HOW WE SAVED EACH OTHER

et no one, least of all this magazine, if only by implication, ever tell you that restoring an old wooden boat is easy. In 2010, Danish man Bendix Sandfoss Laxvig was visiting Copenhagen and spotted a 66ft (20.1m) ketch lying in Frederiksholm Canal. She’d been there for 26 years, letting the elements wreak their havoc on her fabric. Bendix, a lifelong member of the Frogman Corps (the Danish equivalent of the SBS or Navy Seals), had been sailing since the age of eight, starting with a friend in Optimists out of Elsinor and moving into the yacht-racing scene in Denmark, helming everything from Folkboats to X-boats, with some of the country’s most noted sailors. Through all these years, Bendix somehow managed to avoid owning a boat of his own. The dream of boat ownership, however, had been planted in his mind at the age of 25 when, while travelling with the Frogman Corps, the owner of a classic 12-M invited Bendix and some mates aboard for a tour, above and below decks. “There was a soul… and a smell… to it,” he