Used Boat - Back Cove 37

Used Boat - Back Cove 37

- Steve Knauth

You start out small in a skiff or a run-about, exploring the local waters: the river, the bays and the coves close to home.

But there’s always the lure of a more distant shore, a farther horizon — and a larger vessel to get there. Stepping up to your first “big boat” brings the promise of longer cruises and new destinations.

March and Lorry Young began their boating lives with a 6-year-old MFG runabout they bought in 1982. “We liked to cruise and explore the backwaters of the Connecticut River,” says March Young, 67, a retired aerospace engineer. “The MFG tasted salt water on our annual trips to Saybrook Point Marina and a trip to Niantic” on Long Island Sound.

In 2005, the couple bought their first “big boat” — a 1999 Sea Ray 290 Sun dance that expanded their cruising grounds beyond Long Island Sound to Newport, Rhode Island, and Jersey City, New Jersey, where they’d tie up at Liberty Landing Marina.

Four years ago, they traded the Sea Ray for a Back Cove 37, which has gotten them to Northeast Harbor in Down East Maine. Plans are in the works for a cruise down to the Chesapeake aboard the single-stateroom, Maine built, hardtop cruiser.

They found the Back Cove — and its owner — in Portland, Connecticut, at a 2013 Petzold’s Marine Center seminar on long distance cruising. As they listened to the speaker talk about his boat, the couple realized they were looking for just such a craft.