Inside Ithaka

By Bernadette Bernon
From Cruising World, June, 2000

We're fortunate to be the owners of a boat that's been built by someone as meticulous, as clever, as tasteful-and as picky-as Gary Back. Ithaka, the 1992 Shearwater 39 that Douglas and I purchased from Gary and Bridgette Back last September, has given us a great deal about which to be proud since we brought her home to Newport, Rhode Island. But we can claim no credit for the achievement of this boat except for one: After seven grueling months of boat shopping, when we stepped aboard this vessel, we had the good sense to buy her on the spot.

Ithaka was constructed of fiberglass at the Nebe Boatworks in Hout Bay, South Africa, under the critical eye of Gary, who told us-imagine how this would play at any other yard-that he went to Nebe to oversee the work of the craftsmen every single day of the building process. Gary could do this because he'd just sold his family business- a large metal-furniture manufacturing company-and he wanted to enjoy the process of building the boat that would take his wife and young children on a cruising sabbatical before he started a new enterprise. Gary, a master craftsman who likes to rebuild Maseratis as a hobby, then finished the interior of the boat himself and brought his expertise in metals and systems to the task of fitting it out with an array of impressive custom stainless-steel work.

Ithaka was designed by naval architect Dudley Dix to withstand the heart-in-your-throat conditions of his home waters around the Cape of Good Hope. Dix, who's won the Cruising World design competition and is known as a successful designer of racing and cruising boats, says his inspiration is the work of Bruce King, Bob Perry, Chuck Paine, John Cherubini, and E.G. Van de Stadt. The pleasing lines of Paine and Cherubini are particularly evident in Ithaka's pretty sheer and strong tumblehome. Douglas and I, not normally traditionalists, were delighted to find that Dix also likes his boats to go fast. Underwater, Ithaka sports a sleeker underbody than one would expect from her clipper bow, rugged bowsprit, champagne-glass stern, and oval bronze ports. She weighs in at a trim 20,000 pounds, has a 6-foot draft and a 12-foot-10-inch beam, and carries a considerable sail area on her cutter rig. So far, she's been a real champ in heavy weather-steady, nimble, and fairly dry on deck.

The Backs cruised the boat for four years from South Africa across the Atlantic, up the coast of South America, through the Caribbean, and then up the coast of the United States, where they sold her to us in Annapolis. According to the old saying, the day you buy a boat and the day you sell it are the two happiest in your life, but when Gary walked away from Ithaka that last day in Annapolis, I thought his heart would break from the grief of selling a boat that had become so much a part of his life.

Since then, as Douglas and I have worked over the winter and spring to get Ithaka ready for our own departure, time and again we've discovered examples of Gary's dazzling execution of engineering ideas and his impressive installation of systems. We're also grateful to him for sharing his expertise with us via email from South Africa over the winter-although we suspect he's compelled to stay involved mostly to ensure that we don't ruin anything on the boat. So far, we seem to have met with his approval, thanks in part to our friends Phil Burton and John Dennison of Atlantic Marine Group, who've expertly done some of the more delicate upgrades.

For the first few months, Gary's idiosyncratic presence was felt everywhere on Ithaka, and often we heard his voice whenever we tried to dismantle something: "If you have to use pressure, STOP; you're not doing it right." He was always right, of course; there'd be some trick to it that we'd been slow to figure out. But now, one by one, as we finish the projects that stand between us and leaving, and especially now that aesthetic changes such as new upholstery and favorite pictures are in place, Ithaka feels like ours, and she feels like home.