The Plan

My original plan was hopelessly naive. After a summer, 'fixin' her up', I thought I would sail the following summer and do projects in the winters. Over the course of a few years I hoped to have the boat looking sharp. A winter doing some cosmetics, a winter doing interior re-building, a winter doing systems... piece of cake. A nice, fun, project for the next few years. Yeah right.

During my first summer's work in 2004, I realized I might not get it all done on schedule. I had a decent amount in savings so I decided to leave a job I really wasn't happy with anyway, work full time all summer, and try to be ready for a fall departure to destinations south (and warm). From there I could continue working over the winter on the interior and systems and bring her back up in the spring, get paint on, and call the project done. I could afford a year of not working and I figured it would be worth the trade in savings to have the boat finished up quickly. Yeah right.

That didn't happen either. I tackled what I thought was critical, (oh, how silly I was in those years), didn't get enough done to launch, and found the winter weather too cold for boatwork. So I ended my plans of heading south and did some schooling and kept busy waiting for the weather to warm up again. The following spring I hit it extra hard and managed to get the boat sail-worthy. That is, safe to sail but in no way looking nice or having functional systems. At this point I was anxious to sail the boat for the first time and launched her as-is, spending a week on the mooring packing her up and then headiing to downeast Maine for a 10 week cruise. The exterior was a patchwork of primer and old gel-coat and the interior was made up of fir plywood panels I knocked together in about four hours. There were no systems. My head was a plastic bucket. Functional from a simple camping perspective but not at all like real cruising. On a positive note, sailing the boat and camping/cruising on it gave me a better perspective on how to proceed with the project and gave me faith in the underlying sailing and cruising qualities of the Triton.

Frankly, most boat projects like this fail. Very few people appreciate the amount of time necessary to make it happen. The money part is slightly easier. Take your estimate, triple it, and you will come close to what it will cost (I am on target to spend $40-50k in material costs). Planning the work and figuring out all the details takes lots of time. Everything effects everything else and nothing is as simple to plan as you might think. Then there is the finding and ordering of materials. Then there is the actual work. Then there is the delays when you realize you forgot to order something. Then there is the weather. Then there is simply the fact that everything takes much longer than expected. The other issue is the 'might-as-wells'. Its hard to do just one thing without effecting everything else and I didn't want to do one thing and then have to rip it out in two years to get to something behind it. For example, I had no toilet. The plastic bucket worked but it wasn't a final solution. In order to replace the head, I needed to install a holding tank. In my case the best solution was to install the holding tank under the V-berth. That meant removing the V-berth. With the V-berth out, it was a good time to replace the main water tank as well since the tank only comes out when the V-berth is cut out. I had hoped to add insulation to the hull so before I installed new tanks I needed to install the insulation. To install the insulation fully, I needed to have all the structure I wanted tabbed to the hull to be in place for future installations so I didn't have to cut the insulation out later. And so it goes. One things leads to another and if the plan is to dig deep into the boat then it seems best to do it all at once. Totally gut the boat and build it back up properly. My plan to sail summers and work winters was an abyssmal failure. I quickly found myself in over my head with an empty shell of a boat.

A second abyssmal failing was my attempt to save money by not building a temporary shelter over the boat or staging around the sides. At the first boatyard I was at, I was charged by the square footage which made a shelter extremely expensive. Plus there were other 'attachments' that were being added to the deal that made a shelter there less than ideal. So I moved to another boatyard where a shelter was less of a problem. Unfortunately, I postoned the building of a shelter until I ran short of funds and then thought I could save money by not building a shelter. That was a mistake that I was to pay dearly for. A shelter keeps the boat dry so you don't have to worry about leaving things open. It also keeps the owner dry so work doesn't have to stop with every little sprinkle. My plan to drag a tarp on and off every day proved tiresome and much less effective. When I had the opportunity to move the boat to an indoor shop where the hull and deck was to be spray painted, I not only was able to see the benefits of indoor workspace but I also learned the value of staging. All that time creeping along the side decks on my knees would have been so SO much easier with some simple staging. Next time I will secure cover and build staging before I ever begin. If I can't then I won't start the project. It really is that important.

Luckily for me, with the enormous amounts of time needed to complete the project, I have found myself blessed with no social life, no family obligations, several periods of prolonged unemployment, and a healthy savings account (now completely obliterated).

You have been warned

Anyway, after a season's cruise in 2005 I parked the boat in the yard and have been plugging away at it ever since. Jenny was launched for the 2009 season but do to other committments she didn't do much beyond sitting on the mooring. Currently the boat is on schedule for a spring launch in 2011.