Restoring ZEST

The kid could not stop drawing boats. Greg Marshall drew them everywhere—on his homework, on the chalkboard at school. It didn’t matter that the teacher erased them; he’d draw more. Growing up on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, during the 1960s and ’70s, he loved to dash around with his family on their small Bayliner out of Canoe Cove near Sidney, north of Victoria. On the way past the naval architect William Garden’s famous homestead, Toad’s Landing, with its superb collection of wooden boats (see WB No. 60), Greg would marvel at a long, skinny, and insanely fast-looking 70-footer called CLAYMORE. Garden wrote in his classic book Yacht Designs that “A boat of this size and power seldom becomes airborne, certainly never on purpose.”

When Greg was 13 and out with his family aboard their boat in Desolation Sound, a long, slim, 68' powerboat went cruising past, making no fuss in the water. Besides its looks, what captivated him was that a boat that big could be run by just one person. That person was Orin Edson, and the boat was the sleek AVANZAR, another of Garden’s designs. Greg’s path to becoming a renowned Victoria-based naval architect specializing in superyachts was set in motion the moment Edson, who also owned the Bayliner Boat company, invited him aboard. It was Edson who helped arrange a visit by Greg and his dad to Toad’s Landing. “That’s why,” Greg said, “whenever I see a family with boat-nut kids, I always make time for them.”

Two years later, in 1977, at age 15, Greg started working for Garden. Above his desk he kept a photo of ZEST—a 62-footer with a beam of 15' 6"—the Garden-designed boat he loved. He “just stared at it for years and years,” even though he would not actually see ZEST in person until 2016.

It was many years later that Greg’s wife tried to talk him into living aboard a boat. “If you lived on a boat,” she mused, “what would it be like?” His instant answer was that it would be a boat like ZEST, with a hull length about 62', skinny, and low. Greg describes the yacht as “much like a normal 50-footer, with the ends pulled out.” His dream boat would have all the comforts—a good bed at night, a big enough shower, and a fridge stocked with food. “I like low boats because I like to be close to the water,” he said. “I like big windows, so you feel like you’re part of the water instead of removed from it, and I like mostly one level, so that you can walk in from the swim platform to the cockpit to the saloon, which all becomes one space.”