boat brands - prejudice or reality

[geem]

You are obviously getting a bit upset on this thread.

The reason this debate in unwinnable, for either side, is that there is no doubt old and new are different, but there is also no reason why a modern, or an old boat like yours, would be unsuitable for the type of sailing you do. It's a preference and priorities problem, which for every person is different.

I couldn't understand why you seem so vociferously opposed to anything modern, until I found your blog.

Wild Bird Adventures

It's a shame it stopped because it is both entertaining and interesting. Many could learn from the content.

I've got great respect for those who buy a close-to-end-of-life boat and put loads of money and time into bringing it up to scratch, breathing another decade or more of life into it. Why not start some threads on here, based on your experiences? You could highlight issues specific to older boats.

As far as I can gather, the teak decks were leaking and worn out, so you removed them completely apart from re-doing the cockpit and coach-roof, filled around 2000 screw holes, glassed the decks "for strength" and re-bedded all the deck hardware which involved taking the interior headlining out to get to the underside of the deck. Great job, it needed doing. Let's hear about it, with costs, time, and other useful information like availability of teak, how to make a non-slip deck etc. You could even give your perspective to people thinking of buying a boat with a 30 year old teak deck - especially the bit about how it is less than ideal in the Caribbean heat.

The original solid windscreen was severely corroded and the windows crazed, so you removed it and replaced it with a sprayhood - getting a decent spray-hood/bimini arrangement on a centre cockpit isn't easy - you could give people tips on how to adapt a centre cockpit to hot climates, the vents for your portlights and hatches looked interesting too.

There was also the corroded mast support, which you noticed when the bulkhead started creaking. You pulled the floor up, and found you could poke a screwdriver through the mast support. Things corroding in the bowels of old boats are to be expected. The bulkhead sunk into the bilge and started creaking. This structural issue required a mast removal and a repair, pretty much what Sailing Fair Isle had to do with a similar problem. As I understand it, due to the prohibitive cost of a mast removal, you sanctioned use of a hydraulic jack, and had the mast jacked up to allow fitting of a stainless steel section in the mast support. In the process, this separated the bulkhead from the hull, so you and your lovely wife had to re-glass the bulkhead due to the extremely loud noises it was making as the hull flexed (requiring ear-plugs to sleep?) - in the process of making the repair, you had to remove a considerable amount of the interior. Sounds like a great learning experience to me, and not atypical for boats of this age. Would also be interesting to people on this forum considering an older boat.

Old boats come with these sort of problems, however you paint them as a solid, dependable, safe choice, bash modern designs, and consistently fail to concede the associated issues of buying an old boat.

There are sailors, who don't want the hassle, cost, stress or uncertainty of relying on a 40+ year old structure. After reading the blog, which was very interesting, I can only conclude that your dogmatic attacks on modern boats could in part be due to a bit of cognitive dissonance? It must be difficult to evangelise your boat choice, knowing all the issues you have had.

Anyway, you seem to be enjoying yourself, as are the owners of modern boats.

I think the only person getting upset here is you. You felt the need to try to find me on the Internet and you dug up a blog from over 10 years ago!
I bought my boat fully aware of what we were getting into.
I retired in 2014 at the age of 50 and wanted a project. I am not the person to retire and sit in front of the telly until I die. We wanted a big project to get our teeth into and understood the benefits are taking a high quality older vessel and doing a full refurbishment on her for our benefit.

As a retired engineer, the kind of work you identified that we were doing doesn't phase me. I enjoy it. I have done far more to her than you saw in my blog!
As I am sure you are aware we just crossed the pond from the UK 5,600nm. We had zero issues other than some problems with a new AIS in the Canaries that wouldn't talk nicely with my Raymarine Axiom.
Our 45 year boat didn't creak, or break anything even though we saw winds of 40kts and experienced an extended period of bad weather. We also had a fast passage that would have placed us 4th in the ARC+ if we had entered and had the same conditions. Slow these old boats, eh!

I have the financial resources to go out and buy a new production boat of the same size as Wild Bird but they are not what we wanted. You will hopefully understand why as you know my feeling about modern boats.

You seem to think you have scored a goal against me. The reality is you couldn't be further from the truth.

If anybody want to read my blog from 10 years ago Baggyface has kindly linked it for you all to see