Grace and Bill Bodle have spent 19 years restoring the schooner EROS. She was built by Brooks Motor Craft to Lloyds A1 specifications in 1939 in the UK to a design by Willian McKeek in teak on steel frames. EROS is an absolutely splendid schooner yacht by any measure!

I met Grace and Bill a couple of years ago at a classic regatta in St. Martin in the Caribbean for the first time. Little did I know that they live in the Bay Area very close to me, had their boat very close to where I used to have mine, and that they have spent an awful amount of time sailing, chartering, and just being passionate about schooners.  The most surprising part of meeting Bill and Grace was that they actually had owned two schooners that I studied in great detail, collected the drawings on, and had built a half model of in my quest to find the perfect schooner to build. The two schooners were the 97’ PANOPE and the 112’ PANDA both designed by A. Mylne in the 1920s. The half-model David Spy built for me of PANOPE now rightfully hangs in one of the cabins on-board EROS. When chance encounters like this happens one has to wonder about destiny and parallel universes without becoming to philosophical.

I had the fortune to practice for, and race on, EROS in the 4’th annual San Francisco Bay Area schooner race. To sail on an 80-ton schooner, unfurled, across the bay at speeds up to 12.9 kn is something else!  If you want to charter EROS you can follow this link to the EROS web site.