A New-To-Us Cruising Boat

Seafari is a 1981 Watkins 27 Mk2.  She is docked at the Grand Lake Sailing Club in NE Oklahoma. We bought the boat in late 2016 with the intent to restore her to her once pristine condition.  It was a $4,000 investment, including lots of extra supplies and hardware. We figured her to have good value despite the 37 year old mainsail that looks like an old bed sheet stolen from a Motel 6 in Toadsuck Arkansas.  I'll build a new one.

With the price of new yachts these days, it makes perfect sense to find older boats in restorable condition and spend a little extra cash and a lot of elbow grease to get a boat shipshape for fun and adventure.  I figure to hire a boatbuilder to build a Watkins 27 from scratch would cost over $100,000 assuming they could even find the original molds which I'm pretty sure were destroyed long ago.  This is our fourth and largest sailboat we have owned in 40 years.

The first project was to clean out the cabin completely in order to have a habitable weekend place to stay while working on the boat.  Remarkably, the interior was in very good condition both aesthetically and functionally. This boat is no speedster and doesn't point well but very comfortable for a 27 footer.  It's a reasonably well built cruising boat designed by Walter Scott and once built in Florida.

It took an entire day to haul out all the junk from the previous owner and 2 additional days to clean.  Pic to the left shows the cabin before cleanup. The cleaning process also included waxing the interior shell and scrubbing the bilge.  Fun.

The engine is an early 1990's Yanmar 2gm 13 h.p. which is in great condition.  In the Winter of 2016, I replaced all the engine water hoses, clamps, impeller, belts, air/oil filters and diesel hoses plus, I pumped out the old diesel and changed engine and transmission oil.

In early 2017, we replaced the large cabin portlights with new Bomar ports.  We will eventually change out all the portlights.  Getting out the old ones took a putty knife and hammer to pry them out. I used painters tape on the interior shell around the old ports so as not to score or damage the shell.  I had to repair a little rot around the cutouts with thickened epoxy but nothing major.

I'll take more photos of these projects in the
future.

The restoration will include some deck replacement, full deck resurfacing/painting, new shorepower, new mainsail, new standing and running rigging, new wiring, new sail cover, new primary winches, anchor rode replacement, 2 new seacocks and a whole lot more.

Next on the agenda - repair a pesky deck leak on the port side.