Lightning struck sloop
When Drew Maglio and his fiancée bought a storm-damaged yacht they had little idea of the restoration work that lay ahead
In the summer of 2018 I convinced my fiancée, Avery, that we needed to buy a yacht. Inspired by SV Delos and the glut of digital sailors on YouTube, I pictured us living aboard and cruising where the wind blows and the season dictates.
As young people just beginning our respective careers our funds were limited and, rather than rent an apartment, we decided the yacht would become our liveaboard home.
At the time, we were in the midst of rebuilding a Sea Ray Sundancer 270 from the hull up, a boat we affectionately referred to as ‘the boat from hell’ because of its structural rot (see PBO Summer 2019). The Sea Ray being our fourth powerboat and biggest restoration yet, we knew how important it would be to view as many boats as possible to find the right sailing yacht.
The search begins
Tired of working on old boats, Avery and I began our search by looking at new mass-production boats offered at a local Jeanneau dealer, hoping to finance our floating home as other young couples would their land-based ones.
We liked the idea of having a new boat under warranty, but weren’t so keen on the stitch and glue construction method used, so decided to expand our search to include used production boats, of about ten to 15 years old.
We viewed a couple of Beneteaus, Hunters and a Bavaria up to 44ft, but realised that financing a depreciating asset was a poor choice and we decided to be more pragmatic in our search.
We began to search for sloops under $40,000 with the following features: a fibreglass structural grid tabbed to the hull to avoid structural decay that is almost inevitable when encapsulated wood structures are immersed in bilge water for years, a lead keel to avoid the maintenance and potential hull damage on grounding (which are the drawbacks of an iron keel), a traditional teak interior, and as fast a design as we could come by.
With these requirements we looked at another crop of boats and narrowed our shortlist down to just two possibilities: a 1987 Ericson 38-200 sloop named Kismet, for which the owner wanted an exorbitant $53,000, and a 1984 Endeavour 35, which was in excellent condition and well under budget at $27,500. Sadly, the Endeavour was sold by the time we were able to view it so we had a serious think about Kismet.
The owners had enjoyed Kismet for 21 years and had taken great pride in the boat. The boat’s interior joinery work was immaculate as were its cushions. All systems functioned including the fridge,
electric head, pressurised water, sailing instruments, and so on.
The exterior was oxidised, however, due to the South Florida sun. The standing rigging was original, which was a cause for concern, but showed well. Some of the running rigging was new while other portions remained serviceable. Despite sporting an original fully-battened mainsail, Kismet had two genoas (a 135 and 155 respectively), and an asymmetrical spinnaker.
In May of 2018, we offered $45,000 for the boat and after some haggling came to an agreement on $48,000, contingent upon a satisfactory survey.
The survey was scheduled for late July but just as Avery and I were about to get in the car to head over to owners Noel and Linda’s home for the survey I received a phone call from Noel.
“Drew, you’re not going to believe this,” he said. “Kismet was hit by lightning.” After talking with our surveyors, Avery and I decided it would be in our best interest to let Noel work with his insurance company to assess and repair the damage before proceeding with the purchase.
When lightning strikes a yacht it seeks an uninhibited path from cloud to ground (sea). The boat acts as an electrical conduit for up to one billion volts of electricity, which will create a path if a predefined one does not exist. Lightning will generally take ‘the path of least resistance’, but will also take all available paths according to my research.
We later found that on Kismet the lightning arced from the aluminium mast step through the keel via the stainless steel keel bolts.
After taking ownership, we also found the strike had exited through the stainless steel rudder shaft – perhaps the product of what is known as a ‘side flash’ from the nearby backstay.
The survey
As Noel’s insurance provider seemed to be dragging its heels, we agreed to go ahead with a full survey and sea trial for Kismet to ensure the boat’s hull structure hadn’t been compromised by the lightning strike. Bursting with excitement and dripping with sweat on a hot and humid morning in August, Avery and I were enthralled as our future home went under the surveyors’ microscope.
Because of the lightning strike, most of the boat’s instruments were vaporised including the VHF radio, stereo, autohelm, wind instruments, depth finder, and GPS. Luckily the fridge, battery charger, and AC outlets were still operable. Importantly, the hull was structurally intact. All things considered, the surveyors valued the boat at $32,000. Survey in hand, I beseeched Noel to sell us the boat as-is for $32,000 and he reluctantly obliged. Avery and I took ownership during the last week of August, 2018. The lower purchase price would give us funds to refashion the boat and its systems how we pleased, and Noel was still able to collect the insurance for the damages.
Starting work
We renamed Kismet as Walden after the book by philosopher Henry David Thoreau, and placed her on the hard in Placida, Florida, to undergo a refit.
During this time Noel and Linda kindly offered me a guest room in their home. Though we lived on the other coast, we planned to make frequent weekend trips over the coming months to refit Walden.
First on the agenda was to unstep the mast in order to re-paint it, re-rig it, and
install new instruments. I vividly remember the two days in late August spent in the blistering hell of a boatyard, sweat flowing from my brow as I, a novice – albeit handy – sailor, attempted to loosen bronze turnbuckles which were welded to the stainless steel wire rigging via three decades of electrolysis. Upon returning to Noel and Linda’s house for a shower and bed, an enthusiastic Noel greeted me and asked, “Did you survive your first day as a yacht owner?” to which I replied, “Yes.” I knew, however, the long and arduous journey had only just begun.
Working alone with only a slight semblance of an idea as to what unstepping the mast entailed, I was not prepared for the crane to separate the mast from the boat the next morning. But with the help of a few hired hands we got the job done. With the mast safely blocked on the ground and the hole in the cabin top covered, I went home for a few weeks to recover after an onerous beginning to yacht ownership.
Before I headed home, I employed a rigger to remove the old stays from the mast and replace them with new 316 stainless steel swaged stays, and later help me re-step the mast and tune the new rigging. For a price of $2,100 and track record of satisfied customers he couldn’t be beaten!
Electronics
With the rigging in qualified hands, I decided to focus on updating the electronics. Walden came equipped with a hodgepodge of old and new electronics but since we were planning on keeping her indefinitely, we decided no expense would be spared.
We replaced the Raymarine i50/i60 tri-data bundle (wind speed, direction and depth) with a B&G Triton T41 and upgraded the GPS and radar, which cost a hefty $2,000 as well as $300 just for the mount. We also fitted a Garmin 210 VHF with a built-in AIS receiver that would synchronize with our other electronics via the NMEA 2000 network that I’d installed.
The glut of wires in our mast’s wiring conduit meant we decided to fit a wireless wind sensor in lieu of the wired one that came in the bundle – another $700.
Crucially, we installed the utilitarian CPT belt-driven autopilot, a necessity for double-handed passage making. With its simple control knobs and lack of any NMEA integration, we’ve found this to be extremely robust with ample power to turn the wheel in nearly any sea.
Installing new electronics on an old boat is a laborious task, and I spent hours in cramped lazarettes, chasing and removing old and superfluous wiring for bygone electronics that were no longer fitted. As well as the new instruments we also installed all new navigation, anchor, and running lights. LED bulbs were used in the fixtures (with the exception of the anchor light because of the propensity of LED lights to interfere with radio communications) to save valuable power.
Antifouling
Walden needed to be antifouled before launch. Because some of the paint was flaking off, I decided it would be prudent to remove years of paint build-up first, so I bought a vacuum sander and the most aggressive grit sandpaper I could find.
After suiting up in a miserable full-body suit, I fired up the sander and quickly grew disheartened: rather than remove the paint, the sander simply burnished the paint and gummed up the pad. Constantly swapping pads and only working small
‘The pre-purchase survey noted “a number of blisters” that needed to be addressed’
areas, it was going to take an eternity.
So I decided to focus my efforts on painting the mast and installing electronics while I ruminated over how to tackle the bottom job. An online boating forum suggested using a vacuum scraper, rather than sander. I ordered one and it proved a revelation, effortlessly removing the layers of ablative paint that had built up over the years!
Avery now took on the huge task of completing Walden’s bottom job so I could focus on other tasks.
While the prepurchase survey had noted ‘a number of blisters’ that needed to be addressed, our surveyors had failed to describe the true nature of the work. Walden had not been antifouled in four years, yet its Interlux Micron 66 ablative paint was still intact, hiding what lay beneath.
Tackling osmosis
Osmotic blisters occur when water permeates a porous gelcoat surface after years of constant immersion. The resin, when exposed to water trapped between layers of fibreglass composite, is dissolved and leaves behind a soursmelling residue. While blisters are generally only superficial in nature, they do compromise the structural integrity of a hull if allowed to fester and grow. The only remedy is to grind them out and laminate new layers of fibreglass cloth saturated with epoxy resin, which is needed for its enhanced strength and bonding properties. The only true protection against hull blistering is an epoxy barrier coat. Noel and Linda had this done a few years earlier, but the yard that did the work had apparently barrier-coated over existing blisters without fixing them properly first!
As Avery grew increasingly skilled, she identified more and more blisters. There were hundreds of them – some bigger in area than watermelons. It seemed that once she learned to use an angle grinder, she never stopped opening up more blisters! As a result, the bottom job dragged on for months.
Once all of the blisters had been opened up, the arduous task of filling and fairing them began. Depending on the size and severity of the blister, one, two, or even three layers of bi-axial 17oz fibreglass mat were cut and laminated in place with epoxy resin. Once the blisters were close to level with the hull, they were sanded and also faired if necessary. Sanding areas that had been built up too far proved difficult and a special sanding disk attachment for our angle grinder had to be employed. The fairing process was exacerbated by our lack of knowledge regarding fillers and epoxies at the time.
Because of this, we had a few batches of epoxy either fail to cure or cure far too fast, which had to be removed. Some of the fillers we used included milled and chopped fibres and glass microballoons, all of which proved extremely difficult to sand fair. We eventually hit our groove with West System 5:1 ratio epoxy and their 404 Silica filler. Mixed to a putty-like consistency it made sanding doable – even by hand if desired. To put matters in perspective, the bottom was the first job started, but the last one completed before Walden left the yard early in April 2019!
Painting
While I lent Avery assistance when needed, I focused on repairs, upgrades, and general maintenance. After new electronics were installed and tested as much as possible without commissioning, I painted the mast.
Our Ericson 38-200 was built in 1987 in Southern California and due to the state of California’s long history of stringent environmental regulations, our boat’s Kenyon mast was painted with a two-part polyurethane paint, rather than anodised. So after 32 years Walden’s mast and boom were looking ratty, despite being