SARAH ABBOT

Built in 1966 by master shipwright David Stevens of Second Peninsula, Lunenberg, Sarah Abbot (ex-Skylark) is hull #1 of the Stevens’ 47-footers (Atlantica, Avenger & Atlantas). The schooner was a major player on the Nova Scotian schooner-racing circuit until Randy Peffer bought her, moved her to Massachusetts in 1984 and began her career as a research vessel for the Oceans marine science program at Phillips Academy (Andover).

For fourteen years Sarah Abbot sailed the waters of coastal New England with Capt. Peffer, carrying nearly a thousand high school students on 12-day research cruises. Highlights of the Oceans program was the study of the Buzzards bay/Vineyard Sound ecosystem, a scallop restoration project and the observation/tracking of whales in the Stellwagen Bank Marine Sanctuary.

Since 1998 she has been the Peffer family cruising boat and has sailed over 50,000 miles on cruises from eastern Maine to the southern Bahamas.

In 1995 she was re-decked. 2006 saw her re-launched with a new double-diagonal planked, cold-molded hull skin.

The schooner has been featured in a National Geographic article on Nova Scotia and in Randy Peffer’s book Logs of the Dead Pirates Society.

Her hail port is Marion, MA, on Buzzards Bay.