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This will be a fitting first post to introduce to what has been at least a good 60% of my free time as of late.
Sailing is fun, let’s start with that. It’s so fun you might get the crazy idea to buy a sailboat. If you do, you probably also do research ad-nauseum, before realizing the market moves faster than your spreadsheets. Eventually you might even find a decent boat.
In our case we were very lucky to have found a nice ’81 Maxi Fenix (Dinette) for a good price and the previous owner was very helpful in getting us squared away. Minor issues aside, it was time to start thinking about what to change and what to tinker with. What’s the point of being an engineer and not utterly dissecting the things you own, after all?
I think we broke it down into several categories:
- Functional
- Decorative/Visual
- Comfort
Now of course I prioritized the “functional” things. Things like the electrical panel being re-organized, or the autopilot getting working, etc. But equally important are the things that were pointed out by my partner; namely that we needed to take care of the inside and the looks as well.
I don’t want to spoil all things all at once, but there has been a whole summer’s worth of work, and even just the electrics have been enough of a pain in the ass to keep me on the border of having enough to do and being overwhelmed. As a sneak peak, though here were the first of things I got to look at.
Overall we had to balance fixing things with sailing. I think we struck a good balance so far, but time will tell if we are taking things at the right pace. Since I am new to boat ownership, I am sure I am doing a lot of things wrong too, which I am sure seasoned locals will correct me on.
