Click
here for Silverheels' running refit list,
from the
beginning thru 2016.
~~~
There
is a popular saying among sailors about planning boat projects: Make
your best conservative estimate, then double the cost and triple
the time. In my experience that is an understatement.
When
I bought the ketch Silverheels she was 29 years old, structurally sound but sparsely equipped and
obviously neglected by her former owner.
Refitting, as in renovating, refurbishing, and substantially renewing
the vessel stem to stern and masthead to keelson, turned out to require a
good deal more money, time, learning
and plain hard work than I had anticipated in spite of my years
of experience messing around with boats. And yet I can honestly
say I wound up enjoying the process immensely and am gratified by the results.
I
began working on Silverheels in December of 2006, while she was
on the hard in Indiantown Marina, before I even owned her,
fixing little problems as I found them during my personal,
week-long, pre-purchase survey of the boat. Of course, the work kicked
into high gear as soon as the purchase was completed a few days
after Christmas, and it has not entirely stopped since.
By
the time
we arrived at Green Cove Springs Marina (www.GCSmarina.com)
in late January and got to work in earnest on the refit, I had a
pretty extensive list of what I intended to do, yet clinging to the
illusion that I'd get most of it done in the next 4 months so that
I could spend the summer cruising. I wasn't even remotely close to
grasping the reality of it yet.
A handful of
hired professionals helped me in the earliest stages. The local
Yanmar dealer installed a brand new diesel engine.
An
old sailing buddy, Captain Ray Jason, did virtually all of the
new paint work and a host of other small jobs.
Jerry Evans, a master craftsman with fiberglass, sealed up the
many holes I opened in Silverheels' bottom during my campaign to
reduce the number of thru-hull fittings. Canvas workers made
sail covers, awnings, bimini top and dodger; one or two other craftsmen contributed their skills.
Aside from those
opening salvos, I did virtually everything else myself. It was
voluminous, but I
don't mean it to sound onerous. On the contrary, I soon grew to enjoy the work most days
-
really enjoy it! It was and continues to be endlessly
challenging and wonderfully gratifying.
I'd wake up excited every
morning, anxious to get back to it. This joyful mind set was
largely the result of a practice I privately dubbed Zen and the Art of Boat
Renovation. Eckhart Tolle, the spiritual teacher from whom I'm
still learning
these
techniques and a good deal more, calls it presence. The trick was
to keep my consciousness, my
attention, focused entirely on whatever I was doing at that moment.
This practice not only brought en-joy-ment to the job at
hand and the boat renovation in general, but to my life as a
whole. It was never about "getting the boat done." It was
all about the doing, and incidentally I achieved much better end
results this way.
I've completed hundreds of upgrades on Silverheels to date, large
and small, not to mention the never-ending, routine maintenance
chores common to all boats. If you have never had the pleasure of
doing this kind of work you can scarcely imagine how deceptive
were simple to-do-list items like "re-plumb and re-wire bilge
pump" or "icebox compartment insulation upgrade." In that sense
the boat's refit lists are brief to the point of misleading. Every
job on a boat takes longer than you ever dreamed possible, and
each one begets several more that you never anticipated. The good
news is, Silverheels' "completed" list gradually grew much, much
longer than the "to-do" list, and for years now she has been
eminently sound, seaworthy and "tricked out," providing ample time
to simply enjoy her.
Click
here for Silverheels' running refit list, from the
beginning thru 2016.
