Caribbean Compass Yachting Magazine - April 2021

Aildee — A Boat
to Fall in Love With
by John Everton
Somehow out of all the boats I’ve lived on I loved
Aildee the most.
After selling Pole Star, my first wooden boat (see
“Pole Star Days” on page 24 at www.caribbeancompass.
com/online/july20compass_online.pdf), I twice crossed
harbour and saw the boat from different angles and
every time I looked at her picture in LouLou’s I fell in
love more deeply.
At the time I was day chartering with a friend on his
Tartan sloop and one day we had people from San
Diego, California, on board. The Tartan’s owner
handed me the tiller after I hauled the anchor, and one
black beard and long greasy tangled hair. In his life he
had treated things roughly, including possessions,
other people and his own body. But he had a resilient
spirit and a dry, sardonic sense of humour.
I finally deciphered the gist of what he was saying.
He wanted to fly me to San Diego and help him look
for a boat to buy, which I could live on and teach
him how to sail. His first time on a sailboat had
already hooked him. My reply was, “There’s a
beautiful boat right here in the harbour for sale.”
And so it was arranged to go and see the little vessel.
With our friend Timi Carstarphen, whose parents,
Jack and Ruth, had owned the gaff ketch Maverick
and for years chartered out of Charlotte Amalie
Harbour in St. Thomas, we took Askell out for a test
sail. It didn’t take but a few minutes for us all to fall
totally in love with her, Timi saying excitedly, “She’s
a little Maverick!”
When we came back ashore Ron called Pierre and
told him he would be flying back to San Diego and
returning in two weeks with the full asking price of
US$22,000 in cash. Everyone was skeptical but they
didn’t know Ron and the hold that the boat had on
APRIL 2021 CARIBBEAN COMPASS PAGE 22
Nature took its course and we were blessed with
two wonderful children — first Kylie.
the Atlantic on Zephyrus, a gaff-rigged 57-foot Brixham
trawler ketch built all of teak for the owner of a fleet of
Brixham trawler fishing vessels. It was my first
experience in gaff rig. After sailing 16 days from
Bermuda to the Azores, ten days from there to
Gibraltar, several months cruising the Mediterranean,
and then 63 days back to the southeastern coast of the
US, I had gained plenty of gaff rig experience, and
thoroughly enjoyed working with it. I liked nothing
better than to haul on throat and peak halyards, and
then sweat the last bits up.
After making landfall in Charleston, South Carolina,
in 1976, and soaking up the pleasures of a city of true
Southern hospitality for a couple of months, I got a job
delivering a Scottish cutter from Miami to Charleston.
My next sailing came on a 57-foot wooden yawl,
Minoru, from Annapolis, Maryland, to St. Barts. After
moving off the boat and camping out ashore for a while
I knew the time was soon approaching when I would
want my own boat again.
One day while hanging out at LouLou’s Marine Store
I saw a black and white photograph of Askell (originally
named and then later re-named Aildee), a French gaffrigged
cutter, 35 feet on deck, sailing along a river in
France. She was for sale by the Monsangion brothers.
Pierre, an architect, and Jacques, a submariner in the
French Navy who went on to build the first marine
railway in les Iles des Saintes, had sailed her across
the Atlantic with their wives. It must have been tight
on a small boat with no standing headroom, but they
were all small people.
The boat was anchored bow and stern in Gustavia’s
inner harbour. Every time I walked around the
Ron was always compatible with everyone on board.
of the guests started talking to me. It was not
particularly easy to understand Ron as he was
slurring his words badly, not from drinking but from
results of a car wreck that had left him in a coma for
three months. He had suffered and miraculously
survived several car and motorcycle accidents
previously. He looked like an ex-Hells Angel with his
Roni and Iain on Aildee. When he was a year old Roni
began talking about how we needed a boat of our own.
him already.
Sure enough, in two weeks Ron was back in St. Barts,
cash in hand, and I was moving my bags aboard.
Aildee was built in 1953 for Louis DeMoyers, a
former governor of French Indochina. He had the wood
— Vietnamese teak, which is similar to iroko —
shipped to a boatyard in Sartrouville, France, where
she was built along the lines of a Brittany tuna fishing
boat. After the hull was planked up, her bottom was
copper sheathed. Instead of rigging her gaff, DeMoyers
chose to rig her a Marconi cutter for ease of handling
for himself and his wife, who were retired. After cruises
to Portugal the DesMoyers sailed her to the Azores,
where Louis unexpectedly died, the rumour being from
an abundance of rich food and wine — as good a way
to go as any.
This is where the Monsangions found her for sale,
bought her, and sailed her back to France. There they
re-rigged her as gaff, and then crossed the Atlantic to
les Iles des Saintes then on to St. Barts. They had
re-named her Askell, which means wing in Breton.
When they sold the boat they requested we change
the name so we finally decided upon the original
name, Aildee. It means North Star in Vietnamese, and
also reflects the initials of the first owner: LD.
—Continued on next page
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