I've posted here a number of times about the boat my parents owned for most of my teen years -- a 1973 Tylercraft 26 (and, yes, that's me in the photo above, prior to us splashing the hull for the first time in 1974). As stated in prior posts, we signed the contract on the boat as a kit in October 1973 -- just days before the Arab oil embargo -- and it was one of the very last heavily-built, bulletproof hulls that Ted Tyler constructed on Long Island before the crisis upended the entire fiberglass boat building industry. As it was, he took a huge loss on our boat because the cost of the raw materials skyrocketed beyond the scope of our contract (less than $10,000 for the entire package at the time).
We cruised with the Tylercraft in the coastal waters of Connecticut, Rhode Island and Long Island Sound, then moved to Maryland and spent many years gunkholing the northern Chesapeake Bay in and around the Annapolis area. The last time I saw our dear boat (I truly loved that Tylercraft) was during the summer of 1981, just before I returned to college to begin my junior year. That fall my Dad was promoted to a new position within his company and the rest of the family moved out to southern California. By the time I graduated from college, the Tylercraft had been moved up to the San Francisco Bay area and ultimately was sold there.
Below is the last photograph I have of it. On the back of the photo, in my Dad's handwriting, it says "Mac's Tac at Rio Vista, California. Fall 1986"
And below is where the marina is located where it was photographed.
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And that was that. We never learned anything more about her and figured she had ultimately been turned into scrap about ten years ago.
But no...
Here she is today. Don't believe me? Check out the bow letters. It even looks like the teak bow roller that my Dad installed is still there.
The current owner contacted me late Friday and has it for sale on Craigslist for $6,700, which you can read here. He contacted me last year about the same boat, but I didn't know for certain that it was the same one as ours because our email thread never seemed to mesh.
Suffice to say, someone has spent some serious time and money fixing the old girl up; she's in much nicer condition than I remember her being in when I last saw her over 30 years ago.
Were she on the east coast, I'd be very interested in looking at her in person. As far as coastal cruisers go, she's perfect for gunkholing in shallow water -- though I wouldn't take her on as a blue water cruiser as she was never designed for that.
Below are all the other photos I've posted of that wonderful boat. Now you'll have to excuse me while I get something out of my eye...
I always cherished the time I had with my family aboard that boat. And I'm delighted that she's still around. I hope another family is as lucky as we were to have her...
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