1969 Cheoy Lee Offshore 27 - my new fixer upper

[agent9]

New to sailboats, but I assume mine is a pretty common story. I purchased an old boat in need of some work for a fairly small amount of money, to work and and learn to sail. I live in San Francisco, and have it berthed at Oyster Point in South San Francisco. I am prepared to spend some time and money on the boat, but my priority is making it safe and protected from the elements more then making it look like new (which would never happen).

The boat is a 1969 Cheoy Lee Offshore 27 (Newell Cadet).

Lets just start with the ugly and the bad:
- The deck is pretty ugly, a lot of the teak trim is dry but not cracking
- the gelcoat is done, needs paint
- the teak deck has been removed, which I see as a positive, but there is a spot where someone did a terrible job of repairing a soft spot, and it is still pretty soft.
- I can see that the soft spot was caused by the drain holes being raised as a result of the deck removal, there is about a 1/4" space where water can be trapped below them.
- Standing rigging has a couple cracked swage fittings.
- lifeline needs replacing
- jib had a couple small tears in it, I took it to a shop today and think I am just going to purchase a new sail. I believe she has one that was never picked up that she will give me a good deal on.
- manual bilge was not working (Gusher 10), I have rebuilt this myself, working great now.
- automatic bilge was disconnected. Had it wired correctly and serviced. Seems to be working well now, but when I submerge it in the lower part of the bilge it seems to just run and not remove the couple inches of water in there. I am assuming the pipe is running too far to the exit and is just falling back into the bilge, would love opinions on this.
- prop stuffing was dripping, I had it serviced, started dripping again. I found that if I leave the boat in gear (sometimes forward works, sometimes reverse works) that the dripping is minimized

The good:
- I love the boat
- Volvo MD1 seems to run quite well. I did an oil change and added some seafoam cleaner to the oil and diesel. I did notice that when I put the engine in full throttle I see some diesel and black soot out the back. Before doing the maintenance I motored it from Sausalito to the SF Marina, then the 15 miles or so down to Oyster Point. No issues.
- Interior is quite nice after a cleaning
- deck is solid aside from the poor repair spot
- surveyed at the beginning of this year out of water, and had new bottom paint

Things I want to immediately address
- I want to explore the bilge and make sure I will feel ok leaving it for a couple weeks when I am gone on vacation later this year. I am open to purchasing and installing a more modern / robust system
- Standing rigging - I want to have this done, and done right. I am talking to riggers, but would like to know more about the process. Should I just take it to a nearby shipyard and have them remove the mast, then take the rigging to the rigger, or do riggers typically offer an all in service where I can just have them come deal with it all. What should I expect to pay for this?
- Either having my jib either repaired or replaced. I have a second jib which I would love to know how to identify, and spinnaker (which looks like it has never been used, and I doubt I will use it any time soon)
- I have scheduled a hull cleaning every two months, the diver is coming out at the end of this week, and I am going to have him clean the hull, which looks pretty clean, and check out the zincs and prop to see if that is the cause of the engine soot.

I also want to start on the deck. I am not looking for a show boat, just something passible. I have read up a bit on proper soft spot repair and am thinking of just taking whack at it. I am pretty handy and mechanical, but have never worked with fiberglass before. Also thinking of just masking off everything on the deck and sanding down the gelcoat, then doing a prime and paint.

Would love some advice on the teak, which I do not need perfect, but want to protect it from the elements. Should I just use a stained oil. or maybe a couple coats of polyurethane?

Anyways, this was a bit of a long introduction, but wanted to say hi. Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Thanks, and I will upload some images as soon as i figure out how to do that.

[fstbttms]

Welcome to CF!

Originally Posted by agent9

I have scheduled a hull cleaning every two months...

Very nice. You are off to a good proper boat maintenance start.

[David_Old_Jersey]

You sound like you have a good handle on things.

Boats seems to involve a lot of puzzling out, welcome to the club!

[SkiprJohn]

Aloha and welcome aboard!
If you do a search here on the forum using the search function in the second line from the top you'll find lots of answers. I've explored the bilge pump thing quite some time ago but it was very thorough. Hard to get the last couple inches out of the bilge because your full hose drains back in and then cycles your pump again. That means no completely dry bilge.
Someone more experienced on the issue will chime in I'm certain.

[roverhi]

You can redo the rigging yourself with Norseman/StaLok or other mechanical terminals. Just take down one wire at a time and make an identical one. Fitting these terminals to the wire is a piece of cake. Use a halyard to stabilize the mast. The lowers will hold the mast up by themselves so don't worry about the mast falling down. If the mast is wood, might consider taking it down to give it a thorough inspection and refinish. Rot is an issue with wooden masts but can be repaired. If it's aluminum wouldn't spend the money to pull it unless there are other issues like frozen sheaves, internal wiring issues or other stuff difficult to address with the mast up. MIght want to look for a used Mast Climber on Ebay or buy ascenders and mountain climbing harness to make it an easy solo job to get up the mast.

There are a lot of used sails for small boats on Ebay now. Condition of some are suspect so caveat emptor. For another source of used sails, you should also try Minnies in Costa Mesa or Bacon in Annapolis for used sails. Hoist the sails you've got on a calm day to see what they are, how they need to be sheeted, etc. Lay them out on a lawn and carefully inspect, especially the stitching, the achilles heal of dacron sails. Sail the boat a bit and then decide if the sails have decent shape and condition and whether to keep or replace. New sails are are nice but unless you are planning on keeping the boat for awhile, a big outlay of funds that it's doubtful you'll recover on sale of the boat.

If the pump is defective get a Johnson controls switch and a new pump. If the problem is water running back into the bilge from the hose, try a swing check valve. Will keep the water in the hose from running back into the bilge. Impossible to keep an entirely dry bilge without a sponge or wet and dry vacuum. You can repack the stuffing box in place if you can get at it. Will let a lot of water into the boat while you doing it but definitely worth while to stop the leak. Use Gore type packing.

Those old Volvos are great engines. Hand started an MD 2 for ten years. If you need a hand crank, believe I still have one laying around.

[SecondBase]

Originally Posted by SkiprJohn

I've explored the bilge pump thing quite some time ago but it was very thorough. Hard to get the last couple inches out of the bilge because your full hose drains back in and then cycles your pump again. That means no completely dry bilge.

I had remaining bilge water as well- right at the pump location. She seems to have a gap between pump intakes and lowest point. Neither the hand pump or the wet-dry DustBuster helped. What finally worked is West Marine 12v wet-dry vacuum which gets the last couple gallons followed by chamois. Minimizing the lift height seemed to help.

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, agent9.

[boatman61]

Give your teak a very light (fine grit) sanding by hand.. just enough to show the colour then use plain old teak oil... it'll suck it up.
Just keep repeating till the morning it is not dry to the touch... after that it just needs a wipe with an oily rag every 6 mths or so..
Do not recommend coating it with anything..


0.00000000001 centime...

[Suijin]

The bilge pump line may be clogged...if she had a jabsco in the engine compartment then there is a filter along the way and that could be clogged. If the shaft seal is leaking that will carry oil into the bilge which would certain clog a line over time.

You'll get many opinions on teak care and finishing. Oiling is one option. Cetol is another. And of course there is varnish. The route you choose is a function of the state of the teak, the maintenance routine you're amenable to, and the look you want. For the record, any of these approaches done badly is going to look like crap. I've seen some gorgeous Cetol maintained teak that is a good compromise between the dirt-attracting aspects of oiled teak and the brutal maintenance routine of varnish.