Over the weekend the 114-year-old, double ended, double-gaff ketch Violet returned to her devoted Island owners after 11 years in other harbors under others’ care.

Kristi and Gary Maynard first restored Violet in 1991. Before they sold it, they raised two children on the boat and cruised it around the Caribbean and the Pacific.

“Selling Violet was the biggest mistake we ever made,” Kristi said.

Nearly 48 feet long and rigged in a style that is consistent with the age of her construction, Violet’s ability to abide in the weather without deteriorating requires a lot of specific maintenance. Gary and Kristi will have to rebuild portions of Violet’s deck and cabin house again.

“It’s pretty emotional to look around the cabin,” Kristi said. “Seeing all the parts and pieces we put together when we were just kids. We were so deeply in love. I brought my babies to sea on this boat. There are still my plates in the cabinets.”

“Everything you see is our design,” Gary said.

Thirty-seven years ago at the front of the big shed at Five Corners, Gary and Kristi built most of what is visible of the boat. Their design includes the sailing rig, which didn’t come with the boat when she came over from Europe.

At the end of the 19th century, the Scots Zulu was the most popular design for fishing boats on the Northeastern coast of the British Isles. They were medium sailboats set up for large crews to catch herring in nets then race along the North-Sea coasts to markets for favorable prices. In 1977, when Bob Douglas, the sailor and entrepreneur who built both Shenandoah and the Black Dog franchise, bought Violet in Castle Townshend, Ireland, she had been converted to a motorboat with an aft pilothouse.

Captain Bob shipped it across the Atlantic to Martha’s Vineyard where at first he left it on a mooring at the head of the harbor in Vineyard Haven. Four years later he hauled it out on the railway in front of his restaurant.

For four more years Violet sat in the weather where the boat’s decks opened up and its planking dried out. When Gary bought the boat in February of 1987 it was already clear that a lot of the boat would have to be replaced.

“People kept walking by and telling Gary like, ‘You’re crazy man.’ I think that doubled down on his determination,” remembered Will White who worked for Captain Bob during those years, on the dock at Coastwise Packet Company.

“While they were working on the boat, Gary and Kristi had shirts made up with an illustration of Violet with her topsail flying, that said ‘Never say die,’ on them,” recalled Antonio Salguero, who was an apprentice boatbuilder at Gannon and Benjamin in those same years. “I think that really encapsulated their attitude. It was a monumental task.”

“We really worked our butts off,” Kristi said. “Besides working on the boat, I waited tables at the Black Dog, breakfast and dinner every day. Everything went into the boat. For us it was a lot of rice and beans.”

“I’d work on the boat until we ran out of money,” Gary said. “Then I’d have to stop and take another job. I never thought it would take four years.”

At that time Gary was a professional sailor, learning boatbuilding as he went. For a period he took industrial work around Boston Harbor. During another spell he captained the schooner When and If.

“We were young and idealistic,” Kristi said.

“In my opinion, Violet is one of the world’s great boats,” Gary said. “She’s a great sea boat. She’s great looking. People react strongly to it, even people that know nothing about boats. With her full rig she’s as dramatic as Shenandoah, but she’s small enough that people imagine they could have a boat like that.”

“Even in the worst weather she is like a little duck,” Kristi said.

Will White was Gary’s first mate when he ran charters on the boat the first summer after he launched it.

“I loved sailing that boat,” Will said. “We did three charters a day. She’s like a Swiss army knife; you have so many options there’s a sail combination that works in every breeze.”

“Gary ran a pretty tight program,” Will added. “You better put a perfect furl in that staysail.”