Hi CPA,
This is an old thread but I have a little to offer . I have not read all 18 pages yet but will so possibly you know much of what I write.
I worked for Eric Bongers for a summer in 1979. He ran
Compass Marine, in the strand east of
cape town. He was son of Pops Bongers who was a legend as a designer/builder of yachts of his own design and others , check out the thread about yacht ‘outburst’ ,some great posts of folks who new the
family well. Eric and his brother( bobby) married sisters, but Bobbys wife died from cancer. Bobby and later his son charles were/are very active ocean
racing sailors. ERIC got seasick on big boats so rarely sailed
offshore but sailed a Finn in the 65
olympics. Eric's son later tookover
compass marine, building
commercial boats including catamarans. They had a fire and
lost a lot in maybe 2000’s but I don’t think was able to restart the company.
When I was there Eric was building the last of 6-7 wooden coldmolded compass 47’ designed by Anglo Lavranos . It was used as the
plug for the molds for the
fiberglass versions. I was helping with some
fiberglass projects and other things during the time I was there.( it was a summer job while I was at a boatbuilding college in UK).
While I was there we were building the
interior of the first fiberglass
hull with the
deck off as the
deck mold was being made off the
wood boat. We later fitted the first deck while I was there. I remember filling the
hull to deck joint/toerail with a fiberglass filler and probably helped glass over the joint inside.
This
boat had a wide yellow strip on the hull side , bit odd, but apparently it was going into the
charter trade. This boat had a regular shaft drive but we were discussing the new fangled saildrives available with bigger engines suitable for this 47’er. He did later fit the later boats with them. Simpler and cheaper to install. We also fitted an
engine driven AC unit which I have never see since but thought a good idea.
We also fitted a
teak deck that was glued to a glued down marine ply deck overlay so there were no thru deck fasteners to cause leaks!
You may also have found in you boat there are few limber holes. Eric believed it was better to let
water accumulate where it leaked in so you could more easily trace the leak.
I did get to
race on table bay on one of the
wood versions. Sailed well , I think we won!
I did have a sales brochure but not been able to find.
Cheers warren
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