Making Ex-Racer My Cruiser . . . Am I Mad ?

[Weyalan]

delmarrey once whispered in the wind:
That first trip is always the worst. Until one gets to really know their vessel do they become at ease

Now you can plan for all the up grades
........................................_/)

The first night out of Mooloolaba we had a forecast of 20 - 25 knots, locally 30 knots at times, with 2 - 3m seas. What we actually got was 35 - 45 knots, with the occasional 50 knot gusts and 3 - 5m seas. It was something of a baptism of fire, but the boat handled it well (we got to 18 knots at one stage). We did not experience anything that rough thereafter (and I will be quite happy if I don't see those conditions again for a while), but it did give us confidence in the boat's ability to handle a littl ebit of rough weather.

As for the upgrades - yup; I have a list as long as my arm that needs to be prioritised. Having said that, various minor repairs and replacements will be first priority...

[mudnut]

Have you checked every boat in Tassie?Now Im really not even a beginner by any means but I know there is a Boro Temptress down there for 34 thousand.And I know there are 3 or 4 more here in oz waters for around the same price,being an ozzy wannabe myself. **** I wish I hade the money &/or the choice the yanks had,or you for that matter,but I rekon there are better deals going than that old racer.Dont let being down in Tassie stop ya from looking a bit further north for a boat.My two cents Mudnut.

[capt lar]

Weyalan - Sounds like the shakedown from hell. Glad to read boat, captain and crew all held together. Must feel good !

Larry

[Weyalan]

Just thought I would let y'all know how its going with the good ship Insatiable:

Since bringing her down to Hobart I have been a little bit poverty stricken - the purchase and delivery basicall took up the available budget for "big ticket" projects but the saving regimen has already been implemented to finance the bigger jobs.

I have been doing a few smaller / less expensive jobs - new back-stay (old one had a broken strand or two), minor sail repairs, replaced one of the stays from the mast box to the ring on the cabin top that supports the halyard blocks, etc.

I have also been sailing as much as I can (work is currently rather busy), so that means most weekends cruising and the occasional evening twilight race. The longest I have been away so far is only 3 nights, but one takes what one can get.

Here she is sneaking along quite nicely (7 knots in 15 knots of breeze), with just the main up... (sorry if the picture is a bit big)



No, I'm not having much fun

[swagman]

Nice to see the picture of your new boat underway and equally good to hear the maiden trip went so well - despite your first night conditions.

You make the delivery trip sound easy, but we all know how the Tasman is not a sea to take lightly, so my congrats on a successful first sail.

I've no doubts you'll grow even fonder of her as time goes by - and we all look forward to hearing of your progress in turning her into a cruising lady.

So well done - and enjoy.

JOHN

[Weyalan]

Thanks for the kind words Swagman.

Actually, the delivery trip was "easy" insofar as only having conditions consistently above 3m/30knots during the first 36 hours and the last 36 hours. And, in both cases, in the strongest winds we were either running or broad reaching - never punching into it. I guess that wasn't entirely luck - we would have probably been hiding somewhere if the breeze had been 30+ on the nose. I really enjoyed the delivery, although I never seemd to get enough sleep.

I will be sure to keep y'all posted as/when things progress.

[Joli]

Weyalan,

Thank you for the update. It sounds like you bought a very nice boat that is quick and fun to sail for a great price.

Fair Winds,

Bryan

This is us till mid April



This is us after mid May.

[Weyalan]

Lovely looking boat Bryan. One of the big plusses about being in Tasmania is that we get to sail all year round.

[Seaquesta1]

Weyalan,

You are not mad, infact you are a truely wise man.

I am loving reading this post as you and i are wanting to do the same thing, with the same style of boat, bought from the same part of Australia at about the same time! We must have almost tripped over each other.

Im a Kiwi who bought a Dubois 42ft, alloy 2 tonner "Lipstick on your Collar" (ex Seaquesta) in Mooloolaba, Aust, in about Sept last year (05) and I sailed her back to Auckland, NZ in November 05. I considered buying Insatiable, but the owner was wanting far more that you paid for her, and I decided I liked Alloy?!

Did you buy her through Sunshine Coast Boat Sales? and have you got rid of the headlining yet?

We had a full on trip across the Tasman with a crew on 6. First few days were a nice brease but from the wrong direction!, 2nd 3 days we had no breasy and had to motor, the final 3 days were spend in 50 - 60 knt winds with 6-8 mtere seas with trisail and storm jib up! I was nice to know the old girl was up for it as there was nowhere to hide!

Like you, I decided that you got a lot of offshore proven yacht for your money in these boats. And if your not affraid of getting your hands dirty, you can have a great comfy ocean cruiser for not too much money. Plus, as an ex skiff sailer, I wanted something that would perform reasonably.

My plans are to pull her out of the water this winter, extend the cabin back 1.5 meters, rewire her, re plumb her, do up the interior a bit and sort out a decent anchoring system. Should be fun.

I'd luv to hear about how things are progressing on Insatiable, and if you dont mind, I might use this post to let you know about my trials and tribulations as I go.

Congrads on your wise decision!

[Seaquesta1]

[Weyalan]

Haha, Seaquesta,

That is fantastic. As soon as I saw the photo I laughed out loud - I recognised "Lipstick" straight away. I expect that you have got a great boat there - I hope you got it at the right price. I did look quite long & hard at Lipstick (I like Dubois boats), but she was a bit out of my price range and I am a little bit scared of aluminium.... but each to their own, and I am sure that you will have a heap of fun - I think she is a good boat. I also looked at Sweet Caroline - Another Dubois; about 43 or 44 foot McConaghy's built racer - again a lovely looking boat, but again a bit out of my price range. I also looked at Ultimate Challenge - again a great boat (another Dubois) but rod rigging scared me and also it was particularly bare down below...

Anyway, congratulations on your purchase...you have got yourself a whole lot of boat, hopefully for not a whole lot of $$$s. Please feel free to post details of your progression and upgrades on here - I would be keen to hear your stories and compare notes.

To answer your question about brokers: I actually purchased directly from the owner - I did not talk to any brokers, which is a risk, but it helped on the price negotiations.

Since I brought the boat down to Hobart from Mooloolaba, I have not done as much work as I would have liked. I have done a handful of races (mostly twilight races), and some weekend cruises (3 days & nights being the longest), but I haven't done too much work...but that is about to change. To start with, I have had real trouble getting a marina berth - there has been a significant influx of boats into the area, but no significant new marinas or berthage available. I am on a waiting list with my local club (Bellerieve Yacht Club), where I am a member, but it could be months, or perhaps even years before a berthcomes available. So I have been forced to hop the boat from temporary mooring to temporary mooring, which is not really conducive to working on the boat.

However, I have finally found a "semi permanaent" berth for her, which I can have for as long as it takes for BYC to come up with a spot for me. I moved her in last weekend. It is not a particularly well set up birth for my boat, but it is good enough, plus it has power and water, and its $AUD 50 per week, which isnt too bad for "casual" berthing.

I have done some work on stripping out the saloon area: It has been slow going because, once the lining fabric is pulled off, there is a really hard glue residue left behind, which is a real bugger to shift. It gums up sander discs in seconds, so I have been forced to scrape it back entirely by hand. I have found that an application of 50/50 turpentine & kerosene softens the gunk just enough to be able to scrape if off with a good scraper and copious elbow grease. I am only about 60 - 70% done with scraping down the saloon, but not I have a fixed berth (which is only about 5 minutes from where I work), I should be able to get more done.

I shall post a photo or two as things progress. There won't be much done this weekend though; its a long weekend here, so its a 3 day cruise for me!

I look forward to hearing more stories from you.

[Joli]

Sounds like the ex racer is making a fine cruiser. Cheers!

Just back from a nice trip; Me, princess Lisa & cabin boy Tom:

Thursday afternoon sailed out of Hobart, around The Iron Pot, across Storm Bay to Nubeena. The second half was after sunset, but there was a bright moon most of the time. A pod of about 12 dolphins came and swam alongside us for half an hour or so, which was a real treat.

Friday morning, sailed out of Nubeena, past Wedge Island and along the coast to Port Arthur...incredible coastal scenery all the way - especially Shipstern Bluff and Cape Roul. Weather cut up a bit rough during the latter part of the trip, so by the time we rounded the headland at the Endtrance to the Port Arthur Channel, it was blowing 25 knots, lashing rain and a decent swellw as rolling in.

We found a nice quite sheltered bay (Stingaree Bay) to drop the pick, and caugt us a feed of flathead in the rain. Saturday blew the proverbial "hatfull of arseholes" and rained on and off all day, so we went ashore and went for a bit of a wander around.

Sunday we headed out into the teeth of a good 25 - 30 knot souwester...with gusts around 35 knots and about 4m swell rolling in too! - not real comfortable sailing until we were able to pull off and crack sheets a bit. Sailed right back acroos Storm Bay and down the D'entrecasteaux Channel. Spent the night in Oyster Bay. Next morning the breeze had all gone, so spent a happy day crusing gentl back to Hobart, stopping occasionally to wet a line (and wet the whistle).

A very pleasant four and a half day cruise - a mixed bag of weather, but good fun nonetheless.

[Weyalan]

Sure is Joli, sure is.

In fact, I am quickly learning the wisdom of the words of another poster here who said something along the lines of: "a cruiser is just a boat you go cruising in". This is definitely not an "ideal" cruising boat, but its the boat I've got, and that is good enough for me, so I cruise it! Of course, it has it's advantages too...with a reefed main & #3 up in 25 knots & 3-4m seas, a comfortable 7.5 knots with cracked sheets is kinda a fun ride

[Weyalan]

Well, just in case anyone is interested, I thought I would post a little bit about the refitting work that has been going on, on board the Insatiable:

It has, as was eminently predictable, turned out to be rather a bigger exercise than anticipated...I mean, I kinda knew that this would be the case, but I just didn't know how this would manifest itself.

I started off with tripping the carpet-like lining that covered just about every surface, then painstakingly removing the glue residue left behind. Then some reinfocing glassing in the saloon, followed by fairing compound, sanding, and more fairingcompound, and more sanding...but that is when the first "issue" came to light...

Fuel & water tanks
The fuel and water tanks are located underneath the saloon sofa-berths. A 15gal stainless steel deisel tank and a 26gal polyurethane water tank on each side. I noticed, after sanding back the fairing compound on the vertical panels underneath the sofa perths, some "moisture" leeching through the panels (marine ply) and showing up as slight damp atches on the fairing compound. I gessed that I might have a leaking tank, or perhaps some problem with spillage being trapped, so decided that the tanks had to be pulled out for a full inspection.

Removing the tanks was an exercise in itself. The tanks had been custom made to fit, and once located, the space around them had been completely filled with expending foam. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the tanks were pulled out, and a rather nasty "soup" of water & diesel was discovered underneath; not exactly ideal laying against the hull of a fibreglass boat. It seemed that the wells for the tanks had no drainage into the bilges, so that any small spillage, when filling, from the last 20 years had been accumulating in the wells and "festering". The damp patches I was seeing in the front panels were because, over yers, the marine ply had absorbed the diesel/water and was pretty much fully impregnated.

Although this looked "ugly", the hull-glass actually seems pretty good (I shall check more carefully when I pull her out of the water next month), and I am sure I will be able to clean it up and even, if necessary, lay some more glass in the wells. I am going to replace the panels and, pretty much rebuld the tank wells. I also intend to make the tank installation much more "friendly" for future removal and inspection. Incidentally, all the fuel lines are no longer "legal"; being the clear plastic type...so I shall prplace all the fuel lines and all the 20 year old ball valves in the fuel system.

Floor and bilges
The next problem to manifest, which kind of followed on from the tank issues was a sneaking suspicion that the problem might be more wide-spread than just in the tank wells....The floor of the boat was completely sealed down and glassed in, with access panels to the bilges. But, because I was somewhat suspicious after the tank-well incident, I cut a 4" hole in the floor to see what I could find - what I found was that under the "sealed" floor was pretty much full of water or water and diesel soup. Essentially, apart from the main bilges, under the floor is a whole heap of "compartments" created by the transverse and longitudinal beams...these compartments were designed to be completely seled, and therefore have no drainage intot he main bilges...which is fine in theory, but once they did get full, not so good.

So, I have ripped out pretty much the entire floor. Once again, the hull glass seems ok. And once again, that will have to been verified when she comes out of the water. If necessary, some re-glassing can be undertaken, but it may not be required. I get to put in a new floor, which, although is entirely unplanned, I am actually quite happy about - the old floor was marine ply with a non-skid linoleum-like material glued onto it. I am considering a more traditional teak & holly floor - the marine ply with timber vaneer type...which will be designed to allow inspection of the compartments underneath.

So...there you have it - just your typical, non-typical boat renovation story....and this is, indeed, only the first chapter!

[S/V Elusive]

Weyalan - geeeeeeeeeesh. Two things. Bang on congrats for not ignoring that and digging into it, and even more for following through and checking it ALL out. That has got to be discouraging to find all that - but not fatal. Keep after it and keep us informed - it is encouraging to us all!!!