I suppose I am once again long overdue an update. I just haven’t found myself the right mood to do one for a long time, but alas there is much to tell and so I must.

As I mentioned elsewhere, on Boxing day last year I travelled to Honiton in Devon to look at a new boat, a Tyler Boats Cinder. It’s a 22 foot long keel sloop, or in layman’s terms, it’s both slightly bigger and slightly better at sailing than Kudu. I bought the boat on the spot since there’s no point in biding your time with these decisions. Jump in feet first and grab the bull by the horns as middle management folk seem fond of saying. Just go for it. A donf!

There was no chance I could arrange to have the boat towed during the Christmas week, so I delayed it until after new years. That’s when the country was attacked by a brutal cold spell along with a generous helping of that frozen white water that grinds us softy Brits to a halt. Preston marina, in fact the entire dock, froze over solid with at least an inch of ice. In places it was 3″ thick. The boats, including Kudu, were frozen solid. My little fan heater struggled to keep me warm, but worse than my suffering was the delay. My transport man wouldn’t attempt to tow the boat from Devon to Lancashire while there were snow drifts around.

A couple of weeks ago, however, the weather settled for a while and myself and Nick Lancaster made a quick dash down to Honiton to pick Vreli up. Once back in Preston, I finally examined what I had bought, and felt disheartened.

She had been sat in a field for quite some time, and inside she was damp, and smelly. Her engine had long since been removed, and there was the pungent odour of diesel where it had leaked ever so slightly from the bunged fuel pipes. Since I had no shore power in her, she had no heat and was cold. She didn’t have the homely welcoming feel that Kudu had.

When I picked Kudu up I fell in love with her instantly. Maybe because it was the summer, maybe for some other reason, who knows, but I do know that Kudu made an instant impression upon me. She lit a spark that eventually led me to every blog post before this one. Vreli did not have that effect, and I felt disheartened by it. I wanted to love her, but I just didn’t.

Nevertheless, she was now mine and I would have to live with her, so I set about the first job; shore power. My intention was to fit entirely new equipment, and lacking that I jury rigged shore power by butchering  the Marinco cable from Kudu and connecting a double socket from Homebase. It was in no way a long term solution, but at least it allowed to to get some heat on the boat.

Vreli is an old boat, and she’s almost totally original. There was an old gas hob and grill fitted in to a disgusting looking galley from the 1970’s. That was removed on the first day. I intended to spend a night on her, but the smell and dampness eventually forced me to give up and seek refuge at a friends house.

A day later I was determined to complete my first night on board. I had to anyway since Kudu now had no heating. The smell had cleared up a lot, and the dampness almost entirely dry, but still she wasn’t ever so homely. Armed with a finest example of vin de table, I parked myself on the port quarter berth and poured a glass. Actually, that’s a romanticised lie. I don’t have glass on the boat, so I took a slug out of the bottle. Dead classy, I am.

I spent hours, quite literally, just staring at bits of the boat. To the onlooker, if there were any, I must have seemed quite strange and vacant, but my mind was flat out making plans. This is my boat and I need to make it suitable for my needs. I need a heater, where can it go? Hmm, what about the galley?

I was slowly painting a picture of what Vreli will look like when I’ve finished with her, and by doing that, I was growing quite fond of my new boat. She wasn’t that bad after all, there was almost standing headroom, and the vee berth with a fill-in up front was like having a double bed. That’s shear luxury in my world, I can tell you. Once I’d completed my plans, she would be a fine boat, and with the hull shape (my primary reason for buying her) I would be able to take her anywhere. Maybe we have a future together after all.

Unfortunately, there was a development in my professional life between buying the boat and taking delivery of it. My one and only client had to cut my hours down to 2 days per week. This means that where once I could have fitted out the entire galley in a weeks fee’s, I would now have to save for an entire month. Not to worry, these things never run to plan, do they.

So, here we are two weeks later, and I’ve totally removed the port quarter berth, ripped out the entire galley, and generally removed an awful lot of woodwork. The plan is to extend the wet locker bulkhead to create a space for a diesel or solid fuel heater, then use the space under the port cockpit seat as the new wet locker. The space between the two will make room for a proper seat and chart table, which is an exciting development I can tell you. To have a proper desk to work from will be bliss. Then there’s the engine, an inboard will allow me better power production to keep laptops running, and if I can get a suitable engine then I can run a calorifier for hot water. I just need to find a Yanmar GM10 now.

The galley is being totally rebuilt with the intention of having hot and cold running water (at least cold), and an oven. I don’t want gas on the boat so it will need to be either a Taylors parafin oven, or an Origo 6000. Unfortunately they are not cheap, so will have to wait. In the meantime, until I can find further progress, I’m staying on a yacht that is entirely stripped out apart from the forward vee berth, surrounded by tools and saw dust, and with no cooking facilities. The path to the perfect boat on a budget is not a comfortable one, I can assure you.

The laptop I’m typing this on doesn’t have the facility for me to transfer pictures from my phone, but as soon as I can, I’ll post some pics.

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