A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Proper Yacht: Paul Koch and Ponyo

Some boats are acquired. Others are accumulated, year by year, skill by skill, memory by memory. Ponyo belongs to the latter category.

Dr. Paul Koch’s sailing story begins at East Greenwich Yacht Club in 1963, when Wednesday nights meant one hundred boats finishing in the cove just off the East Greenwich Yacht Club gas
dock. “Years of racing dinghies and larger boats never distracted me from my affinity for
gaff rigged classics,” Koch says. That preference endured quietly through decades of
sailing, waiting for the one thing most sailors never quite get enough of: time.
Retirement provided the minutes and hours.

Rather than buy a finished boat, Koch chose a project that would occupy five years and reward patience. He selected a 1915 Crownin shield designed Camden Class Knockabout, which he describes simply as “the longest boat I could comfortably fit in my shop,” and began building Ponyo between 2016 and 2021. The work was methodical. Plans were lofted. Fourteen station molds were built. The hull was strip planked in Spanish cedar, with laminated Honduran
mahogany ribs and deck beams, and an interior ceiling of Alaskan yellow cedar. “I built
everything except four items,” Koch says. “The lead ballast keel, the stainless-steel
framed rudder, the sails, and the spars.”

His meticulous level of craftsmanship was eventually noticed. Ponyo was featured in
Wooden Boat, an acknowledgment that carries particular weight among classic
boatbuilders. For Koch, it was less validation than completion. The boat had made the
transition from private project to public object.

On the racecourse, Ponyo has settled into a familiar rhythm. Each summer includes the
Camden Classic Cup, not simply because the boat was designed for those waters, but
because of the racing itself. “There are a lot of similar sized boats up there,” Koch
explains. “Dragons, Spidsgatters, Dark Harbors. Some years we have so many
daysailers we need to split into two classes. It’s the closest racing we see all year.”
Narragansett Bay presents a different challenge. “So many of the classics are twice my
size,” he notes, which quietly reframes every tactical decision.

Maine, however, has become the center of Ponyo’s season. Boothbay and Camden
offer what the boat seems to prefer: steady breezes, flat water, and regattas that
balance serious racing with serious hospitality. “We can rig or derig in just two hours,”
Koch says, describing a logistics routine refined over time that includes Bristol Marine,
Lyman Morse, and temporary storage at Artisan Boat Yard. The details matter because
they allow the sailing to take precedence. In alternate years, the Eggemoggin Reach
Regatta enters the rotation, though this season Ponyo will instead sail in the NYYC
Astor Cup.

Charleston, South Carolina, offered a sharp contrast. “The racing is always excellent,
provided you love strong tides, currents, and hitting the shore to escape them,” Koch
says. Charleston Race Week, now three decades old, stages its social events aboard
the USS Yorktown, where Ponyo stood out as the only gaff rigged classic in attendance.
“We were considered the Belle of the Ball,” he says, with a trace of amusement. The
timing helped. With family in Charleston and school vacation week underway, the
regatta blended into post-race day sailing with grandchildren.

The continuity is intentional. Sailing, in the Koch family, is something handed down
rather than scheduled. His son Paul Jr., now a film composer in Hollywood, completed
the full GBSA program and later sailed more than twenty NYYC Cruise passages with
his father. “He is the best sailing mate I’ve ever had,” Koch says. A son in law has joined
more recently, learning quickly and fitting in easily. At home, restored Optimists and a
Beetle catboat form a small, informal sailing school for visiting grandchildren. “Soon
we’ll have three generations racing together,” Koch adds.

This spring, Ponyo is briefly ashore for what Koch calls a “spa retreat”. The bottom is
being converted from ablative to hard antifouling. The hull has been re faired for new
paint. The brightwork has been taken back to wood, and the varnish will be rebuilt from
scratch. New sails are on order, and the sail number will change to 42. “The answer to
the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything,” Koch explains with a nod to
Douglas Adams.

Then the calendar fills again: Tiedemann, Boothbay, Camden, Herreshoff, Newport and
IYRS, NYYC Annual Regatta, and The Astor Cup. Possibly Marblehead or the Vineyard
Cup. And, of course, the EGYC Annual, the Hagglund, and a few Wednesday nights
back home.

“It’s a short season,” Koch says, Hitchhiker’s Guide in hand. “But we do what we can.”