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It was sometime when I was late in my 10th year or early on when I was an 11 year old that my mother and father decided to sell our Ericson 41 sailboat and buy a “classic” wooden boat called Pandora III. Pandora was a Bugeye Ketch, built on the East Coast on the Chesapeake Bay in Solomons, Maryland, if I remember correctly during the second decade of the 20th Century.

A Bugeye Ketch is a very unique design as far as sailboats, there are not many of them in existence. She had a rather clipper like bow, nice lines, with two very tall masts (they were equally tall if I remember correctly) that were raked back at about a 5-7 degree angle. The unique design with the “rakish” masts came about in an effort to make these vessels very easy to handle with a 2-man crew. Originally bugeye ketchs were designed as Oyster boats for the Chesapeake Bay. The rakish design of the sails, combined with sails that had loops around the mast (rather than a metal channel) and a gaff rig on the sails, made the sails virtually “fall” down when the halyard was released. That was the original design anyhow, Pandora was a modified bugeye, I’m not sure but what she wasn’t originally made the way she was.

Some of he differences in Pandora were that she did have a metal track running up both masts, did not have the gaff rigged sails, but had much more “typical” triangular sails. Pandora had the “normal” double cabin appearance of a bugeye, but the cabins were actually cabins, and not hatch covers as would have been on a working version of a bugeye.

Still, nobody can doubt she was a bugeye. I will try to get some pictures posted of her as soon as I can. She was very pretty, the hull was painted white, the masts were natural pine, solid I believe. Since she was a “ketch” the masts were designated as “Main” (the one in front) and “Mizzen” (the one in back). The main mast had a ladder that led up to a platform, some 40-50 (about 47-57 feet above the water) feet above the deck. It was quite a thrill to be at sea and climb up there and hang out on that platform while the boat was rocking, or heeled over, or both.

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