Extracted from the July/August issue of the 'Potter Yachter', the
newsletter of the Northern California West Wight Potter Association
I thought your readers would be interested in this account of the sale of
my P-15, Poco Giganti, #2183. In early October of 1993 I sold my Potter
to a young lady in North Carolina. As the lady had no sailing experience,
I offered to, and in fact did, give her three or four hours of sailing
instruction.
Selling a sailboat is nothing new, but what makes this so different is
that she was planning on living aboard this 15' (actually 14') boat! She
did not want to sail the ocean blue, but simply wanted to live on the
water in a sailboat she could handle for short enjoyable day sailing.
She established a buoy at the head of a pretty wide creek (in other places
it would be called a river), anchored her boat to it and settled in. She
had a $300 sleeping bag that was to be her heating system in cold weather.
And, as she was planning on cooking aboard, I installed a fire
extinguisher inside the cuddy for her.
For transportation around town, she had a sixteen foot canoe and a
10-speed bike. She would paddle the canoe, with the bike inside, out the
creek to town. Then run all of her errands around town on the bike and
reverse the trip in the evening. She used the canoe at times for relaxing
by paddling around the shore studying nature.
She would ride her bike as much as sixty to seventy miles, and sleep in
her sleeping bag at night if necessary, to accomplish her errands.
This woman spent the complete winter of 93-94 in the boat and is still
living in it. That winter, as you will remember, was the coldest on the
east coast in 50 years. Temperatures at night were often well below
freezing with many days not much better. Being concerned about her in
these conditions, my wife and I checked on her in early April of 1994.
She was still in the boat, still paddling the canoe, carrying the bike,
back and forth between the boat and town every day.
This should be a noteworthy notch in the history of the West Wight Potter
and give other Potter owners food for thought. The little boat is big in
many ways!
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