Rites of Spring:
Refit and Renewal
When I think of refits and do-ityourself projects, I harken back to the days of my youth on Long Island Sound in eastern Connecticut. Being a transplanted South Floridian, summers were familiar: baseball, boating, the beach. But New England’s hard-bitten winters introduced a different dynamic—one I came to love as much as the lazy days of summer. In northern climes, boats spend the winter on the hard, metal shrouds and stays slapping rhythmically against their masts while their owners hunker down under crisp, blue tarps with their dormant loves, assessing and addressing their annual spring outfitting checklists, keeping just warm enough with their electric space heaters and instant coffees to get the job done.
My dad would spend countless afternoons aboard Ragtime, our 31-foot sloop, mending her wounds from the previous cruising season and prepping her for the next one. I would visit him at the boat after school to “help” whenever I could. Any given day, having climbed the old wooden ladder that just barely reached the extended swim ladder on the transom, I’d find a mess of wires to untangle or a bowl of mixed nuts and bolts to sort out while my dad installed his latest navigational gadget and explained to me the finer points of tuning up a 16-horsepower Yanmar diesel so it would run forever.
Looking back, I believe the best help I gave my dad was just being there with him, father and son, man to man, solving life’s great challenges one by one, from servicing stuffing boxes and bilge pumps to solving math and girl
problems. There were no boundaries, except for “don’t flip that switch until I say.” We didn’t have all the answers—few among us ever really do—but we sure had a lot of fun searching for them, hanging out in the salon under that blue tarp, fingers stiff and teeth chattering.
If you’re looking for ideas for your next refit project or your spring outfitting, we’ve got you covered. This issue is packed with useful tips and ideas to help you save time and money in preparing your boat to hit the water this summer, or any time of year. You’ll read about three magnificent refits, and you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at the growing yacht refit sector and its implications on boat owners and new-boat builders alike. Liveaboard, world voyager and guest columnist Becca Guillote shares some of her tried-and-true life hacks for your boat, while technical expert Steve Zimmerman sounds off on the seven keys to managing a successful refit. Veteran yacht designer, chronic mariner and Viewpoint columnist Dudley Dawson weighs in on the lighter side of doing it yourself, noting that, when it comes to boats, some things are perhaps best left to the pros. And a tequila expert passes down some secrets to help you up your margarita game in time for the upcoming cruising season.
More than anything, I hope you’re as excited to get back out on the water as I was every spring as a kid. There are too many gunkholes that need exploring to be hunkered down under a blue tarp praying to that space heater much longer.