Launched in the Great Lakes around Chicago in 1961, Alden 949-Y, INDECISION did some racing there before heading for the coast a few years later for a Bermuda race and to the Bahamas for some chartering.

From there, her second owner in Mass. christened her GANDER TOO, and for roughly 3 decades she raced with the family in the Cape Cod area making several summer trips to Maine.

More than 10 years ago, I found her for sale at Outward Bound in Rockland Maine through a friend that worked there. I didn't think I was looking for a new boat, until I saw her on jack stands that day all fully rigged. I changed my mind.

She's gone through an uncountable number of sails over the years (I have a few in the attic that are anachronisms today), is on her third engine, several dodgers, a few sets of cushions, several different marine heads, a few cookers, and a truckload of those maintenance items boats go through year after year.

But I realize, the rest of the boat, is still there. We even have most of the plastic dishware that must be from her early days, in a green matching the 60's style formica on the galley counters from the builder in Denmark. The sails are all new, but still going up the same spars now 50 years old and looking optimistically toward, another 50.

Most everything onboard is original, proven by the ghosts of old worn out gizmos over the years, shading their outlines on the 50 year old bulkheads and mahogany cabin sides. We still have the original ice tongs and scale for the 50 pound ice blocks that were commonplace in 1961.

CHRISTMAS has history and is a part of our family now. 50 years later, this design is still proving itself as a fine sailboat.

Other Classic plastic boats will also be turning 50 this year(a few even older), and a real raft of them to come in this decade. This old ad from the UK during the 1960 boat show attests to the dramatic change in boat design that came in with the new space age plastic.

The Alden Challenger design by John Alden of Boston, their first glass hull and deck, and built overseas, was part of that step from wood to "fibreglas". If nothing else, these 50 year old hulls, still as strong as new, prove the materials longevity.

Like anything "new", fiberglass was controversial in 1960, incorporating the best of both, wood and fiberglass,.... or the worst of each, depending upon your position at the time.