When you grow up in boats and on the water, you become fairly particular about the boats that you want to own when you grow up. And then one day a boat, not just any boat, catches your eye and, well, won’t let go. You absolutely must have it; that’s what happened when Holly Tompkins of Annapolis saw Pug, later renamed Cayuga, and for Holly and her husband Brad, the rest is history.
Holly and Brad found the Ray Hunt-designed fiberglass-hulled powerboat, built in 1984, for sale and in need of a little TLC. They spent a lot of time and money on her in a truly loving restoration that took her not only back on the water but all the way to the annual Chesapeake Antique and Classic Boat Festival, where Cayuga was judged as a Late Classic to be in Gold Level condition. But I am getting a little bit ahead of myself here.
Pug was designed in 1984 as a chase boat for Blair Brown, an offshore sailboat racer, according to a writeup in the summer 2024 edition of the Ray Hunt Design Quarterly: “Blair’s concept was for traditional style and performance with just the right exhaust note. It had to sound right. Thus, it had V-8 inboard gasoline power on V-drives for the best trim and speed with props. While IOs would have been faster, tradition mattered to Blair. Pug was built on a cored FRP hull by Concordia in South Dartmouth, MA. The hull was the prototype for the Black Watch 30 which began the Black Watch boat line and later the Whisperjet series by Ted Hood. Later Blair would commission a 33-footer which became the basis for Hunt Yachts, and then a 36, all looking very much like the first 30. As years went by, the original Pug was bought by Brad Cole and Holly Tompkins of Annapolis, MD, who have lovingly restored Pug to its original perfection.”
Holly was born in upstate New York and did much of her boating on the Finger Lakes. Cayuga, (north of Ithaca), she explains, was the first body of water that she was ever on.
And boating is in her blood, in her family history. “My dad liked boating,” Holly says. “He was a powerboater later in life. He told me that he had raced Lightnings or something like that when he was younger. For the most part, he enjoyed powerboating. And so, my first experiences boating were on the Finger Lakes in upstate New York, on Seneca Lake and Keuka Lake.”
Holly’s dad, Scott, worked for IBM, and his family moved around a lot, eventually to the Annapolis area. “We moved around and eventually he chartered a boat for a few years and then finally bought a cabin cruiser style motorboat, and even bought a fatty knees dinghy, but all I ever wanted was to go sailing. So, he got a mast and sail for it, and whenever we would go anchor out, I would get in that boat, set the sail, and disappear as far away from Mom and Dad and my sisters as I could get without getting in too much trouble. And so, I guess thanks to Mom and Dad, I enjoy the water as much as I do.”
“I love the water, right? Sure,” she says. “But when I got older and I was looking to find a place to live, after I moved back to Maryland from being away, it was heading into 2008, and I was, like, ‘I don’t trust this market. This is insane.’”
Thus, Holly didn’t buy a house, but instead bought a Beneteau sailboat and moved aboard. Seven or so years later, still aboard the boat, she met Brad, and they became husband and wife. “We met because of sailing,” she says, “I was racing. He was racing.” But life moves on, and eventually they sold the Beneteau.
“That boat taught me a lot of things about boating in general; maintenance obviously, and a lot of ‘fend for yourself, figure it out, learn how to do this, learn how to do that.’ It’s a real kind of confidence booster when it comes to owning a boat.” But it still didn’t take Holly off the water. “Whether it had to do with racing, Eastern Shore deliveries, whatever, I was still out on the water as much as I could be.”
But it wasn’t the same as having a boat. After all, when you don’t have a boat, nothing else can fill that empty space; it’s almost palpable. Holly and Brad fell in love with a boat in Seattle, WA, but it sold before they had a chance to look at it. “We had just missed her,” Holly says. “Then we were really depressed and gave up looking for awhile.”
Holly’s dad had been a fan of antique motorboats, particularly Chris-Crafts, and he restored a couple of wooden ones and also a Penn Yan. He became, Holly says, “Really involved with the Chesapeake Chapter of the Antique Classic Boat Society, he and Mom headfirst, and he ended up being the chapter president for a year or two,” with Holly’s mom, Julie, involved in the chapter as well.
He passed away in early 2020, Holly’s mom a couple of years earlier, and at one point in time soon after Holly lost her parents, she and Brad picked up their search for another boat. “And so, I’m looking around at sailboats, sailboats, sailboats, and I said, ‘well, let me channel Dad for a second.’ So, I said, ‘what would Dad buy if he was going to buy a boat today?’ I started looking at Chris-Crafts because he always had them.”
She felt that she needed to find something practical, but something that was really classic. “And I went down the rabbit hole and I said, ‘well, what would be maybe even cooler than a Chris-Craft in my mind?’” The answer for Holly was a Hunt. She said, “Let me see if there is a Hunt that is anywhere in the affordability range. And I figured probably not. No way. But I plugged it in, and a boat came up and I said, ‘oh my God, this is the boat, and I think we can afford this.’”
Brad fell in love with the boat, too. They met with the broker, hit it off with the owner, made an offer, and owned her by the end of the week. “It was a little crazy, but I was so excited. She’s just beautiful.”
“The original owner built her to basically be his crew carrier,” Holly says. “He was a racer. He had a racing program, and he was a big-boat sailor, and had this boat built to carry his crew out to the boat and back and party, and part of the reason why it’s set up the way it is, is so that there’s room there for people to sit and enjoy themselves and tell stories after boating with probably many beverages. He eventually had another boat built, a 36, but this is a 30-foot boat. She was built to basically do one thing, go really fast to the boat and really fast back to the dock. He didn’t put trim tabs on her because he was either going fast or he was docking the boat or picking up the mooring ball. So her fuel capacity is not huge. We’re not going to take her any great distance unless we know that we can get gas somewhere. After all, she has two big gasoline engines.”
“We wanted to put trim tabs on her. We don’t want to go 30 miles an hour, and we also don’t want to go just six. We want to go a comfortable 12, 13, 14, 15, maybe 18 miles per hour, but without the trim tabs, she doesn’t quite get fully up on plane. We decided to install Zipwake, a dynamic trim control system. What is also great about them is that they are installed below the water line, and you would never know that they’re there. We’re not physically altering the exterior of the boat for the purposes of the antique classic qualifications or judging.” Because Cayuga is built in 1984, she fits into the Late Classic category.
“She’s here in the Chesapeake, where she has a longer season, so there’s more enjoying to happen. But she has a nice pedigree, she’s a great boat, and I’m having a great time. I’m a girl with her powerboat.”
By Capt. Michael L. Martel