Serendipity

Serendipity is the story of how the author and his wife built a thirty-foot cruising schooner while attending law school in the mid-1960’s. Lacking tools, a proper building location, and any real experience in boat building, the young couple had to learn by doing and persevere in the face of a succession of challenges. The account documents the process of building a bent-frame conventionally planked traditional wooden sailing yacht in some detail. It also tries to recapture the sense of adventure that animated the project from beginning to end.

Serendipity is the story of how the author and his wife built a thirty-foot cruising schooner while attending law school in the mid-1960’s. Lacking tools, a proper building location, and any real experience in boat building, the young couple had to learn by doing and persevere in the face of a succession of challenges. The account documents the process of building a bent-frame conventionally planked traditional wooden sailing yacht in some detail. It also tries to recapture the sense of adventure that animated the project from beginning to end.

Peter L. Murray is a lawyer, law teacher and writer on legal topics. He has lived in Portland, Maine since he came there in Serendipity in 1967. For nearly 50 years he has sailed the Coast of Maine and beyond in his beloved schooner, accompanied by Anita, his first wife and Serendipity's co-builder, by his children, Peter and Anne, and, for the last 25 years, by his current wife, Debby.