Anyone Want To Go Sailing?

With help, on Thursday Jan 29th I was able to officially purchase the 1983 Catalina 25 I mentioned in a previous post.  I spent most of the day on it Sunday before the Uber Bowl and let me tell you, I am very sore.  But it was awesome.  Like the water rat says in ‘The Wind in the Willows’: “There is nothing- absolutely nothing- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

The boat was used mostly for racing and as such the the rigging is in great shape.  It came with a 2004 main sail, the original Jib, and a 150 and 170 genoas, both purchased recently.  Also conveyed with the slip paid through March and some electronics.  Plus a bunch of crap I have no idea what its for yet. 

The little 8 hp outboard already overheated so now I have a project.  I need to take the water pump apart and see in the impeller is toast.  I’m thinking it is.  Same thing that happened to my 150 Mercury on my speed boat, damn it all.  At least the engine didn’t melt.  And let me tell you, the adventure yesterday was nuts.  Trying to get the thing of the slip and the engine kept crapping out, wind blowing us into not good areas…good times.  Turns out, we did all the hard parts of sailing with none of the fun parts yesterday.  Docked/undocked, raised and struck the sails, etc but no actual sailing.

Anyway, some pictures:

It looks like a day sail would be comfortable for up to 6 peeps or so.  One or possibly two nights would be cool for 4, particularly if we docked in a slip somewhere.  Anything longer than that and people are going to have to get along well, but I fully plan on doing it.

I have a huge project list for it.  But there are several things I expect to do over the next couple of months that won’t be too costly to get the interior into shape for cruising.  Not much needs to be done on the rigging.  The exterior needs some cleaning as well.

Good times!