What Does it COST to Refit a 40 Year Old Sail Boat? Ep. 170

This episode opens with a reveal of our plans to build a whole new arch system from scratch. We discuss how we ended up with our current ‘franken-davits’ with a brief blast from the past to our NY sailing days and first cruises on Calico Skies.

We lay out our design considerations and wish list for the final product which include a filet table, D rings to ratchet strap the dinghy, easier access to our paddle board and a wider footprint to prevent water from entering the cockpit. for We have chosen to go with 1 and a1/4 inch stainless steel and discuss why chose this material over aluminum. We explain how our old davits put pressure on our stern resulting from flex and inherent weakness in our davit system and show viewers the damage we will fix and how the engineering of our new system will move the weight to the deck and further forward.

Next we move inside to our casita to discuss our budget for what we consider to be a ‘mini refit’. Big ticket items are the new arch, solar panels, new canvas, new rudder, bottom paint and epoxy and other blister-fix material. We also discuss several other costly items including our new transducers including a forward scan, a new VHF and a kit to service our through hulls among other things.

We explain why we view this boat refit as different from projects we’ve tackled in the past and our desire to take viewers with us in an effort to be transparent about the amount of work cruising takes. Besides maintenance, system installations and repairs there are always going to be long periods of time spent in the boat yard when you cruise full time for years on an old boat. We take a little walk down memory lane showing viewers the stages of transformation over our 7 years of cruising plus revisit a few gems from the older ‘golden’ days over 11 years ago when we first purchased Calico Skies.

0:00 Intro
0:10 You’ll see Calico Skies this bare again!
0:41 Arch Considerations
11:04 What is the refit going cost?!

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