Monthly Archives: January 2011

Often while at anchorage other boaters will dinghy over to us and inquire as to the origin of Monomoy’s name.

When our Ship’s Boatswain, Blake, was 4 years old, he had a favorite book for us to read to him called “Ghost Ship”, which was just released that year. This book was bestselling storyteller Mary Higgins Clark’s first children book and was illustrated by award-winning artist Wendell Minor.

“During his summer visits to his grandmother’s house on Cape Cod, Thomas spends hours walking along the
beach, wondering about the sailing ships of the past and imagining their stories. One afternoon, Thomas digs in
the beach sand and finds an old belt buckle. When he picks it up, something magical happens—a boy his own
age appears: Silas Rich, a cabin boy on a sailboat called the Monomoy that sailed almost three hundred years ago.
Suddenly the world of sailing ships is very near as Silas tells Thomas his tale.”

Blake continues to enjoy the book today, though he tends to read it to himself now.

With the book being Blake’s favorite at the time we sold our sailing vessel Knotical and purchased our next sailboat, Blake was old enough to provide his input on a name; his first choice was Monomoy, and thus it was agreed and subsequently made reputable for our little sailing family.

So there you have the story behind the name of our sailing vessel Monomoy.

The s/v Peacemaker is visiting Pensacola, FL, so we took the opportunity to take a tour and learn a little bit about the ship.

The Peacemaker, originally named Avany, was built on a riverbank in southern Brazil using traditional methods and tropical hardwoods, and was launched in 1989. The original owner and his family motored in the southern Atlantic Ocean before bringing the ship up through the Caribbean to Savannah, Georgia, where they intended to rig it as a three-masted staysail Marconi rigged motor sailer. The work was never done, however, and in the summer of 2000, it was purchased by the Twelve Tribes, a religious group with 50 or so communities in North and South America, Europe, and Australia. They spent the next seven years replacing all of the ship’s mechanical and electrical systems and rigging it as a barquentine. The refit vessel set sail for the first time in the spring of 2007, under the name Peacemaker.

The Peacemaker will be used to travel between the communities of the Twelve Tribes while providing an apprenticeship program for their youth in sailing, seamanship, navigation, and boat maintenance.

Here are some photos from our tour: