When you become obsessed with a project, not even knowing the goal, having no real vision of the tunnel or if there will be a light at the end, you know you’ve set upon a passion–a this will BE, sort of ongoing devotion. That’s how it’s been with Eleanor. Despite her moldy draperies, her failed wooden depressions and scabs, her dusty, rusty electronics, on that chilly October afternoon in Matthews, Virginia, it was love at first sight. We’ve poured ourselves into her. I have a few scars to prove it…. Eleanor and I both have. Where I have cracked skin around my thumb nail, she has a small gash in her wood where I slipped with the scraper. Where I have scars from chemical burns on the tops of my fingers, she has a few frozen varnish drips, forever hanging from her teak trim. Where the lines around my eyes have been over-soaked in sun, she’s peeling her paint on her weathered foredeck.

Eleanor is situated here in Charleston on the so-called “Mega-dock.” The dock itself is 1,530 feet long, counting only the water-facing pier and can accommodate boats as long as 455 feet.

She is nestled between a 60+ foot sage-colored sport fishing yacht whose captain sits in mahogany seats, above thick, luxuriously appointed, spotless fiberglass, and a triple-decked Azimut 50 fly. Across from us is Bonne Vie, a Nordhaven 62, and in front of her is Scorpio, 90 foot Hargrave. All of these vessels are worth two, three, maybe four million. Jon often jokes that we paid less for Eleanor than the taxes on our neighboring floating mansions.

Among them, though, rather then be dwarfed, Eleanor seems to stretch back her shoulders and stiffen her chest. Her lines rise proudly from the sea, having safely and surely transported her new family to port. She is a tough, badass broad, outshone only by her refurbished beauty, having seen some watery road and come back to outlive and out love them all. Like her namesake, she is sturdy and outspoken and long-serving.

Tonight we fly home to the Shady Side. We miss our girls and our home but there will be a certain vacancy there. What will we do not having to carve out several hours each day to toil aboard E? I suspect that time will be filled with things pushed into it so we can go visit her often in Charleston. Meantime, Eleanor will fill her space and keep herself steady, ready for the next sea-splitting adventure.