It all started with a dream and a popup ad.
After spending their 19th anniversary on the lake in Conneaut, Suzi and Bly Daniell decided to buy a boat.
It’s something they’d always wanted. The Rootstown couple has spent every anniversary on a charter boat since they were married.
So Aug. 7, the night they got home from Conneaut, Bly started looking for a boat online. An hour into his search, an ad popped up for a $1 sailboat. Bly quickly disregarded it as a scam and continued looking.
Bing. Back again.
He closed it a second time.
Bing.
The third time the ad popped up, Suzi convinced him to call about it.
He found the too-good-to-be-true ad was real. But to get the boat to Ohio, Bly had to embark on an 18-day adventure through the Hudson Bay and Erie Canal so he and his wife could begin their dream of sailing the sea together.
The man who advertised the boat, they learned, had won it from a charity auction and used it to live out his dream of seeing the Statue of Liberty from the water. Afterward, he was left with a hefty fee each month to dock his boat, so he decided to “pay it forward” and put the boat on the market for no profit.
Similar vessels are listed for thousands of dollars in online ads.
“It’s been our dream to kind of semiretire and spend the summers on a sailboat,” Suzi said. “It’s like God made this happen.”
Suzi, 55, and Bly, 47, decided if they were going to buy the boat, they would have to sail it back from New York instead of paying a pricey shipping cost.
Bly was still skeptical, so he talked to the man, who lives in Washington D.C., for days following the initial call. On Aug. 13, UPS arrived with mail from D.C. There it was: the notarized bill of sale for a 1971 Pearson P30 sailboat named Summer Wind.
Suzi wanted to change the name to French Kiss after her French-Canadian background but opted against a switch.
“It’s bad luck to change a boat’s name before you sail in it,” she explained.
So Bly left with one of their Rottweilers, Zeus, Aug. 17 in a Jeep filled with supplies for their 18-day sail home aboard Summer Wind.
The journey
Sailing 720 miles with a one-dog crew was no easy feat.
Though he had grown up on the water, Bly had no experience sailing a sailboat, which proved to be much different than a typical motor fishing boat.
“You might as well forget everything you ever learned about boating and start over,” Bly said.
He started out near Coney Island in N.Y., working his way up the Hudson Bay and then through the canal locks of Erie Canal.
It wasn’t necessarily smooth sailing.
Before he could even get anywhere, the ignition of the boat wouldn’t start, so he borrowed tools from people at the marina to fix it. Then, within the first day of setting sail, the tiller used to control steering broke.
“It was basically like the steering wheel fell off,” Bly said.
He wound up getting towed that day by Boat U.S. Insurance, which is like AAA service for boats, he explained. As they towed him, completely backtracking his progress for the day, he was able to temporarily fix the tiller, and they let him loose.
As the trip continued, the list of obstacles stacked up. He had to lower the mast himself to fit through the locks, a task that’s usually handled by a few people and takes several hours. Sometimes he got stuck on sandbars or in 5-foot waves. At one point, his GPS device stopped working and he sailed aimlessly.
But there were always people along the way to help him.
When one of the steering parts partially crumbled and he couldn’t patch it anymore, Suzi said she called the New York Port Authority, and one of its deputy directors named John Callaghan assured her he would help.
She said he sent out men named Dave Lamphere, John Owen and Robert Garcia, who found Bly out on the water and had him towed back to a local lock. They told him people had heard about his story down the waterway, and they liked it so much that they fixed his boat for free.
“They’re more important than my story,” Bly said. “If it wasn’t for these guys, I wouldn’t be back home.”
Other people along the way gave him hot meals, and some even bought him gas. The word of his story traveled faster than he did, and soon, people were anticipating his arrival.
Anytime the weather got bad or something went wrong, Bly just thought about returning home to Suzi.
“The only thing I could really think is, ‘One more mile,’ ” Bly said. “Just one more step closer to home.”
Love story
As Bly sailed his way down home, Suzi took care of all the logistics, mapping out the locks, where to go for gas and lodging and how many miles he had left.
“We’ve never been apart for more than four days,” Suzi said. “Do you believe in true love? Because that’s what this is.”
The two met in a restaurant at the Akron-Canton Airport, and Suzi said it was love at first sight.
“I told my friend, ‘I’m gonna marry that man,’ ” Suzi recalled.
She started talking to him, and he called her the next day. It was the day of the 30th Super Bowl when Pittsburgh played Dallas.
“It’s just like we were meant to be. We’ve been together ever since,” Suzi said. “It’s like we’re soulmates.”
Suzi never liked going out on the water, but ever since she met Bly, it’s been something the two have done together. She would have gone with him to bring Summer Wind home, but he was inexperienced with sailing and didn’t want to put her through the difficulties.
“He’s made me so comfortable being on a boat,” Suzi said.
“Now I miss being on one.”
His arrival
Bly finally arrived in Conneaut the night of Sept. 4 after more than two weeks of sailing.
Suzi had made reservations at a hotel right on the water to watch him arrive. When it got dark, she waved to random people on boats hoping it might be the love of her life. Finally, she saw Summer Wind sailing toward her.
“When he finally started coming in, I was screaming,” Suzi said.
She ran down the whole dock in tears, and when she finally saw him, she embraced an equally teary Bly.
“My only regret is not bringing her with me,” Bly said.
The couple spent the last days of summer sailing together with Zeus. After they enjoy their time on the boat, Bly plans to fix it up and resell it cheap, just as it had been sold to him a month ago.
Afterward, the couple plan to buy a bigger boat they can semiretire and live on.
She works in telecommunications, and he is self-employed in contracting and custom home design.
As fall weather sets in, Suzi and Bly are spending their last couple of days on Summer Wind, the boat that set their dream in motion.
Theresa Cottom can be reached at 330-996-3216 or tcottom@thebeaconjournal.com.