Vineyard five days earlier, sailing outside to Atlantic City, and then down the coast and in to the ICW. They were bound for Beaufort, then Southport before heading off shore to the Abacos. Jay WIlbur says the trip usually takes two weeks.

The boat takes her name from a city in Thailand, where she was built. These days she splits her time between two other places —- Hope Town in the Abacos where she is chartered in the winter, and Martha’s Vineyard where her owner Tom Grew charters her in the summers.

Posted Wednesday October 30, 2002 by Melinda Penkava

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