Buying an old boat can be over whelming. Many suffer from years of abuse and neglect. Some would have been better off with neglect than the experimental techniques used by their various owners. Ventolines is not different from these. Her hull and deck are sound. Interior bulk heads, tabbing and cabinetry are in good, no great, shape. The thru-hulls, mast step, and electrical are another matter. But I am not going to discuss those items today; ok tangentially I will.
I can deal with the electrical myself. The mast and thu-hull issues… Well I need a travel lift and a crane. I have many tools, but those are not in my inventory. So I am
reaching out to yards and craft people to help me out. Along the way I am also thinking about replacing the rigging, rewiring the mast, and getting 2 new sails: a main and jib.
I made calls to 2 yards out of the 3 in and around Charleston, as well as a sail maker/rigger from a local loft. The loft was extremely responsive and the person was out in short order to the boat. Great customer service, nice guy and prompt. Yard #1, came out on time, looked over the boat and what I want fixed and gave me a general, “you are looking at $400-500 per X in labor, plus parts.” He even let me know to go on Defender to price the parts and their yard would be near that. Nice guy, on-time, but I have to put the quote together. Yard #2 didn’t show up, sort of called and two weeks later wants to meet. We will see how that goes.
The rigger sent out the quotes. Six grand worth of new sails. The rigging was something like $11,500. So not out of the rigging and I am approaching $18,000. The rough breakdown for the non-sail quote is $5397 for Standing rigging, $4634 for new furler installed and $1678 for running rigging (new halyards and sheets). I priced parts for doing the standing rigging myself using hi-mod mechanical fittings; it came out to $3017. With a potential savings of $2380; its starting to look like a DIY rigging job. The running rigging would come in under $600 for DIY. I would just have to forgo a new furler. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with the existing furler; the rigger just suggested that after the labor of disassembly and putting back together its cost effective to just buy a new one. Yeah.
The second yard finally showed. They are busy and that could be a good sign. The yard manager went over my boat and took notes and some pictures. He said I would get the estimate on Monday. And I did. Its around 9K to replace the frozen through hulls and pull the mast in order to fix the mast step. He has not estimated the mast step fix. He wants to pull the mast and see what is really happening before doing so. That’s cautious and understandable.
The fact that one yard did not produce a quote for me, but a general 15K to 20K yard bill excludes them. Since they were a partial DIY yard I will miss not using them. I could have fixed quite a few things myself while it was on the hard. But most of what I want to fix just requires working through hulls. I will just have to forgo working on the bow thruster myself, but I will just get the yard I select to do it.
This all is going to be expensive. Yet I am still working every day and don’t have the time to work on the boat myself.