King’s Pride Refit Blog
Ever want to buy an old sailboat, fix it up, and sail away? Slow down and read all of these blog posts: it’s much more work, time, and money than you might think. We are going to try and get weekly blog posts put up for students and followers to see our progress, ideas, and learning in action.
Rudder, Part 2: Looking good
King's Pride Home | To Do List | Expenditures | BlogKing's Pride Refit BlogWe didn’t know the construction of the rudder, and no information was available, so we drilled the first 2” hole, to have a look. The...
Fuel Tanks, Part 2
King's Pride Home | To Do List | Expenditures | BlogKing's Pride Refit BlogWe decided to do as much of the take apart as we could. This Fall has been a lot of demolition. The goal, with most refits, it to get...
Fuel Tank removal
King's Pride Home | To Do List | Expenditures | BlogKing's Pride Refit BlogJennifer had reported the aft fuel tank leaking and the forward one contaminated – that’s why we did the delivery on a small 1 gallon can...
Rudder, Part 1
King's Pride Home | To Do List | Expenditures | BlogKing's Pride Refit BlogOne big part of this refit is the steering system. Steering is a major concern when purchasing an older vessel because loss of steerage...
Engine Removal
We have great news, King’s Pride is ready for student work. Our teaching/Learning platform isn’t completely ready, but we’ve made solid progress. So far we…
Visit from John Neal
John & Amanda from Mahina Expeditions stopped in to evaluate what we purchased. John has been helping cruisers purchase boats for 40 years and helped us out in the beginning to ensure we had a good start for this project. We filmed our pre-purchase meeting with them, and then again on this visit.
Bob Perry Vistit
Always a treat! Bob Perry, who designed our Westsail 39′ “King’s Pride” stopped by for a visit. He brought a complete set of plans and shared the story about the project. Bob spent close to an hour going over construction details, tour the boat, giving us ideas and more. The boat was ‘owner completed’ for the interior…
Moved to Anacortes
What an adventure! Matt verified the engine ran, we grabbed a few essentials and headed for Anacortes. From LaConner it’s only about 15 miles and the weather was calm. Fortunately, we didn’t need any tools and didn’t run out of provisions.
Engine Start
Matt, who could walk to the boat in about 10 minutes from his house, went down to check on the engine. Jennifer had reported that it ran, but the fuel tanks were all messed up and it needed to run on an auxiliary jerry can. The boat was a bit of a mess and clearly wasn’t ready to go to sea.
We Bought a BOAT!
It happened very fast, we purchased a project boat. No more than had we discussed re-fitting an offshore boat and started the search with John Neal, a boat presented itself.