It was while working on the first Mariner's Catalog - a period of nautical despair for those who liked traditional boats made of traditional materials - that we first encountered the design works of J. Benford Associates. We could not believe it, a firm devoted almost exclusively to boats so salty that they made our eyes rust. So, like the girl who dreamed away childhood over knights on white chargers and screamed rape when one finally showed up, we didn't list them. Peculiar the human mind....

Jay Benford designs fascinating anachronisms for people who spurn the world of plastics and mass production.

The Benford 30 shows what a clever and uninhibited designer can do in a relatively small boat (indeed, the smallest one in this book).

The designs of Jay R. Benford are usually easy to recognize but difficult to describe precisely. They definitely have a traditional look about them yet don't resemble any particular type of traditional craft. Often they look like caricatures of boats - the kind of boats you see in children's books.

No insult is intended. On the contrary, Benford's boats all seem to have some sort of magical quality, a unique character all their own that defies definition.

Jay Benford is one of those freethinking designers who is just as happy working on a 14ft (4.27m) worldgirdler as a 131ft (40m) luxury cruiser. His magic is such that he can make both boats, and those in between, individual, attractive and practical.

Jay Benford is a widely known yacht designer with a far-ranging imagination and great versatility, unbound by prejudices on materials or methods of construction.

Although Jay Benford has proved he can draw boats with contemporary styling, his reputation has been built on designs - for power and sail - that show a strong traditional flavor....

Careful study of the arrangement drawings in Benford's plans will reveal that he is a master of interior design. In fact, some of the accommodations seem almost too clever to work, but work, they do. Last year, after touring the interior of a 50' Benford designed "coaster," I felt compelled to jump down to the pier and pace off the boat's length. She measured 50', sure enough, but she had the feel of a 65-footer.

His designs are like that: traditional but with contemporary elements, imaginative and unfettered by allegiance to racing rules or fashion, anachronistic, eclectic, eccentric, but always effective and user-friendly.

More Comforts Than Home

And it came to pass that cruising yachtsmen looking for something solid, proven and reliable in hull design came upon the fishing trawler, and rejoiced greatly, and stuck master staterooms down below where the cod were once piled high on ice. And this enthusiasm for the fishing trawler inspired sane men to cast their eyes about the rest of the commercial fleet. Soon they were leaving dock with their mates and mateys in luxurious comfort, in hulls inspired by lobster boats, and shrimpers, and crabbers, and tugs, and you name it.

With time it seemed the designers had left no port unprobed for fresh inspiration. What could possibly be left for the cruising fraternity to adopt? The dredging barge? The oil rig?

Of course not. But think. Think hard. A kind of boat you have probably been aboard on numerous occasions, probably with the family, and have traveled in comfort from points A to B, the whole time without ever considering what a great yacht this thing would make.

You don't mean -

I do.

Jay Benford is one of those rare yacht designers whose work is startling and handsome at the same time. There are lots of designers who come up with wild and daring ideas, but too often gimmickry commands the foreground of their vision. Benford's work is firmly anchored in tradition. Sometimes he salutes it with faithful recreations. More often than not he seizes upon the essential elements of the past, tosses in some contemporary yearnings, and whirls the whole thing like a Rubik's cube. You're left with something that makes you think of days gone by even while wondering: why hasn't someone else done that before?

On one level Benford is a renovator. Like someone who buys a handsome brick Victorian home and guts the thing, laying in banks of skylights and open-concept floor plans, Benford seizes on familiar, graceful forms and goes wild within their essential structure. On another level he is a rehabilitator, taking styles of yachts or ships that have either been consigned to the past or deemed unsuitable to the cruising life and making them relevant. More than relevant. Seductively logical.

I defy anyone who loves ships and the sea to peruse Benford's eclectic portfolio and not come across something that makes you feel warm and kind of dizzy, as if you've indulged yourself too long in a hot bath. I am particularly taken by his drawings of the Solarium 44, a plumb bow fantail motor yacht. Its elliptical aft superstructure surrounds a saloon and galley in a parade of windows which drop open like drawbridges. If you are not overcome by the urge to take this design to the nearest remote anchorage and start lollygagging around in the solarium, then you are without a soul.

The Solarium 44 is typical of Benford's inspirations in that the concept is shot through with evidence of an eye for the essential needs of the good life. This quality is what links the Solarium 44 to the Kanter 64, a rakish pilothouse sloop built by Canada Kanter Aluminum Yachts. And it's what makes them kinfolk of the Florida Bay Coaster 65, the astonishing crowning glory of the Benford pleasure principle.

I don't know anyone who has a thing about ferries the way Benford does. In fact, I don't know anyone other than Benford who has shown a professional interest in making the ferry the cruising yacht of tomorrow. There's nothing in his background, no adolescent signpost, that points to this conviction. He grew up on the south shore of Lake Ontario in Rochester, N.Y. "My folks took me sailing before I could walk," he says. "I've always been cruising." At age 12 he started reading library books on yacht design, and he wound up in the naval architecture program at the University of Michigan.

Benford left one year before completing his degree ("I was too impatient to get to work.") and apprenticed with John Atkin in Connecticut. There followed 18 years as a designer around Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest - eight of them in Seattle, 10 of them in Friday Harbor. He moved back east, to Maryland, five years ago.

It's out west where you'll find one of Benford's best-known boats, for which he is personally virtually unknown. If you have traveled from Vancouver's downtown waterfront to the shops and restaurants and marine businesses of Granville Island, then you have been a passenger on the Granville Island Ferry.

The 20-footer whirls back and forth across False Creek like a diesel-powered waterbug, its passengers snug within the cabin that stretches the length of the boat. The pilot sits dead center, over the engine; to give him a good view while seated, Benford raised the helm seat and with it the center of the cabintop in a kind of cupola.

I have a set of blueprints for the ferry. The basic plans were completed on Oct. 16, 1983 - by then Benford had relocated to Maryland. But somewhere between that fall day and Feb. 7, 1984, the ferry concept had wormed its way into Benford's imagination, and he had produced a cruising version of the False Creek Ferry. He gave it a galley, an enclosed head compartment and a settee that converted into a double berth. He called it the Friday Harbor Ferry.

There was no turning back. The concept of the ferry-as-cruiser gave rise to a 34-foot and a 45-foot Friday Harbor Ferry….