“What type of boat is Eleanor?” our friend yelled from the dock in Wanchese, North Carolina. (It’s pronounced WanChe. The last part of Cheese is silent.) Denny had only seen pictures of her on Facebook and this was his first-time seeing Eleanor in real life.

Denny and his wife, Gail, good neighbors of Terese’s in Edgewater, were spending Thanksgiving week in Nags Head. They had read on FB we were heading for Oregon Inlet and had come searching marinas in the off chance they would find us. Bingo!

Denny’s question gave me pause. When asking bridge tenders for an opening we self-identified as a “black hulled flybridge southbound,” and while that was true as a description, it didn’t really capture what category of boat Eleanor fit. It really didn’t answer Denny’s question.

Eleanor is not a sport fisherman, although has some of the same design elements. Long open foredeck. No lifelines or rails forward. Tall flybridge set aft. But the comparison ends there. Sure, you can fish off her, but you can also fish off a pier. She has a comfortable bench seat that runs the full beam at the aft end of the cockpit. It wouldn’t look good covered in fish guts, and you certainly couldn’t land a big marlin onboard with that sofa in the way. She is Not a sport fish.

I’m a little vague on the difference between a Convertible and a Sedan. It may be the size of the cockpit, as the Convertible is supposed to bridge the gap between a Sport Fish and a Sedan. Our cockpit is for socializing and taking naps underway, not fishing, so Convertible is out.

Sedans tend to have a bit more superstructure carried forward and Eleanor is low and lean up front so doesn’t look like the other sedans out there. Plus, we are narrow for our length. Today’s Sedans are fifty percent beamier than us, so the lean and mean Eleanor slices through the water like a kayak vs a beamy rowboat. We sacrifice interior space compared to floating condos but are still comfortable. And finally, almost all Sedans are white. Only in the last year or two have they started adding color to the gelcoat and coming in other hull colors than plain white. Eleanor is black, with a varnished teak transom, and a cutwater and other trim in polished stainless steel. A very unique look on the water, and not something seen on other Sedans. So, we are not a Sedan.

Eleanor has a couple of other design elements that make her unique, and therefore hard to classify. The most notable is her forward cockpit, inspired from the designs of commuter boats that ran titans of industry to their offices on Wall Street from Long Island in the roaring twenties. Reached through a ladder in the forward stateroom, the “frockpit” as Terese has named it, is a delightful place underway for four to sit comfortably with a windshield deflecting the breeze up and over their heads. One could say Eleanor is a 52-foot bowrider and be accurate, but it misses the grandeur and art deco elements of her design.

This frockpit may be the best clue to answer Denny’s question. So, for now, Denny, to answer your question we are going with “Art Deco Commuter.” There are only another dozen Midnight Lace 52s out there, and twenty of the 44-footers, so we are in a pretty small group. I’m not confident our classification will catch on and answer the question without further explanation but with a unique boat we knew we would be open to conversations at every marina.