Flicka Island Maiden

Darren Davis told Island Maiden's story under the title "Owning A Flicka or Two" in Flicka Friends #70 (Summer 2020). He had first seen her years earlier, an emerald green gaff-rigged Flicka on the hard in Port Townsend, and asked the yard to put him in touch with her owners, who lived in the Midwest, so that he could get under her cover with a camera and a tape measure. He was planning a gaff conversion for another Flicka of his own, and wanted this boat as the pattern. The following spring her owners invited him sailing; he was struck by how high she pointed for a gaffer and how quick she was in light air.

Years later he wrote to them on a whim to say that if they ever thought of selling, he would be interested. They had only just put her on the market, and the deal was made without much haggling. She came to him carefully kept by the yard — wooden spars, tanbark sails, bright work, new wiring and electronics — along with an eight-foot Fatty Knees dinghy and its sailing rig that he had not known about. Davis sails her out of Bellingham, works up into the San Juan Islands when he can, and anchors overnight in Chuckanut Bay when time is short.