Zoltan's old boat?

[Bill]

Here's the last note from Bob Muggelston, an author who was searching for the boat and had reviewed a couple of possibilities when I asked if he had any progress finding it:

Hi Bill, sorry for the late reply. No, that grape died on the vine. It truly is a
head scratcher. The hull number matches Zoltan's boat, but I had long email exchanges
with Zoltan, who made many huge modifications to the boat, while on paper, anyway,
maintaining that he more or less bought the boat as an amateur sailor and sailed it out
of the harbor it was in in California, bound for the South Pacific. For instance, he
installed a giant water tank under the cockpit sole, and significantly upgraded the rig.
From pictures you can see he drilled many large holes to accommodate his wind vane.
There's no evidence whatsoever of these modifications. There's just no way that all
the surgery Zoltan did could be cosmetically removed. Which leads me to believe that
either Zoltan was somehow confused as to the actual hull number of his boat, or that
someone pinched the plate off Zoltan's old boat and then re-installed it on another
white hull. After the heavy use and abuse The Way received traveling nearly around the
world, it's entirely conceivable that it was relegated to the scrap pile somewhere.
That someone (Zoltan) traveled so far in a Commander, with its low freeboard, huge
cockpit and extremely limited space below still boggles my mind.

Happy Holidays!

-Bob

[Bob Muggleston]

Hey guys, I see someone posted my previous opinion as to the possibility of it being Zoltan's boat . . . I still stand by that response. I went pretty far down the rabbit hole trying to figure out what the deal is . . . I think I traced the boat now called The Way, which has a new owner, back several owners . . . where the trail went cold. Zoltan made such huge modifications on his boat that I seriously doubt hull 266 is his old boat. Either he was confused as to his hull number (which would be a bit strange), or someone took the badge and fixed it to their own boat. Which is too bad, as I was going to write a neat story about it. For anyone who didn't see it, the story of my own Commander wintering over in Northport Harbor on Long Island was published on Scuttlebutt (I'm the editor of Points East magazine). The link is here https://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/2...ent-boat-left/.