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Gwynneth Anderson and Trevor Griffiths stopped in at the Town Dock in Oriental in late November, on board board “Kestrel”, the first Pearson Ariel ever made.

It was Thanksgiving Day when they arrived and from Gwynneth’s perspective, thanks were in order to Trevor’s father, John. Because of his endeavors, they have the boat to live on for the next half year.

The story goes back a bit.

Trevor says his parents had met each other in the islands — his father had sailed there from England, his mother was working on a charter schooner. They spent time on boats but ultimately moved to land. His father went to work as a marine surveyor.

But as Trevor recalls, his father “just couldn’t live with the idea of not having a boat.”

Kestrel at the Town Dock, November 2007

This is where the Ariel comes in… but not in the bristol shape that she showed off at the Oriental Town Dock.

If a boat could have sunk on land, Trevor says, “Kestrel” had. She had spent years on the hard in a Maryland boat yard, filling with water.

Around 2000, the owners of the boat yard wanted to get rid of it.

John Griffiths bought “Kestrel” and with it quite a project. He brought the boat to a “huge workshop” (Trevor says it is bigger than his parents’ home) near the Sassafras River in Maryland and got to work.

One particular power tool was put to a lot of use. Trevor says his father “took a chainsaw and cut the interior out.” And there he made one of the biggest changes to the boat, one that would be quickly apparent to anyone accustomed to the Ariel’s formica and plastic interiors. John rebuilt the entire interior out of cherry. Now, down below, it lends a warmth and coziness to the space.

Trevor Griffiths & Gwynneth Anderson

Trevor notes that some Ariel purists may not have liked that change (which also, Gwynneth noted, made for a lot of storage behind the seating area).

In addition to gutting and reworking the interior, John Griffiths reglassed the decks and replaced the failing gas engine with a diesel. With the diesel taking up space beneath the companionway, the galley — a campstove — has moved out to the cockpit.

Meanwhile, the boat has gained a head and holding tank. That marks a departure from the standard Ariel in which a porta-potty was the standard fare.

Gwynneth was especially enthusiastic about that departure from the original design. Like Trevor, she’d grown up sailing too, sometimes in Oriental when her parents lived in the Triangle. Their boat, modest in size, had a porta potty and distinct memories of her mother hauling the ‘suitcase’ to a public restroom were still fresh; Gwynneth wanted no part of that.

With limited space on the Ariel, the decision was made to put the commode under the v-berth — which is why during the day, she and Trevor explain, the v-berth is not in place.

Trevor and Gwyneth set south on “Kestrel” in early November. Since graduating from the University of Maryland a few years ago, Gwynneth and Trevor had been living and working in Washington — she with the Smithsonian Folk-Life Festival and he working for a company that develops bike and pedestrian plans for cities such as Seattle.

They both used bikes to get around Washington but on their boat they decided not to take them along, given the limited space. Similar considerations kept Trevor from taking along a banjo though he did find room for a small guitar.

The two are also traveling light when it comes to a schedule for the next half year. They say they are thinking of aiming for the Bahamas, but for the moment, “heading south is our only solid plan.” other than returning north toward Maryland in the late spring.

A few weeks in to the trip, Gwynneth said the more they were living on the boat, the less it was a “scary adventure” and the more confident she got. Plus, there were those experiences such as seeing a pod of dolphins a few days earlier near Broad Creek. All of which she said, made her want to push back the return trip.

And would they one day want to sail on something larger?

Gwynneth laughs and says they, “should try to persuade Trevor’s father to buy a 35 foot boat to fix up.”

Trevor added that if that happened, he would want to have more of a hand in restoring it than he did on “Kestrel”, so that he could better know the boat’s systems. In the early stages of the voyage south on board “Kestrel” an answer to any questions has been a cell phone call away to John Griffiths. Who as it turns out, has a boat that is sailing once again.

Kestrel is named for a bird that sails in to a headwind. A Louis Wain cat, stenciled in to the dinghy, follows in the wake.

Posted Tuesday January 1, 2008 by Melinda Penkava

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