Original Wandering Toes – Hunter Legend 35.5
Wandering Toes is our 1993 Hunter Legend 35.5. She was originally purchased and sailed on Lake Michigan near Milwaukee, WI. Her first owner named her Baracoda and was presumably associated with the bar code industry. She was sold in the early 2000’s, moved to Lake Pepin in Minnesota on the Mississippi River and renamed Margaritaville. Her second owner replaced the aluminum holding tank with a poly tank as they were known issues and susceptible to failure. Few changes were made to her and she was left in nearly new condition over the years. Her second owner moved the boat to Barker’s Island Marina on Lake Superior in 2006 where she was until we found her for sale late in 2012. As a fresh water boat sailed in an area where the sailing seasons are mainly June-September her systems and rigging are very lightly used. She was nearly 20 years old when we found her but was in very nice condition. We were able to make a deal for her purchase and are very thrilled to become her third owners. We were able to sell our other boat prior to the purchase and that helped make the transition easier having only one boat to deal with. We moved from a VanDeStadt McGruer Sirius 28 which we loved very much, to this our nearly 36 foot boat. It has been a wonderful transition and one we have been having a ball with. We renamed her Wandering Toes at purchase as we transitioned the Coast Guard Documentation into our names, and were able to put on her new name graphics before splashing her in May of 2013.
The name:
We came up with the name Wandering Toes about five years prior to actually finding the boat. We were having dinner one night and were listening to a Jimmy Buffett song on the radio called School Boy Heart. The lyrics went like this: I’ve got a school boy heart, a novelists eye, stout sailors legs and a license to fly. I came with nomad feet, and some wandering toes, that climb up my long board and hang off the nose…. I said to Marge that Wandering Toes would make a great boat name and she agreed. So we secretly decided that Wandering Toes would be our new boat whenever “Someday” came. We continued to look at boats over the years and never found exactly what we wanted in a cruising boat. Part of the problem was every boat that had what we liked and wanted was well outside our price range. So the years went on and on and we just kept the boat we had and continued to have fun and sail. Then one fateful day it happened. Looking back it seemed so highly improbable. Here we had looked at thousands of boats on Yachtworld, boat trader, etc. and never really found the spark that was to be our new boat. But one day in 2012 we found an interesting boat right in our own backyard at Barker’s Island Marina. It was the only boat we went aboard to look at and almost instantly I knew that I wanted this boat. It has all of the systems that I wanted in a boat, a length that I can live with (Goldilocks rule: not too big, not too small), and a styling that is like classic-modern without being too radically modern for my taste. She has wonderful Cherry woodwork cabinetry with Teak and Holly floors. Mostly fiberglass exterior with very little woodwork to care for (or replace) and the previous owners had done very little to change her from her factory new condition. Our boat looks very lightly used and people are generally surprised to find out she’s 20+ years old.
Her general specifications:
LOA: 35′-7″
LWL: 29′-9″
Beam: 11′-9″
Draft: 4′-6″
Mast Height from DWL: 55′-0″
Displacement: 12,600 lbs.
Ballast: 4,800 lbs.
Hunter sailboats have been made in Alachua, Florida since 1973, making ours a 20th anniversary model. Hunter was sold in 2012 to Marlow Yachts and is now known as Marlow-Hunter and continues to survive.
A professional BoatUS review of the Hunter Legend 35.5 model, by Jack Horner:
http://www.boatus.com/boatreviews/sail/hunterlegend35.asp
Links to more Hunter information:
Sail Wandering Toes 