Our charter details

By Kim Kavin

Benford Design Group is at the end of a few fat wooden planks near an old brick factory on a street called East Chew Avenue. Inside the two-room office, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves ooze  files and papers like the bubbling test tubes of a mad scientist. This is the lair of Jay Benford, whose shirt pocket contains tattered three-by-five photographs of all the boats he’s ever lived aboard. He has spent two decades drafting sketches of hulls here in St. Michaels, Maryland, stalking creative genius in hand-knit sweaters and spotless white sneakers.

I met him during a charter in his home waters aboard the 60-foot Irony, one of the half-dozen or so Florida Bay Coasters he’s designed over the years. “I’ve always been a bit of an oddball,” he said with quiet candor, “so I don’t mind being identified with these boats.” 

Having spent a few days aboard, I’m happy to be considered an oddball, too. Irony’s exterior may appeal only to lovers of unique boats, but Benford gave her interior features that will be irresistible to all. From the 7-foot ceilings in nearly every room to the 30 tons of steel that make her nearly indestructible to the warm mahogany throughout, Irony is quite the character—just like her creator.

And because of that, there is no better place to charter her than the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, where the trip includes meeting Benford and other men like him, living founts of the nautical culture that brought this boat and so many other precious originals to life.

While Irony’s story begins on Benford’s drafting table in St. Michaels, her charter chapter opens about 20 miles away in the town of Oxford. Captains (and spouses) Dan and Libby Cole live aboard there every summer with their 4-year-old golden retriever, Montana (pets are welcome aboard Irony), and their family runs the boater-friendly 1876 House bed and breakfast. The Coles are, quite happily, the next generation of characters in the region’s storied nautical history—which is exactly what they try to share with their charter guests.
“It’s the people that are so fabulous here,” Dan says as we pass restored home after restored home.

“Steamships used to come in here from Baltimore, right down there at the ferry docks. And this house here—Michener wrote Chesapeake from this house. Sara Benson lives here now. She’s 92. We had her birthday party on the boat. Her husband used to run the ferry. You know, it’s the oldest operating ferry in the country, since 1683…”

Oxford is one of those towns that tourists often call “quaint,” but it’s too authentic for that. Its charm lacks the self-consciousness that so often comes with the lust for tourism dollars. From the Hinckley repair yard to the general store, it’s a fly trapped in amber with a fistful of sawdust—the kind of place were if you walk around with a local boater like Dan Cole, you’ll be treated like family.

That includes a hearty handshake from Eddie Cutts Jr., who still runs the Cutts & Case boatyard next to his house (the oldest in Oxford) even though he recently lost his left leg to infection. “I’m working on my 78th year,” he says as he tools around in his golf cart, complete with boatyard burgee. He was nice enough to spend a few hours with me, since I resisted calling on him until he’d finished his afternoon bowl of tomato soup.

Over the years Cutts has collected a veritable museum of Americana that he displays, free for anyone to see. The prized possession is Foto, the 33-foot cedar chase boat from which Morris and Stanley Rosenfeld captured America’s Cup photographs. Cutts spent two years restoring Foto himself.  “The boat was a wreck,” he told me. “They were slobs. Didn’t care about anything but their pictures. But they were nice people. And my wife and I had a lot of fun on Foto (after the restoration). We took it up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Great cockpit. You can see everything from it.”

The story epitomizes what’s most palpable during a charter in this destination: the sense of purpose that goes with the craft of building particular boats for particular purposes. And it makes a quirky-looking-but-fabulously-comfortable yacht like Irony fit right in.

The Coles previously worked on megayachts including the 120-foot Sovereign. They bring their understanding of luxury service to Irony in a way that’s more casual, more in tune with the boat and her environment. Guests want for nothing, yet feel like they’ve been welcomed into the Coles’ home. You need not lift a finger, but if you want a turn at the helm, that’s just fine.

That’s why Connie and Betty Millane charter Irony. The Chesapeake trip was their second with the Coles and came after years of chartering other 60-footers. “I felt this boat had as much room on it as a 90-footer,” Connie explains, looking up at the foot of air separating his head from the white beadboard overhead.

“The owner bought it because he never found a 60-footer with more space,” Dan Cole adds. Yes, Irony is stacked like a wedding cake to provide so much interior room, but her steel hull makes her so heavy, she rides with great stability unless the seas are big or winds are high. And that’s probably just as well for charter guests, who tend to sit at the dock in such weather no matter what kind of boat they’re aboard.

That’s what singer Billy Joel did. He owned a sistership to Irony that he outfitted with a full-scale pub for such occasions. The Coles are just as unique with their offerings for guests, including archery contests and art lessons.

Irony tends to attract the sort of people who want more than the standard menu of snorkeling and sunbathing, people who appreciate unique boats and unique experiences. On the Chesapeake, the itinerary can include a day at The River Plantation, a sprawling operation on the stunning Wye River. We spent a full morning with shotguns on the sporting clays course, followed by lunch at the onsite pub before an afternoon of preserve-hunting pheasant, chukar and Hungarian partridge.

Even for beginners, it’s a day of unique fun. “When we go out with people who’ve never shot before, the instructor is right there with them,” explained our guide, Ben Wise—a three-time world champion—as we sampled the two dozen stations where sportsmen pull about 1.3 million clays a year. “This range is set up for everything from beginner to expert. People like to break targets.”

During our visit, that included both Millane (a longtime hunter) and his wife, Betty, who’d never pulled a trigger before. “It wasn’t that bad, you know?” she quipped with a smile after breaking her first target. She’d shied away from the experience at first, but walked away happy that she’d opened herself up to it.

Funny, but that’s the same sort of thing that Benford, the yacht designer from St. Michaels, hears all the time from people about Irony and the other Florida Bay Coasters he’s designed. “The husband walks by and says, ‘What a cool boat!’ and the wife goes, ‘Aaargh, uuhhh.’ And he drags her aboard, and she says, ‘Wow, this is great! I could live here.’”

After getting to know Irony and the unique Chesapeake Bay community she calls home, I feel the same way.