We Bought our First and Last Boat !

[offgridcanuck]

Well today was the day after a year or ten of planning. My soon to be wife and I purchased a steel Ted Brewer Alaskan 43 and will move aboard for August 1st after the wedding.

We have almost no experience and will be refitting it (her?) for a life aboard during this year with hopes to sail away next. We have been reading the forum and although we don't know any of you guys (yet!) we feel as if we do already.

I will fire up a blog or webpage to track our work and learning if anyone is interested in seeing what it takes for a couple of people to take on this from the start.

Thanks for writing all the things you do as they will direct us towards our dreams.

best regards,

Sara and James

[Boatdrinks]

Congrats! While not my first, we take possession of our last boat today as well.

[Hannah on 'Rita T']

To both of you, congratulations and we need pictures -- or, as they say, it didn't happen.

[Mike OReilly]

Welcome Sara and James. From on Canuck to another, it's great to see you onboard. Heck of a first boat! Hope you can get her out under sail soon.

[offgridcanuck]

MOV06686 - YouTube

Here is a short video of when we first saw it. Lots of changes needed but nothing difficult, just many hours.

We will be updating the electronics
Adding SSB (picked up a good ol kenwood 707 for a song recently and modded it for ham)
welding up a rear bimini deck cover
tossing those aluminum davits and welding on steel.
tossing the aluminum radar pole and welding on a steel wind genny
modernizing the interior
adding watermater
converting 600L water tank to diesel
re wiring boat
changing homemade waterlift exhaust to anything else
painting entire boat and antifoulin the bottom
and changing all standing and running rigging

plus a new bathroom for her

Other than that the boat is mint ha ha.

We are also going to write some articles from a noob perspective when getting on with most of this. Any help with acquiring some parts and which paint to use etc is most welcome.

Last but not least we are joining the blue water cruisers of BC next month when we get back from our wedding.

Thanks for the well wishes and encouraging posts, I'm sure the shiny will wear out as I blast and paint the boat early August

[Hannah on 'Rita T']

When we bought out boat 21 years ago we had a similar list. Other things came up and we still haven't done the first thing on the list, but we've sailed a lot of miles. Have fun.

[DRS]

Welcome aboard Offgrid. Best of luck with the refit. Keep us posted. I think I recognize the yard. If It is the one I'm thinking of I haul out there each year.

[Cheechako]

She loks pretty well equipped! Congrats. Most Brewer designs are sweet boats.

[SV.Maverick]

Welcome to CF

[SkiprJohn]

Aloha and welcome aboard!
Congratulations!
All of us want to make a "new to us" boat ours by personalizing it in some way. A word of caution. If the parts and pieces aboard work safely then there is no need to change unless you just can't live with it. Give it six months and a few tried and true cruises before making too many changes.
These are words from a bunch of experience. Not all of the experiences being good.
Ted Brewer's design deserve a lot of respect.
kind regards,

[Cheechako]

Originally Posted by SkiprJohn

Aloha and welcome aboard!
Congratulations!
All of us want to make a "new to us" boat ours by personalizing it in some way. A word of caution. If the parts and pieces aboard work safely then there is no need to change unless you just can't live with it. Give it six months and a few tried and true cruises before making too many changes.
These are words from a bunch of experience. Not all of the experiences being good.
Ted Brewer's design deserve a lot of respect.
kind regards,

A Big YES! go out and use it, understand it.. and them modify it if you want. Maintenance is another issue though!

[Jim Cate]

G'Day Sara and James,

I had a look at your list... lots of work and money represented there for sure.

But I must agree with the above posts that suggest NOT doing most of those projects until you have sailed/lived aboard for some while. In fact, the only ones that I would attempt initially are renewal of the standing rigging if its age suggests that it might be ready to fail, and possibly bottom paint if it needs it to stay reasonable clean. If there are any areas of serious rust, local repair might also be indicated.

It is rather common for newbies to do a lot of reading and come up with a similar list of "improvements" for a newly purchased vessel. All too often, these ideas prove fallacious, and in the best case money/time are wasted, worst case actual damage is done to the new toy. Reading and theoretical knowledge are indeed useful, but experience is more specifically directed at your boat and your actual usage of it.

A specific case in point: when we sold our previous boat, we had been living aboard and cruising full time for 17 years. The new owner, who thought of himself as an expert, immediately tore out much of the interior, removed the wind vane steering, junked the LPG system and stove for an alcohol job w/o an oven, removed the mainsheet traveller, converted from wheel to tiller steering (meaning that the autopilots would not work), and in general stuffed up a proven and successful cruising boat. Six months later he grew bored with the job and sold her on. The new new owner sailed the hell out of it for a while, then removed her from the water and has spent two years and a lot of money changing most of those things back to a semblance of the original configuration.

So, please use the boat for a while before getting too far into changes... and enjoy some sailing while you can!

Cheers,

Jim

[SkiprJohn]

Oh, I was going to mention that I've had the experience that if I carry too much diesel that some of it starts to grow things before I get round to using it. I now have two 35 gallon tanks ready to be placed in the boat and I think that is plenty.
kind regards,

[offgridcanuck]

Thanks for the advice!

We knew we had some work to do when we got it so it's alright. I have been reading the composting toilet thread and thinking we will go with a natures head saving myself to redo the salt and fresh systems.

Good advice on the huge diesel tanks as well. I guess we could use them for storage. Right now the diesel tank is low and causes and airlock from hell when work is done on the fuel line. I was thinking of at least putting in a day tank that I would pump to from the main tank. The design of the boat has these twin tanks below the pilot house. That said there is already a ridiculous amount of storage on the boat. Although there would be some gains by removing that weight of liquid from the boat.
So much to do but I cant start until after the wedding! Last night I read toilet posts until 2am

[offgridcanuck]

Well we are on our way to cleaning and fixing. SO far we blasted the interior with a high pressure water gun and its smrlling better since we tossed the head overboard.

WHAT A LOT OF WORK! Wow hahahah.

We move aboard in two days with a lot more work tomorrow. Will post more pics and vids as we go along. Nice to have a "home" for our newlywed lives together.