Flight of Years is the last in a long line of Pacific Seacraft Flicka 20s. Hull number 434 was purchased from the factory by Dr. and Mrs. Harry Hoffman (pictured here) in 1998 and christened by them "Morgan Le Fay." For those of you whose mythology is rusty, Morgan Le Fay was the half-sister of King Arthur. And, depending on the tale and its teller, Morgan was alternately dirty rotten mean and nasty, or a helpful nymph. Either way, the stories agree she was a water faerie with an attitude. In the words of Mrs. Hoffman, who had quite a conspiratorial look on her face at the time, "She was a vixen!"

I can relate!

Absolutely no question about it, the old ways are always the better ways. What the Pepsi generation calls "progress" is truly a going-backwards retrograde. This Twenty-first Century with its X-Boxes and iPods is not nearly as nice a place to live as my great-granddad's simple old America the Beautiful. From fine old wine to turn of the century classical boat designs, only the old ways bring rest for your soul.

This is Flicka.

You think Bruce Bingham designed the Flicka? Nope. He'll tell you he did not. Well over a century ago, the tough Yankee fishermen of Rhode Island and those parts used to have to sail out for days at a time, often in raging gale winter storms, to break their backs groaning and pulling their heavy lobster pots day and night. And these mighty fishermen developed their own design of wooden work/sail boats which would get them out there to their rough lobster grounds fast, carry massive payloads, and then get them back home quickly and safely after days of horrible toil.

And this is Flicka.

One day Bruce Bingham was strolling along a river just south of Wickford, Rhode Island, when he stumbled across two old derelict and long-forgotten wooden work boats, ghosts of the grand old age of sailing lobstermen. Folks around there called them Newport boats, and they really latched onto Bingham's nostalgic heart strings. He took measurements, made sketches, and then back at his office found drawings of the Newport boats in an old American Sailing Craft book. By early 1972, the Flicka 20 Knockabout Sloop was born. And by 1977 Pacific Seacraft was building our Flickas full time.

So it is, of course, with tongue in cheek that I jest Bingham didn't design the Flicka, because of course he did. From some mere sketches of a couple of old boat skeletons lying alongside a river in Wickford, he has given me a gloriously beautiful and indestructibly strong and incomparably safe little sailing home-away-from-home which is going to safely and comfortably carry me around the eternal seas of this old planet.

This is my Flicka.

Mrs. Hoffman asked if I were going to change Morgan Le Fay's name. And I have. "Flight of Years" is a name sacred to me and it means more than words written to unfamiliar eyes can convey. But she's a vixen nonetheless.

Heather Neil