Finding Pax by Kaci Cronkhite

Author:Kaci Cronkhite
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

The next month Penny sent pictures of the boat from 1974 to 1976. While most were yellowed with age or had the fuzzy resolution of an Instamatic, there was enough detail to make out the signature features. I could pick out the Hansen/Thomsen ovals around the portholes, the sliding hatch on the cuddy cabin, and the two round portholes facing forward near the mast. In the photographs from California, Pax looked like Skarven.

One of the photos showed a life ring they had kept from the boat and had hanging on the fence in their backyard.

I was shocked and could hardly believe my eyes.

The name on the ring was not Firecracker. It was Firecrest, and the other letters on the ring were KDY—the abbreviation for the Royal Danish Yacht Club. I called her immediately.

She opened with an apology. “We just couldn’t part with it,” she said, referring to the life ring.

To the contrary, I assured her that I was thrilled they kept it. They had saved the first and only evidence of Pax’s life in Denmark, beyond the hull itself.

“Was your boat called Firecrest or Firecracker?” I asked.

Technically, she explained, it was the former. The latter was just their nickname for the boat, “because of the quick ways she moved.”

The Sterises had thrown me a life ring for the search. Their photograph likely explained why there had been no Pax in Denmark.

As soon as I hung up, I sent scanned copies of the images to the people now thought of as my Danish research team: Henrik, Klaus, and the Boidins. The name Firecrest matched one of the two Hansen/Thomsen spidsgatters that had been identified as potential matches for Pax based on size, designer, and year. She was one of the spidsgatters with an incomplete history.

This was the first evidence of a connection between the Danish Firecrest and my Pax, maybe. The years weren’t exactly sequential. Firecrest was registered at KDY between 1938 and 1960. Pax was Firecrest in America from 1974 until her name change in 1984.

Where was Firecrest before 1938? Between 1960 and 1974? How did she get across the Atlantic to the west coast of America?

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