Donny and Nancy Perkins of Portland, Maine, spent more than three years shopping for the right sailboat. “We just couldn’t find what we were looking for,” he remembers. “There was a little tension between us about it.”
Nothing they saw fit their specifications. Fiberglass designs and wooden models were considered and rejected, one by one. Then, they went to see yet another boat for sale near Deer Isle, Maine. “We motored halfway around it and my wife said, ‘Oh my, she’s the boat,’” Donny remembers.
Then called Levera, the K. Aage Nielsen-designed 41-foot wooden sloop was 55 years old, with classic lines and heavy construction. Its generous sail plan and high freeboard were paired for the challenges of the renowned Newport to Bermuda race. They bought it.
Among reams of original documents pertaining to the boat was correspondence between Nielsen, who had designed boats for Hinckley, and the original owner, a descendant of Sir Francis Drake. Built at the Paul Luke Shipyard in East Boothbay Harbor, Maine, and launched in 1966, the boat was originally christened Golden Hind after the ancestral Drake vessel in his 1577-1580 circumnavigation. Its headroom and bunks were designed for people as tall as 6-feet, 6-inches, an unexpected bonus.
The boat was well cared for, yet for the Perkins’ purpose, it required upgrades to navigation electronics, rigging and sails. Kalliste Yacht Services in Lincolnville, Maine, handled the only major structural issue, rebuilding the cockpit.
The couple renamed the boat Passage in part because Donny planned a summer-long sailing trip to celebrate his retirement from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, which he helmed for 28 years. The self-supported circumnavigation of Newfoundland would be about 3,000 miles along a wild coast that few U.S. sailors see.
“My wife sailed in Newfoundland with her brother in the 1970s and always spoke of it with reverence,” says Donny. “From the New England point of view, Newfoundland has a spiritual aura. It’s higher-level sailing. I realized I wanted to find something that could be a gift to myself and a way to separate from my former work.”
Even after a career as a manager and planner, preparing for the trip wasn’t easy. In addition to route planning, crew changes, and weather and ice monitoring, the crew’s safety was paramount. Most of his companions would be over age 60, so Donny hired a medical concierge service, Regatta Rescue, used by around-the-world racers. Everyone took a rigorous medical training course.
“I invited them all to sail with me the prior summer, so they knew what they were getting into,” he says. “How you find crew and who they are is a big deal. It’s the difference between miserable and dangerous and enjoyable and safe.” Crew members ranged from friends he’d known for 50 years to recent colleagues.
Passage left the Harraseeket River in South Freeport, Maine, on June 2, 2024. By June 14, they were in Baddeck, on Nova Scotia’s Bras d’Or Lake. There, a boat yard owner gave Donny a well-worn Newfoundland cruising guide and some helpful advice. “Get up early and get your miles in before the wind howls,” he said. Thereafter, the routine on Passage became rising at 2:30 a.m. and being in port by about 4 p.m. to avoid strong catabatic winds rushing down into deep, fjord-like harbors. Those can pipe up to 40 knots late in the day, raising the stakes for tired sailors seeking shelter.
Old friends and fellow former Outward Bound instructors, Buck Harris and Tim Miner crewed from Baddeck up the Gulf of St. Lawrence along the west coast of Newfoundland, a 300-mile, two-week leg that ended near Cape Norman, at the northern tip of the island. That long lee shore was grueling because high-velocity southwesterly winds and a following sea kept the boat on the edge of gybing, day after day.
“I used to do lots of offshore stuff,” says Harris, a retired schoolteacher. “Now I know why I don’t anymore, because it’s scary.” Yet, Passage handled challenging conditions just as it was designed to, he says. And the experience was so cathartic that it inspired him to buy a boat and start writing a book.
Next, colleagues Dorothy Jane Dankel and Parker Hadlock joined Passage in St. Anthony. Instead of pressing southeastward, the boat crossed to Labrador and the crew went ashore near Henley Harbor, where the landscape was vast and majestic. Then, they turned west to explore a portion of the coastline on the Gulf of St. Lawrence near the Quebec-Labrador border.
After getting up close to a pod of curious orcas and discovering graves from an old fishing village, Dankel was awed. A former crewmember on the Schooner America, she was also impressed by Donny’s attention to detail and safety. “Passage was a treasure to live aboard: so simple, well-provisioned, and always ship-shape.”
Hadlock, a lifelong sailor with two trans-Atlantic crossings under his belt, wanted to see icebergs, and got his wish. “We got close, and that was enough,” he says. “You cannot see the growlers that break off and are dinghy-size, awash on the surface. You have to be very diligent because you don’t want to hit one when you’re sailing at eight knots.”
The next legs, the east and south coasts of Newfoundland, were complicated by two hurricanes, Debby and Ernesto, that spun northeastward in August. With crew member Peter Schoenburg, Donny spent a fraught 10 days looking for an appropriate hurricane hole between Fortune and Burgeo harbors, 250 miles apart as the crow flies.
Witnessing the struggles of Newfoundland’s fishing industry added gravity to the trip. Some ports they visited were abandoned 30 years ago when the cod industry crashed, leaving boats and infrastructure to rot. Now that a government-imposed 32-year fishing moratorium has ended, there are some signs of life. Discussing the industry and way of life with local residents engaged Donny, whose career had centered on the delicate equilibrium of Maine’s fisheries in the face of climate change.
Even so, after 42 ports, 110 days, 2 icebergs, and about 3,300 miles, Donny says the rigors of sailing didn’t leave a lot of time to ruminate about retirement. The contact with local people has him already planning a return trip.
“In the end, I will never forget the hospitality, the generosity and the intimacy we shared with everyone we met in every harbor,” he says. “Without exception, we were greeted when we arrived, people would take our lines and help us find a place to tie up. Then we would get talking about fishing. There was no place we went that we weren’t offered someone’s truck to use or a ride to a gas station. The coastal communities were really stunning.”
Donny and Nancy Perkins are staying close to home this summer, with plans to teach their grandson to sail. But in 2026 Passage will begin another extended trip, as far north on the Labrador coast as weather allows.
June 2025
