The Offshore Voyaging Reference Site

A Trans-Atlantic Boat For Less Than US$100,000

Mia and I bought Arcturus, a 35′ Allied Seabreeze Yawl, built in 1966, in the spring of 2008. I was 24 years old. It was the first boat I’d ever owned, and we had big plans for her.

I was long-inspired by reading about Hal Roth’s adventures in his Spencer 35 Whisper, a very similar design from the same era, and thrilled to hear that Arcturus’ previous owner was actually tennis buddies with Roth before his death, and that Hal had actually been aboard Arcturus (Cybele as she was called then) when she was based near Oxford, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

A Classic

The boat was gorgeous when we bought her, cosmetically like-new, like a restored classic car. She was one of those ‘minimally-equipped’ boats, a great platform on which to start fresh.

She sported new upholstery down below, freshly oiled teak and painted bulkheads in the classic Herreshoff style, Awl-gripped topsides in Oyster white, dark red boot and cove stripes, beautiful non-skid on deck. I’ve always been a sucker for classics, and Mia and I fell in love with her when we first saw her hauled out in the boatyard in Oxford.


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More Articles From Lessons From Three Refits:

  1. A Trans-Atlantic Boat For Less Than US$100,000
  2. Refitting a Wauquiez Hood 38
  3. Giving a Tough Old Ocean Greyhound a New Purpose
  4. Things I’ve Learned From Three Refits That Will Help You
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Marc Dacey

Andy/Mia: I would be interested to learn how you value your own educations in this cost evaluation, as I would imagine what began from necessity has paid some sort of dividends not only in maintaining your next boat, but in your professional lives as lecturers and charter skippers, as well as in your self-confidence to deal with the inevitable breakages and repair.

Andy

Hi Marc, thanks for the comment, and a very good question. It would be impossible to quantify both financially and with regards to time into our education. I’ve been sailing and round boats my entire life, literally, with my mom and dad bringing us up sailing on the Chesapeake. My dad has a library full of old classic books by the Dashew’s, Pardey’s, etc. etc. and I’ve read them all over the years, usually several times over.

I did go to school at Maritime Professional Training to get my RYA Yachtmaster license and STCW, which cost around $5,000 I think in 2008. That was about three weeks of time, and very well worth it, even though I never professionally used the license. I learned a lot in that class about the ‘right’ way to navigate, handle big boats, etc. and would encourage everyone to do it.

Beyond that, sailing as a deckhand on the Schooner Woodwind out of Annapolis for several years, and working as a rigger at Southbound have been the most beneficial. They were working apprenticeships, as I like to say, meaning I was able to make a living AND gain experience at the same time, which was invaluable.

As far as self-confidence when it comes to breakages and repairs, that has been earned with experience, and I think has to be. I’ve learned that ANYTHING is fixable on boats, no matter how dire it looks, and that keeps me calm now with our big Swan. In fact – little behind-the-scenes secret here – that photo of me drilling holes for chainplates above? I drilled them in the wrong place the first time around! Four, 1/2-inch holes that needed to be filled and painted!

Ultimately, it’s been years of self-study reading books, real-world experience with people smarter than me, and learning things the hard way by screwing them up the first time around!

Alastair

How did you back the nuts on the new chain plates inside the hull: thickness of backing plate, width of backing plate, bedding material? I have found over the years that backing plates are undersized and not stiff enough e.g. 1” ply which has crushed under the washer / nut and slackened slightly, large diameter, washers or steel plate which are too thin and bow slightly under load. Interested to hear how massive is massive for a backing plate without going overboard on size, especially material type and thickness.

Got to ask – what is your favourite tool and what is your most useful tool when fitting out, the one that you think, good ‘old so so always reliable and does the job?

Andy

Hi Alistair, another good question. We used quarter-inch ‘G-10’, a very dense and stiff fiberglass plate that you can order in sheets of various sizes and thicknesses on McMaster-Carr’s site. They were probably 4-5 inches wide and spanned the length of the chainplate. The chainplate’s themselves were bent on an old hand-operated press at my friend’s metal shop in Baltimore to take the same curve of the hull. Though subtle, it still does curve, and would have put unnecessary loads on the chainplates if it hadn’t been done, especially since titanium doesn’t like to be bent as much as stainless does. The bedding was plain-old white Life Seal, which I use for most things that need to someday come apart.

My favorite hand tools remain on my hip almost constantly in the little toolbelt I made on our Sailrite machine – a ‘Swedish’ or open fid; a Wichard multi-fid; a small adjustable wrench; a calipers; a dikes cutting tool; a four-way screwdriver; a Sharpie; and a tape measure. Most things on deck can be accomplished with just this stuff.

My favorite power tool has come to be our Fein Multimaster, which we used to just call the ‘Fein’ tool at the rig shop. It does amazing things!

Alastair

Thanks for the comments, I have additional lower back shrouds that were added after a conversion to cutter rig. The deck penetration and subsequent bolting arrangement always produces a leak eventually. I suspect that I need to significantly increase the thickness of the backing plate and width.

My good lady bought me a Fein (other brands are available) as a present and I honestly wonder how I ever worked without it such is its usefulness and versatility. My favourite tool, bought as an impulse buy at the London Boat show, is a right angle drive for a drill bit chuck; awkward or impossible drilling jobs became a cinch (ok, I still have to be a contortionist to get the drill into position).

Marc Dacey

Good to hear and who among us has not drilled in the wrong place? Usually just prior to a rainstorm.

What I was getting at using the term “education” (and I should have been more explicit) is the usefulness to you of doing your own work in putting together the theory and the practice. Not being independently wealthy has driven my wife and I, for instance, into previously unknown realms, such as engine and electrical installations, transmission service, carpentry, refrigeration, below the WL plumbing, fabrications of all type, exotic coatings and, shortly, welding. Partially, this has been due to cost: had we had the money, we would have shelled out to save the time, but we’ve come to discover a virtue in doing most of our own modifications and installations in terms of greater self-reliance (we hope) and greater insight on how to deal with problems. This, for us, has been the real education and I’m glad now in many ways that circumstances allowed so many “teachable moments”.

Marc Dacey

I have a knock-off Fein and agree that it’s very helpful. A company called Milescraft makes an “orbital” adapter that gives you even more options with a drill in tight spots. If you have a chuck extender, you can get to an amazing number of formerly inaccessible places aboard.

As for backing plates, I’ve used 1/4″ aluminum plate, shaped to fit and well-bedded, with great success.

JCFlander

Here’s my ‘silver bullets’:

1. Festool T-15 cordless drill with right-angle and eccentric chucks.
This is way better than separate adapters, since this model is fixed. Absolutely essential when eg. trying to drill stainless steel on difficult places.
https://www.festool.com/Products/Pages/Product-Detail.aspx?pid=564561&name=Cordless-drill-T-15+3-Li-5-2-Set

2. Short Cobalt drills and drill sharpener. A godsend with stainless. Normal lenght HSS drills have a self-destrut mode when drilling handheld. Also it helps to heat SS above 60C, since tendency to work-harden is then much less.

3. Katimex Kati-Blitz fiberglass cable puller. Nothing like this, ordinary steel springs will destroy insulation from cables already on conduit, and they are a nuisance to work with anyway. Nylon springs are hopeless.

4. Pomona 5913 /Fluke AC89 through-insulation multimeter probes.
http://en-us.fluke.com/products/all-accessories/fluke-ac89.html
Insanely useful tool. Try to troubleshoot eg. Yanmarine wire harness without this. Though advisable to spray something afterwards that blocks water ingress to cable.

5. Boeshield spray. Best protection for cable terminals sofar.
http://boeshield.com/
If using also industrial grade carbon paste on contact surfaces they make connections that last virtually forever.

Cheers,
JCFlander

Marc Dacey

A great list and thank you for including those links.

Richard Phillips

 industrial grade carbon paste” – any chance you could recomend a product, it is something I want but am unsure what to buy!

Petri Flander

Hello Richard,
here you go:
https://www.mgchemicals.com/products/grease-for-electronics/electrically-conductive-grease/carbon-conductive-assembly-paste/
Seems to be stocked on RS online and Farnell, at least. BR, PF

Petri Flander

and, stating the obvious 🙂 this stuff only between cable lug and busbar/connection. Excess carefully wiped out w. rubbing alcohol/isopropanol, then Boeshield on top. 100yr guarantee 🙂 (provided that tightened with moment wrench, tightened position marked with line across bolt/washer by marker/paint pen to indicate if rotated/loosened later, and proper lock washers used)

RDE

Hi Andy,
Good to see a series of articles by someone who has gotten their hands dirty on a number of refit projects followed by putting them to the test by going to sea on the same boats!
You are one of the few individuals who has long term experience with two pieces of equipment I’ve long admired in the abstract: DUX rigging and the Cape Horn wind vane. How about an article about each when you get done refitting? LOL

That said the distinction between a Need and a Want on your refit of Arcturus seems muddy — unless the Need was to have the finest and most perfect Allied Seabreeze on the planet. Not that there is anything wrong with that set of priorities. But paying a premium for the most perfect boat available and then refitting it isn’t necessarily the best way to get the most function per dollar.

At the other extreme, I can’t help but recall another refit from about the same era, the Hughes 35 Wild Card that Fatty Goodlander bought for $3,000 and sailed twice around the world scribbling along the way. It was a hurricane damaged boat, no engine for the first year of ownership, and by the pictures was always a bit rough around the edges and creaky in the bulkheads. But it carried them around the world twice.

Most of those boats had Perkins 4108’s , and I’ll bet the one that ended up in Wild Card came from some yacht owner who got tired of the leaky main seal in his– and cost little more than the $3,000 they paid for the boat. I can’t help but notice that 3/4 of the hours and over half the cost of Arcturus’s refit came in the form of a brand new engine. I’d have to call that a Want rather than a Need for a boat of Arcturus’s vintage. When I was building my Cape George 36 I couldn’t afford a new engine, and instead bought a Buhk 20— the original purpose built marine design– for $800. It had been delivered in a Swan and taken out when it experienced overheating after a few hundred hours. Northwest Motor Welding repaired a small crack in a water passage for $175, and it ran faithfully for 7 years thereafter. Since it was underpowered enough that I always ran it with the throttle full on, I never had any problems with cylinder glazing (as per John’s recent article) LOL The next owner “needed” to go faster so he installed a Yanmar with twice as much power. The third owner sailed the boat to San Diego, where it sat unused and the expensive Yanmar died a natural death.

And was being a pioneer by using DUX rigging and titanium fittings on a 50 year old small boat a Need or a Want? I do know that I built a hollow spruce and carbon fiber mast rigged with Sta-loc’s and hand made silicon bronze tangs and chain plates for less than $4000– with about the same labor time that you spent on your rig– and for a much bigger boat.

So my point is that if your Need is to sail across oceans the bottom line doesn’t need to look like yours or poor old Bob from Bermuda’s. You can have only a couple hundred dollars, a bare steel interior with no cabinetry, and two circumnavigations in the log book like a French single-hander who made his living making black pearl jewelry that I once met if you so choose. Or you can build the Maltese Falcon with the sole goal of sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge and displaying that Yours is bigger than Theirs like Tom Perkins.

Andy

Hi RDE, all good comments, and good points about ‘needs’ versus ‘wants.’ As for the interior, the boat was very nicely finished inside, but had too many berths and not enough storage, typical of a former racing boat from the CCA era (the Seabreeze was a production evolution of the famous S&S yawl ‘Finisterre’). We wanted two straight sea-berths and more storage under the settees, so that’s why we rebuilt the interior. It added a bit of safety offshore, but again, wasn’t ‘needed.’ One can get very nit-picky with ‘needs’ versus ‘wants’ as you say too, and some of the stuff we did just because we enjoyed doing it. I had more knowledge and experience with Dux and titanium than with spruce and carbon fiber, so that’s what we used and it worked for us.

I didn’t go into this, but the new engine was actually only half the horsepower of what we replaced. The old one was a Westerbeke 30B-3 that ran occasionally, though I’m sure could have been brought back to life by someone with more technical ability than me. The new install was a Beta 16, a much smaller, truly ‘auxiliary’ engine. When I installed it we didn’t have any plans to sell the boat, and I really liked the end result – everything was new and shiny and easy to maintain and keep that way, which I DO know how to do. When we bought the Swan and started the new business, that changed things. You certainly could have gone around the world in Arcturus with the old Westerbeke. I happened to have the money to replace it and so you could argue it was more of a ‘want’ than a ‘need.’ Plus, voyaging on a shoe-string was never our intention, nor was full-time live-aboard cruising, but that’s another story!

John Harries

Hi Richard,

I would argue that for most people a reliable engine is a need not a want. Also, as Andy says, whether or not a old engine is a smart idea depends entirely on the owner. If said owner is really comfortable with rebuilding and then maintaining their own engine, then yes, a new engine could be classed as a want. But if that’s not the case, then probably a need. As I have pointed out many times before, the history of small engine rebuilds is not good. I know of at least 10 rebuilds, and of those, at least 7 were expensive failures. Point being, even though a reliable new engine is a want for you, it can still be a perfectly valid need for Andy…or me.

Also, whether or not an engine is a need or a want depends on cruising ground. For example, going to Greenland or Labrador without a reliable engine is just plain foolhardy. On the other hand cruising the Caribbean or going around the world in the Tradewinds without any engine at all is perfectly seamanlike, as long as one has the skills.

Summary, needs and wants, at least as far as engines, depend on a lot of variables.

Marc Dacey

When we bought our steel 40 footer in 2006, it came with a 1987 Westerbeke W-52 with a mere 1,100 hours on the clock. We have grand ambitions and even though it was a low-hours engine, we had no idea of its maintenance other than it drank oil and started well. I determined that a rebuild would be prudent. The cost was about $1,000 more than a brand new Beta 60, the parts for which I could cross-check to those of Kubota tractors and backhoes, for the most part. Eight more horses, Tier 2 emissions, and about 15% better fuel economy decided the issue. Of course, it led to fabrications, a new prop, shaft, AquaDrive and a different exhaust setup, but we still got away around $22K Canadian (the engine was $11,500 Canadian) and how does one value peace of mind or the value of the learning process? The want became a need due to the ridiculous price of rebuilding, which as has been pointed out, is no guarantor of reliability.

John Harries

Hi Marc,

You made a good call. Funny I was just chatting with a friend on the wharf who just bought a boat with a rebuilt engine…that filled the filter with steal fragments in the first running hour…and then made a nasty clanking…and then had to be rebuilt again…but the rebuild company has changed hands, so who is going to pay what is the question of the hour…that, and will it run right this time?

RDE

Hi John,
I’d have to put leaving the machining shards in the crankshaft without pulling the plugs and properly cleaning it after machining the bearing journals in the same category as bolting a keel with a tiny base onto a hull liner bottom and then wondering why it fell off. There is no accounting for human stupidity. And having somebody there to sue may be the neoliberal solution, but its no substitute for ethics and pride in workmanship.

Marc Dacey

Exactly and thank you. And what I’ve learned about engines in the meantime: priceless, which is, I suspect, part of the motivation of any refit process.

RDE

WoW! Seven out of ten rebuilds were expensive failures! I understand why you recommend that an engine simply be thrown away and replaced with new when it has a problem.

I’ve rebuilt all kinds of engines, from 2 cyl. Buhks to V12 MTU diesels, vintage Mercedes, Ferrari v12s, as well as Porsche & BMW racing motors. The closest thing I’ve ever had to an engine failure was a race motor that started to loose power on the dyno, so I shut it down and disassembled it.

In the world of mechanical devices only bicycles are simpler than small diesels. Frankly I can’t see why any mechanic with a body temperature above dishwater couldn’t successfully rebuild one.

John Harries

Hi Richard,

I’m sure you are right, but never the less this sad stat is correct.

On the other hand, my friends at Billings Diesel rebuild scores of big lobster boat engines (mostly Cats) every year, with great success. I’m really not sure what the difference is, although one factor may be that the bigger engines are designed to be rebuilt and the smaller ones are not? Another factor might be practice. For example my friend Troy at Billings is their Cat-guy. He spends 50 weeks a year rebuilding one brand of engine, so maybe that’s an issue too.

Anyway, I stand by my recommendation not to rebuild small yacht diesels, the history, over several years and at least five different rebuilders is just too damming to take the risk. Particularly since in these days of high labour rates the cost of rebuild seems to run about 80% of a new engine, and worse still rebuilds typically come with just a 90 day warranty.

RDE

Hi Marc,

If I’m correct, your Westerbeke W52* was a marinzed Kubota tractor engine, just like your new Beta except for the color of paint and external accessories. Maybe a machine shop that didn’t have Yacht above the entry door would have been in order. $12,500 is a bit rich for what was likely a cylinder hone and new rings or new pistons and a cyl bore.

*the W50 is a Kubota for sure

Marc Dacey

RDE, no, the W-52 was a marinized Mazda R2 2.2 litre block as found in ’80s-’90s Ford Rangers and Mazda B2200s light-duty pickups. It’s also the same as a Perkins 4.154 from 1984-85, I believe. I did investigate this and did track down rebuild kits in Australia, where a B2200 of the sort found on a thousand sheep stations can last 30 years thanks to the absence of salt and (usually) rain and are still worth rebuilding. The cost would have been about 15% of the domestic “Westerbeke” rebuild. However, that would have just been a hundred kilos of parts.

The logistics of having a rebuild kit (including drivetrain) sent from Australia and then finding a reputable local rebuilder seemed squirrelly when I considered the alternative. I had already rebuilt two Atomic 4s, but the tolerances for a diesel were much more stringent and I did not have the tools nor, frankly, the experience to take it on myself. Trust me, I’m cheap and stubborn…it was a hard decision but, I believe, the right one for us contemplating world cruising.

Scott Dufour

Hi Andy,

A well done article, filled with the kind of details that are going to beget more questions from readers – always a good sign.

So mine is regarding the wheel-to-tiller conversion: any chance of getting a photo-essay of how that project went down? I’m going to start the same process on my Pearson 10M, and have been scratching my head, too.

Andy

Hi Scott – Definitely can help on the tiller conversion. In fact, I think there are already some details on my website on 59-north.com/arcturus, at least some descriptions. I’ll try and put something together, as I have a lot of detailed photos. Check back on the /arcturus page linked above in the coming weeks, and I’ll try to have John link it here.

-Andy

Scott Dufour

Thanks Andy.

I checked out 59-north.com/arcturus – quite the chronicled life you two lead. I found a few photos in the blog-search section, but couldn’t find descriptions. Maybe in the archive?

Eric Klem

Hi Andy,

Nice work. Like Richard, I would love to see an article on synthetic rigging at some point. While I have no illusions about saving cost over wire, I find the potential weight savings aloft interesting particularly as I feel this is one of the shortcomings of our boat. I hear very little about Dux these days and see very few boats with it and I don’t know what that means. The big question really is whether you would go synthetic again or not.

One of my initial reactions to your spreadsheet was the amount of time tied up in the engine replacement but it got me thinking that I probably account for my time in a less than fair way when discussing with others. My day job involves spending the time to think through a design up front so that it goes together really easily when the hands on work begins. I do the same thing with our boat but the only time that I ever really account for is the time in the boatyard. The planning is something that I do in free time during the winter when I am not working on our house and is something I don’t mind doing. For me, the scarce resource is time in the boatyard as we don’t want to use vacation time to do that so we need to make sure that things happen pretty quickly there. What your numbers show is that there is enormous value in buying a boat with a good engine.

Eric

Andy

Hi Eric, funny that you comment about time. John asked me to audit the initial sheet I sent him, and I had way under-estimated the time myself at first. A lot of the time spent though was simply removing all the old stuff, cleaning, prepping and painting long before the new design and install ever started. And I spent lots more un-accounted hours on the phone with people at Beta, Vetus, Campbell Sailer props, etc. trying to design the whole system from scratch. It adds up! And it’s fun, so you easily lose track of time! Thankfully for me, sailing is my career, so I don’t have to take ‘vacation’ time or time away from other stuff to do all of this.

-Andy

Eric Klem

Hi Andy,

It is interesting how my perspective has changed on time accounting. When I was getting paid to work on boats, I tried to strike the balance of cost of time versus materials for the lowest overall cost but now, I focus heavily on the cost of materials provided the job will be done right and won’t need to be done again. At work as an engineer, I have to be very conscious of not being too hands-on with the prototypes and early production units that I design and get them handed off to manufacturing quickly.

Eric