Monthly Archives: April 2014

Rebuild

and so the work starts

We have started the refit of Zero, started by taking off all the kit and pulling down the headlinings. Revealing a number of leaks in the deck and windows, to be cured.


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The galley and chart table area before

The galley and chart table area where the next to be looking at with Tim taking on dismantling the electrics and then the joinery in the chart table area and Jon taking on the galley. Finding a number of water traps, which has cased some of the joinery to have water ingress at the bottom of some of the joinery. It took us about a day to get all the joinery out leaving a large area of clear hull.

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The galley and chart table area stripped

The next stage to redesign the galley and chart table area, to take the new instruments.

The Boat

We bought a boat

zero_gravitasWe’ve been looking for a replacement for Harlequin for quite a while now. The requirements were fairly simple, but turned out to be very hard to fulfil.

  1. Rate well enough compared to speed to make us able to be competitive.
  2. No runners.
  3. Around 30 foot long.
  4. Small crew.
  5. Able to be used for cruising as well as racing.
  6. No runners.
  7. Cheap.

Did I mention that we didn’t want runners?

The answer was an SJ320. We’ve known that for months…. Now we have one. đŸ™‚

We completed the purchase on a chilly February morning, intending to sail/motor round to Walton and hoping for decent weather. The delivery crew was Tim, Ed, Jon and Nick. I don’t know who sacrificed what to which gods, but it worked. The weather was wonderful the whole way.

delivery_1

One exception: there wasn’t enough wind for us to actually sail. There was plenty as we left the old moorings; enough for Tim to embarrass himself trying to park at the fuel pontoon anyway. Unfortunately it died just as we got to the point where the direction was right for us to hoist sail.

delivery_2

We made good time and were able to negotiate the interesting buoyage at Stone Point to get to Titchmarsh Marina.

The crane out and move into the pond is for another post. Tim was the only one there and took a few photos. Photos in this post were shamelessly stolen from Nick’s facebook page. Thanks Nick!