What’s in a name?
Her name is Legacy. All of our boats, starting with a 268 SeaRay Sundancer back in 1997 have been named Legacy. Of course, we added numbers for a while, so it was Legacy II for our 33 Sundancer and Legacy III for our 38 Sundancer. The Fleming is the boat that we will do the Great Loop in, however, and we think she’s the final Legacy!
So why Legacy, especially from someone who spent and entire career in Information Technology (IT)? If you’re in IT, you would know legacy systems as the old stuff – tired and expensive; not well architected; a lot of technical debt and likely not very secure. These are the systems you need to rearchitect, upgrade or replace. Well that’s not it….and the irony for a retired chief information officer (CIO). Those who know I was a CIO always ask why such an odd name.
Legacy means that which is handed down from generation to generation….”something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past.”
So Legacy is a tribute to my Dad, who passed away when I was in college, but gave my brothers, sister and I a love for boating. My parents were both school teachers and we grew up on school teachers salaries, so we all know that’s not much! My Dad taught industrial arts – back in the day that was wood shop and power mechanics. He was an amazing mechanic, but more than that an amazing man. He was a double amputee having lost both legs below the knee to circulatory problems. He had his aorta replaced 3 times. He couldn’t play baseball or soccer with us, or skate or hike, but we could boat and fish together, and that we did. On teachers’ salaries, boating was a huge reach financially so he found a way to make it happen. He bought a sunken 30’ Colonial cabin cruiser (the owner slammed it into a seawall and sunk it for the insurance money) and fixed it up. He bartered for 2 used Grey Marine engines and my Mom, an amazing seamstress in addition to math teacher, replaced all cushions and curtain to make it a summer home. I remember scraping gummed up oil out of the bilge, sanding the bottom and removing layers and layers of varnish from the transom. We all worked on it together. It was called Ed’s Joy his name being Ed and hers being Joyce. Ed’s Joy was later upgraded to a 42’ Richardson with a few more creature comforts – 2 heads and bigger bunks for the 4 of us kids; we had sort of outgrown the ones on the Colonial.
As teachers, my parents had the summer off, so we lived on the boat – all six of us plus the German shepherd (Roscoe), family of hamsters, couple gerbils and even a tarantula. Dad ran the engine business at the marina and I think we got our slip for free. We spent nearly the entire month of August at Block Island, RI in Old Harbor where the movie changed every day or two and cost us $1.00 each to get in. It was a short walk to the beach and of course the gift shops were right there to browse in almost every day. We flew kites from fishing rods, hitch hiked around the island, picked wild blackberries and body surfed at Ballards Beach. We made great memories and felt like we were living high! He instilled in each of us a love of boating and respect for the sea, thus the name Legacy.
My younger sister and her husband have a 39’ Mainship named Jane-Jane, because that is what Dad would affectionately call her and painted ‘Jane-Jane’ on a purple outboard engine he put on a small skif for her to tool around in. My younger brother and his wife have a 32’ Grand Banks named Synergy, because they are better together. I don’t know the name of my older brother’s boat – it was a sailboat in New Zealand and he just sold it. Obviously, he didn’t get the memo about trawlers, but he’s always been the rebel.
So there you have it…. Legacy. Thanks Dad!
