sailing upgrades Archives - Gerbers UnderWay

Must Have Boat Buying Criteria for Cruising

When we looked at buying a boat, we had some specific criteria. We knew we would need to make several upgrades for cruising, but wanted to make sure we had a good foundation. After a lot of research we set up the following criteria:

Requirements:

Freshwater only (Great Lakes)
‘blue-water’ capable
- We weeded out a few, but not all production boat brands
36-42 feet – large enough to live on for an extended period, but within our price range
Draft of no more than 6’
Functional layout
Easy to sail short-handed
Large tankage for fuel/water
$45-65k – This seemed to be the sweet spot for older boats in good condition.

Not required, but would need to have a discount if they were missing/in poor condition

Good sails with a lot of life left in them
Self-tailing winches
Dodger/Bimini
Good running/standing rigging
Electric windlass

Bonus items – we’d upgrade if they aren’t included

Stack pack
Modern anchor
Full canvas enclosure
Updated electronics
Reliable autopilot

When we purchased Resande (learn about our boat here!), we immediately knew she checked a lot of these boxes. She even had some of the bonus items listed. Still, we knew it was going to require a long list of upgrades to take her from a Great Lakes cruiser for short trips to one that could handle a trip to the Atlantic and down to the Caribbean. We are continuing to refine this list, prioritizing some items sooner than others. The previous owner had spared no expense maintaining and updating many of the items above. Below is a list of the upgrades for cruising we currently have put together. These will be listed by area/system, and I will include an Excel file for people like me that think in spreadsheets.

Boat Projects

Fix de-lamination in foredeck (re-core)
Tower in a box or davit system for Dinghy
Replace one head with a composting toilet
New lifelines
New halyards (main, headsail, staysail)
New under-deck autopilot
Add reverse osmosis water maker
Seal mast step with engine paint or other (known corrosion issues with these boats, probably not an issue for years since it’s always been in fresh water, but worth getting it right now)
Put together “spare parts” list/kits

Electrical System: overall is in decent condition, the DC system was professionally redone in 2009, but there are some areas for improvement:

Battery Charger upgrade – right now the old charger is ancient, and the surveyor recommended upgrading it
Inverter – be able to run small appliances, water maker
Battery bank – right now our house bank is only about 100 AH, and one of the batteries was leaking/bad when we bought the boat. We are looking at upgrading to Firefly Carbon Foam AGM batteries unless a better lithium option comes on the market in the next few years. We are thinking around 350 AH in the house bank
DC – USB outlets. Small project, but makes a big difference being able to plug a phone cable directly into the wall without AC power.
Solar Panels – need to work out the sizing (will post calculations on here) but likely 2 X 175 watt panels on a tower, with 2-3 more flexible 80-100 watt panels on the dodger
Replace all outlets w/ GFCI

LED Lighting to Replace any Incandescent or Fluorescent bulbs to reduce current draw

Navigation Lights
Spreader Lights
Mast head light
Mast head navigation light
Nav station lights
Cockpit lighting
Fluorescent replacements:
- Aft
- Both heads

Ground Tackle

Mantus 45lb M1 anchor
150’ of chain
Mantus bridle w/ chain hook
Mantus swivel
Mantus dinghy anchor

Download Excel File

I’m sure we will be adding to this list and updating it with more details, specifics, and in-depth explanations of why we went with certain products. We don’t have any affiliations or with these products or companies, we try to research products to find the best value.

Similar to the cockpit, we knew our foredeck was wet when we purchased Resande. It’s a common issue on old boats where hardware goes through the deck if the owner isn’t keeping up on leaks. We decided to tackle this project in Fall 2021, after hauling out for the season. We’re also not planning to add back our staysail boom. We’ll have a post about how we’re rigging the staysail without a boom in the future. Most of the steps are identical to our Recoring the cockpit post, but we decided to do something a bit different for the high-load areas that have the highest risk of future leaks. As you can see in the pictures, we used 3/4″ plywood just like the cockpit. The difference is we made inserts out of 1/2″ thick G10 fiberglass board and glassed these inserts into the plywood prior to laminating.

The areas we did this in are the high load areas: windlass bolts, new port & starboard cleats, and the staysail tacking point. These areas will all have thru-bolts and will benefit from the high compressive strength of G10 (plywood or balsa core will deflect under a highly tightened bolt).

Resande’s foredeck has a lot of hardware due to our staysail. We aren’t planning to continue using a staysail boom, but we do plan to add a second foredeck cleat.

All of the hardware now removed, we start to understand the scope of the water intrusion.

After cutting the top shell of the fiberglass off, we scrape out the wet and rotten wood. We used an angle grinder to remove the top shell. Scraping, then sanding down to the lower fiberglass shell to make sure you adhere to something solid when you put the new core in.

This is the new core piece. As mentioned before, we added pieces of G10 where the high load hardware is located. Above in the picture is the layout: Staysail will attach in the top insert; the two small inserts in the middle will be cleats, and the large one at a diagonal is where the windlass will bolt through.

We used multiple layers of 17oz biaxial fiberglass cloth to build up the 1/4″ difference between the 1/2″ G10 and 3/4″ Plywood. this was on purpose, and we beveled out the plywood so we could build the layers up and larger in diameter.

Not shown, but we made relief cuts on the underside to help contour to the shape of the deck. The deck is slightly crowned, so we needed to flex the new core down on the side, we used pieces of wood to help clamp them down as the resin cured

After the core is in place, we ground the edges to a bevel to make a smooth and seamless transition. Our goal is that this new edge is nearly invisible.

As with the cockpit, we did 3 coats of fairing. This step is much like mudding drywall to try to get the seamless transition from the old to the new. We used the West Systems. Fair, sand, repeat until happy.

The final layer of fairing we used micro-balloons, which sand even easier for a nice final finish before gelcoat.

We used Total Boat topside paint instead of gelcoat. We decided to go with white and not try to match the foredeck color to the rest of our non-skid. We are planning to paint total boat non-skid in this area when we get a warm, dry day.

We also decided to go with a cleat on each side and not just replace the one center cleat we had previously.

We moved the placement of our winless buttons and added a wash-down pump on deck.

A final look with everything back in place. Completely done except the non-skid paint.

What do you think? Questions on our process or suggestions for our next project? Leave us a comment below.