RLM Bahama 31 1979

[David Pathfinder]

Hello, well, at 77 I still ought to classify myself as a newbie although I have pottered around in and owned the odd boat from the Exe estuary and offshore Exmouth to well remembered weekends in the Lake District. At a time when I should probably know better, I have bought the above boat and will potter around Plymouth sound and upriver to Calstock. Very modest ambitions. I am very taken with the Bahama but I wonder if anyone knows of or where I can source, an Owners Manual for the boat. It has been interesting reading some of the posts since I joined.......I never realised that the boating world could raise such warm emotions....knocks Twitter to second place but is wonderfully good prose! Anyway, thank you in advance to anyone who can advise me,

 

[oldgit]

Might be worth searching for Senior Marine . Some of their boats were also based on Sheerline hulls which appeared to have been moulded by company called Midland Mouldings.
The RLM Bahama , also looks remarkably similar to the Project 31 and the Senior 31 which later morphed into the Princess 32.
Very much doubt a copy of the owners manual even exists today.
They tend to be of no help whatsoever after umpteen owners had addded several miles of totally unsuitable wiring on the boatmost of which does nothing at all except confuse.

 

[David Pathfinder]

Thank you for your information, I'll do some more searching along the lines you suggest. It's so interesting digging around for old information, almost as good as being afloat but not quite.

 

[PCUK]

RLM boats were all based on Senior marine shells built in Southampton and fitted out by RLM on the Thames.. Owners manuals in those days were very rudimentary and as said of little use today. Best to just ask questions here as you go along.

 

[David Pathfinder]

Thanks PCUK, I think you are right. I've managed to get some advertising type brochures from the very helpful seller and they give some useful information. This really is a crazy time to buy a boat with lockdown in force and travel limited but sometimes you have to work round the hard bits in life!

 

[PCUK]

Might be worth searching for Senior Marine . Some of their boats were also based on Sheerline hulls which appeared to have been moulded by company called Midland Mouldings.
The RLM Bahama , also looks remarkably similar to the Project 31 and the Senior 31 which later morphed into the Princess 32.
Very much doubt a copy of the owners manual even exists today.
They tend to be of no help whatsoever after umpteen owners had addded several miles of totally unsuitable wiring on the boatmost of which does nothing at all except confuse.

Sheer line hulls were simply another Senior marine product from the same basic mould.

 

[David Pathfinder]

Hello, well I'm finally the formal owner of my very own RLM Bahama 31 which is called Olympic Dream. She currently resides in a very beautiful marina on the Medway but next Thursday she will be at her new home at Torpoint, Plymouth , where she must prepare herself for a less genteel lifestyle. I am slowly putting together a fact file on her but I am lacking a lot of history.

She was built in 1979, so is one of the later ones and has the logo "London" on her starboard stern. I would appreciate it if anyone could tell anything about her at all please.

 

[PCUK]

What engines has she got?

 

[David Pathfinder]

Hello PCUK, she has 2xBMC 2.5 DIesels.

 

[Restoration man]

Hello PCUK, she has 2xBMC 2.5 DIesels.

My dad had one in 1985 it had Perkins 4107 , when you opened it up you couldn’t see over the dashboard , enjoyed having it but rolled like pig out at sea. We sold it and bought birchwood 33

 

[David Pathfinder]

Hello Restoration man, thanks for your memories. I suspect I will use her mainly upriver from Plymouth if I can avoid the mudbanks and certainly at no great speed, given her age and smallish HP. The insurance lady asked me what her top speed was and I said "Probably 8 knots and then a heart attack, the boat not me" !! Thanks for the warning about the rolling, I guess I will have to find out through trial and error what she's most comfortable in, in terms of seas.

 

[Restoration man]

Thought you might like to see this , same as my dads this was the caprice same boat but without the shower the Bahama had shower and some other little extras or so I washed to believe when we bought ours

 

[PCUK]

My Senior 31 had the appalling 4107s and went through, heads, crankshafts, cylinder liners and water pump drives. The BMC 2.5s are superb engines, almost as good as the 2.2. I put a lot of ballast in the bilges which stabilised her dramatically although cutting down on speed. after that she was very comfortable at sea during several cross channel trips. You should expect 10 knots plus with those engines and the correct props. You have a great boat/engine package.

 

[David Pathfinder]

Thanks RM, that is brilliant. It made me smile to see the price of the boats but of course you could have bought a couple of small houses for that at the time!

 

[David Pathfinder]

Hi PCUK, throughout my searches for a boat, one or two other people have warned me about the 4107's but I have not had enough inboard engine experience to comment. A lot of my youth was spent in the Exe estuary with open boats and Seagull outboards. At 77 this will be a brilliant and challenging learning experience for me in my dotage. I was interested that your lively Senior was calmed down with the ballast. I may try the same thing if she rolls to much. It is an enigma to me about the weight of the boat. There is a small black plaque on the wheelhouse rail with what I assume to be her manufacturing number, which is 390721 and R.T. (Registered tonnage ?) 6 and then 01 over 100). If it is 6 ton and the Princess 32 is only 4, where the heck is the difference ?

 

[oldgit]

where she must prepare herself for a less genteel lifestyle.

A very good idea that any crud which may accumulated in those fuel tanks during its peaceful sojourn on the upper Medway, is removed before venturing forth on a rocky rolly sea.
Less stressfull to sort it firmly moored up to a pontoon, rather than a couple of miles offshore on your first trip out.

 

[Restoration man]

I assume your boats got Enfield legs ? Ours did, it has some sort of hydronic rams to lift the legs never seen another Enfield with them before, the bolts that held the transom shield on had holes drilled through them with hydraulic hose running through them , and it also had at some stage had some sort trim tabs that were fitted to the rear of the cavitation plate itself , with red green switch on the dash to operate it , the tabs had what I was lead to believe some sort of worm drive that operated them ours were missing, but another owner we got talking to on the Thames told me about this as we always wondered about them

 

[David Pathfinder]

Thanks for the advice on the fuel, I must admit it was something I hadn't given a thought about. She had a good surveyors report for her age
and there are only a few things that I need to look at. Eric, the previous owner, had been meticulous in his care of her but she is 41 years old after all.

Regarding the legs RM, yes, they are Enfield, there was no sign of any hydraulic pipework or operating switches on the control panel, I'll have a chance to examine her better in a few days when she's in her Winter dry storage.

I find it a little unusual that no one has responded to her background enquiry. Maybe a name change but I know she called Olympic Dream back in 2014 because she had a Certificate of British Registry at the time. Now expired. Perhaps that's a clue that the name was changed at that date?

 

[Restoration man]

Also RLM stands for Ronald Lesly maskel
He originally bought a hull to complete for himself as he couldn’t get what he wanted in a production boat and ended up turning it into a business

 

[PCUK]

Hi PCUK, throughout my searches for a boat, one or two other people have warned me about the 4107's but I have not had enough inboard engine experience to comment. A lot of my youth was spent in the Exe estuary with open boats and Seagull outboards. At 77 this will be a brilliant and challenging learning experience for me in my dotage. I was interested that your lively Senior was calmed down with the ballast. I may try the same thing if she rolls to much. It is an enigma to me about the weight of the boat. There is a small black plaque on the wheelhouse rail with what I assume to be her manufacturing number, which is 390721 and R.T. (Registered tonnage ?) 6 and then 01 over 100). If it is 6 ton and the Princess 32 is only 4, where the heck is the difference ?

Registered Tonnage is not the boats weight (displacement) it is a theoretical cargo carrying capacity based on standard calculations that exclude the engine space. I would say that around 4 tons displacement is correct. Where will you be based?