Maynard BrayAs recently as 2018, QUARK, by then renamed HERITAGE, was looking okay.
In winter 2018, I spent a few weeks vacationing with friends Bill and Caroline Mayher in Apalachicola, Florida, and while poking around looking at boats stumbled across one that I knew well. I had watched her being built in Maine more than a dozen years earlier at Brooklin Boat Yard to an L. Francis Herreshoff design and launched as QUARK. She was one of my all-time favorites from that yard.
Renamed HERITAGE, she’d been hauled out—rig, sails, and all—and was gradually being repainted. She had become the flagship of George Floyd’s Apalachicola Maritime Museum. She surely needed painting and varnishing but seemed in great condition otherwise.
Maynard Bray (left), Greg Phillips (right)Above left—The yacht was traditionally built at Brooklin Boat Yard to its usual high standards and launched in 2002. Above right—Renamed HERITAGE and lying in Apalachicola, Florida, she has been on the hard since at least 2018 and, as this 2026 photo shows, is in need of cosmetic attention.
I don’t believe she’s moved an inch since then, but she has had her sails removed and masts unstepped and covered, and a new engine has been installed. Work came to a halt, however, when George Floyd died, and his estate lawyers recently put the boat up for sale.
I’ve not seen QUARK (the name I’ll always attach to her) for eight years, but my friend Greg Phillips, who spends winters near Apalachicola, has kept an eye on her and just recently alerted me to her availability. He also sent recent photos. The degradation appears superficial, and I expect that beneath the peeling varnish, paint, and teak oil, there still lies a very fine yacht.
Particulars
- LOA: 45′3″
- LWL: 38′9″
- Beam: 12′6″
- Draft: 5′
- Displacement: 38,600 lbs
- Sail area: 1,060 sq ft
- Power: 80-hp Yanmar 4JH diesel
- Official No.: 1140137
- Designed by: L. Francis Herreshoff
- Built by: Brooklin Boat Yard, 2002
Brooklin Boat Yard built her to their usual high standards, with a cast-lead keel, laminated oak frames, nonferrous fastenings, a double-planked hull, and a teak-over-plywood deck. The workmanship was exquisite, and she would stop you in your tracks when she departed Brooklin in 2003.
Herreshoff loved the ketch rig and trailboard-enhanced clipper bows, the largest and most famous of which was the 72′ TICONDEROGA, launched as TIOGA in 1936. QUARK, built to his Mobjack design of 1935, was one of two yachts—the other was a 57′ Bounty design, CATRIONA—commissioned simultaneously in 2002 by John P. Kendall, a longtime admirer of Herreshoff’s work. Kendall had previously owned several of Herreshoff’s designs, including ARAMINTA, a 33-footer. As I understand it, he planned to gift these two new boats to his sons.
Mystic Seaport MuseumOf L. Francis Herreshoff’s ketch-rigged cruisers, the Mobjack design was one of the most popular, with an estimated 100 built after the original in 1935; The Rudder published her plans in 1948.
Small enough for singlehanding (her mainsail, the largest, is under 500 sq ft in area), QUARK has an abundance of full-headroom space belowdeck. Her trunk cabin, in fact, takes up fully half her length. With a remarkably shallow draft of only 5′, she’d make a wonderful cruiser, able to explore thin-water anchorages off limits to most yachts of her size. As with her big sister TICONDEROGA, QUARK’s low-aspect keel makes her a bit lacking in windward ability. That’s a small matter, however, for a cruiser; you’ll probably find yourself motorsailing to windward using her brand-new 80-hp Yanmar diesel engine. Who knows; a return to Brooklin may be in QUARK’s future…. 
Maynard Bray is WoodenBoat’s technical editor.
You can easily see HERITAGE, ex-QUARK, at Hayes Marine Service in downtown Apalachicola, but to get aboard, learn more, or to make an offer, contact Tim Hayes at 850–338–5989.