New PBO Project boat
PBO’s Ali Wood asks herself if she’s ready to own her first boat when offered the Maxi 84 Maximus that’s in need of thorough renovation
Taking the plunge to own a boat in need of renovation
Last month we got a surprise email from PBO reader Daniel Kirtley: “I have a 28ft cruiser and wondered if you have any interest in taking her on as a PBO project?” he asked. “I’ve compiled the list of projects needed to bring her up to scratch and it is just too long for me: I don’t have the time!”
Daniel, who runs corporate finance business Westgate Advisers, became a dad for the second time during lockdown. After eight years spent sailing his Maxi 84 around the South West coast, he decided it was time to give her up and replace her with a day-sailer.
“Maximus has been out of the water for over two years. She’s a great boat that has kept me safe in most conditions and of course I would love to ‘do right’ by her,” he said.
Could we do that?
Editor Rob and I chewed over this offer for a while. We’re a much smaller team than we used to be, and there’s no editorial budget for refitting and mooring boats. If we were to take her on, one of us would have to own the boat and commit to getting the work done – weekends, evenings – whenever we could between our day jobs.
My family thought long and hard about this and, after some research, decided to go for it. After all, it was an incredibly generous offer... and you don’t get given a boat every day!
I’ve grown-up around yachts; cruised them, raced them, occasionally skippered them, but now I was going to own one and be the proud custodian of a 43-yearold cruiser exactly the same age as me. Fate, I wonder?
First things first
Before agreeing to take on Maximus, I looked at my finances and considered where we’d moor her, how I’d transport her home, where we’d do the refit, where we’d keep her over winter, and how much money we’d need to set aside for annual maintenance. As for the actual refit budget… that would have to wait for the results of the survey.
The right type of boat?
As Alistair Buchan says in his book How to Sail on a Budget, ‘Choose a boat you can afford which suits your type of sailing. No boat is suitable for all types of sailing’.
He goes on to warn, ‘buying the wrong sort of boat for your principal activity is never a wise move, however cheaply the boat is priced.’
Was the Maxi 84 right for us? Designed by Pelle Peterson and built by Swedish company Maxi yachts, Maximus is one of 1,350 they built between 1977 and 1983, and has certainly stood the test of time.
My cousins – now grown up with children of their own – explored the West Country on a Maxi 84 as children, and as PBO’s Peter Poland said back in 2015, the Maxi 84 was ‘a runaway success… a marvellous cruiser to this day.’
My husband and I have three children aged 5, 7 and 10, so the deep, safe cockpit is ideal, and all the lines can be controlled from there (though the mainsail traveller in front of the companionway will be something to watch out for).
There’s standing headroom below, a galley, heads, small chart table, plenty of stowage and five berths.
A cruising boat is what we want. We won’t be doing club racing, and getting anywhere quickly is not a priority (though Maxi 84s are known to sail well in a blow).
The kids’ enjoyment is key to our sailing plans, however. Short coastal hops with plenty of time ashore exploring towns and villages will suit our lifestyle better for now than long passages.
One of the downsides of Maximus is that she has a fin keel which rules out my dream of exploring the French canals (inspired by the articles of PBO’s Richard Hare) and, more importantly, rules out keeping her on a mooring in the harbour nearest my home, Christchurch, which is very shallow.
However, there are many beautiful places to explore in Hampshire, Dorset and Devon, and perhaps when we get more adventurous we can head to the Channel Islands, Brittany or even northern Spain (trips inspired by our late friend and contributor, Jim Mottram).
She’s certainly seaworthy enough and, as I would later find out from the survey, built of a very strong fibreglass.
For now, though, simply owning a boat we could sail around Poole harbour and Studland Bay would be a great achievement.
Where will you sail?
If you sail on inland waters your boat may have to meet local regulations in terms of fitting out and equipment. On coastal passages, you may need to be prepared to stay at sea in most conditions, and of course on ocean passages, you’re effectively a liveaboard for three or more weeks, requiring an entirely different standard of fit-out again.
Two liveaboard families who’ve inspired me are the Pattisons and Korrops, both regular contributors to PBO.
I first met Hermione Pattison on the pontoons in Gran Canaria two years ago. Originally from Chichester, she was preparing to cross the Atlantic as part of the ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers), and is still sailing round the world now with her husband and two kids.
My children were the same age, and I confided my fears about taking them sailing. Hermione said: “You’ve just got to do it. You soon get over it – the kids are the most adaptable of all.”
Indeed, Kia Korrop was cruising the world before she even had children, and her two – now aged 10 and 7 – were born on board and have never lived on land. You can follow their adventures in PBO’s Cruising Notes section.
I don’t plan to follow in their footsteps, but their stories certainly keep me fuelled with a lust for adventure (small adventures… two lockdowns of homeschooling was more than enough for me).
How often will you sail?
The more you wish to sail, the closer you want the boat. Too much time spent getting to the mooring could mean the difference between getting on the water and not.
Alternatively, like Maximus’s owner
‘I was going to be the owner of a 43-year-old cruiser exactly the same age as me’
Daniel, who bought her while he lived in London, you may have to accept your boat is your weekend holiday home, and forget about those impulse day sails.
For a time my dad owned a beautiful wooden gaff-rigger. After years spent doing her up he realised he couldn’t sail her easily single-handed, and trips were dependent on finding crew. The maintenance was never-ending. Much as he loved Rose, a Morecambe Bay Prawner, he gave her up in the end for a small fibreglass day-sailer that he used twice as much on the rivers and estuaries around North Wales.
Unless you enjoy the maintenance as much as the sailing (and many people do) a small, simple boat might be the answer.
In last month’s PBO, Clive Robertson gave up his London career in order to fulfil his dream of owning and restoring a wooden boat, Andromeda. He has no regrets, but admits there was just no way he could have maintained a project boat and a city job at the same time.
We’re a busy family, and in between football, swimming lessons and junior sailing there’s not a lot of time for day sails. However, long weekends and school holidays will be the perfect opportunity to get afloat. As such, it’s not essential we keep Maximus 20 minutes away. Anything under a two-hour drive would work for us.
The advantage of a nearby berth, however, is that we could do jobs on the boat while the kids are at school. Cobbs Quay Marina in Hamworthy, for example, is accessible by train, leaving one of us with the car to do the school run.
That said, if we keep Maximus a little further away – perhaps the Beaulieu River in the New Forest, Lymington or even Chichester – where she currently is – we can have weekends away instead. With the summer holidays coming up, the boat could be an alternative to camping, and eventually, perhaps next season, she can move to Poole.
What type of mooring?
Aside from cost, which we’ll look at later, another thing to think about is access to your boat. Though we’d briefly considered a shoal-draught vessel, we’d still have been restricted by tides in Christchurch harbour. Even in a Laser dinghy I regularly scrape the bottom.
Friends of mine recently bought a Westerly Konsort in Devon. They couldn’t wait to bring her home, not least because the drying harbour could only be accessed at high water, and they faced 6-knot tidal streams in the narrow 10m entrance. To go out sailing was a precisely timed and stressful operation – especially with three young kids.
If your home port is limited by tides, a bridge or lock-opening times, then you might have to rule out regular evening or weekend sailing.
Cost of mooring
Before going ahead with boat ownership, I did a ring around to check if there were actually moorings available in my local area. The last thing I wanted was to own a boat I couldn’t keep afloat.
Some moorings were fully booked and charged a fee simply to be on the waiting list. Others, such as Keyhaven, only allocated moorings to local residents.
However, we did find a few options, ranging from a £650 seasonal swinging mooring in Poole harbour to annual marina berths ranging from £4,000 to £11,000.
On the hardstanding in Chichester, where Maximus has been for the past two years, the cost is £4 a day – £1,482 annually.
Though a swinging mooring is less convenient than a marina berth, it’s considerably cheaper, and some of the private moorings – such as Salterns Marina and Sandbanks Yacht Club – include free use of a motor launch to get out to your boat, as well as hot showers.
We visited all the local options and
‘Some moorings were fully booked and charged a fee simply to be on the waiting list’
snooped round the pontoons and shower-blocks. I liked that Salterns Marina had a baby change, which sends the right message to families. I also liked the location of Sandbanks Yacht Club, but there was no parking, and it would cost us a fortune in the summer to use the public car park opposite, not to mention battling the traffic.
As well as mooring fees, I learned there would be harbour dues (£161) and Crown fees (£111) to pay each year.
Winter options
Will you be taking the boat out over winter? Swinging moorings tend to be charged from April to October (some with a 50% discount over winter), whereas marina berths quote an annual fee.
For convenience nothing beats a marina – and with electrics and water we could continue to do many of the jobs highlighted in the survey. In a place as serene as Buckler’s Hard on the Beaulieu River, we could simply hang-out, and camp on our boat as we might in a field. Busier marinas just didn’t have the same atmosphere.
Some marinas, such as MDL’s Cobbs Quay, operate a points scheme offering discounts on services and other marinas in the group. Buckler’s Hard Yacht Harbour offers a free month ashore.
If your boat is coming out over winter, then you need to factor in the cost of lift-out and launch. At Dell Quay – where boats can only come out and go in fortnightly at Springs, this is £4.99/ft, so for Maximus that’s £140.
Winter storage
Anticipating a substantial ‘to-do’ list – after all, it wouldn’t be a PBO Project Boat without one – I also wanted to be sure that the yard where Maximus overwinters has electricity, water and allows other contractors in. Her current home at Dell Quay ticks all these boxes (though we had to buy an extra long hose and extension lead), but some don’t. Check they’re happy with mess too (eg antifouling removal, paint, dirty water) – though of course, they’ll expect you to clean up after yourself.
Running costs
The cost of berthing may only account for half the annual sum you spend on a boat. The smaller the boat, the cheaper the running costs, but you still need to factor in insurance, servicing safety equipment, replenishing spares, cleaning, antifouling, brightwork varnishing, engine service and sails valeting.
There’ll also be a rolling programme of things that need replacing, such as standing rigging after 10 years, gas
hoses and seacocks, as well as general wear and tear and the things that simply break.
On Maximus, we were aware that the saildrive bellows were reaching the end of their life and would soon need replacing at a cost of around £1,500. There was also just three years left on the standing rigging – and that was providing the rigger didn’t spot anything significant once she was launched (they don’t go up the mast while ashore).
Other costs you might not have considered are upgrading electronics, updating charts, travel to and from the boat, licence fees, sailing club fees (if applicable) and berthing fees while away from home.
Yachting Monthly editor Theo Stocker bought a Sadler 29 a few years ago.
“Owning a boat is great fun, especially the adventures and the quality time it gives you as a family,” he told me. “However, running on a budget means being quite strict on what you do and don’t do, and the initial getting-up-toscratch is the scary bit. It feels like costs just mount up. There are always unexpected costs too.”
Theo had to re-engine the boat after a year or two, but managed to get an ex-lifeboat Buhk DV24, which was a couple of thousand pounds cheaper than anything else.
In terms of running costs, Theo sets aside a budget of £3,000-£4,000 a year, with mooring fees being around half of that. This leaves a bit of money for maintenance and spares, though not enough for big projects such as new engines or sails.
So you’ve done the budget. What next? There was a lot to think about, but having looked at our finances, I was confident to move onto the pre-purchase survey. So I arranged for marine surveyor and PBO contributor Ben Sutcliffe-Davies to pay her a visit.
In the weeks before the survey, I set my mind to planning the voyage home (despite the fact we still haven’t decided where ‘home’ is).
Exactly how you get a new boat home depends on the survey. While I sent videos and photos of Maximus to anyone unlucky enough to be in my contacts list, no-one had a crystal ball. No-one could say how much work she needed to get her on the water.
If the boat’s on the hard standing will she be seaworthy enough to launch and sail home immediately? Even if she is, might it be better to do some of the long-term work now, while she’s on the hard, rather than pay for her to be lifted out again at the other end?
Another factor was the commute, in our case a three-hour round-trip. When trying to arrange this around work and schoolruns, it wasn’t going to be something we did on a whim. Every run to the boat would have to be carefully planned to maximise our time there, all tools packed, parts ordered in advance, labour booked.
No pressure then...
I jumped the gun a bit here, and optimistically called Richard Falk, the RYA’s director of training and qualifications.
“I’m about to buy a boat,” I said, “Can you suggest anyone to help me sail her home?” Richard kindly volunteered his services, and I booked a provisional launch date at Dell Quay for the next spring tide after the survey.
Of course, it was all premature… as it turned out Maximus would require new seacocks, a safe gas system, working batteries and electrical systems, an engine check, keel check and up-to-date safety equipment before she was even seaworthy.
The earliest that anyone could fit seacocks would be six weeks away. Plus, there’d be many more jobs on the list too – including antifouling, gelcoat polish, new anodes and running rigging. It made sense to do this work while she was still in Chichester. There’s a very precise order to doing jobs on a boat that, despite 20 years spent writing for yachting magazines, I’m still getting my head around! I did obtain some road-transport quotes, but when the first one came back in the region of £800, I ruled that out. I could have probably got a much better price, but to be honest, where’s the
‘If the boat’s on the hard standing will she be seaworthy enough to launch and sail home?’
adventure in that? I’d much rather sail my new boat home.
The survey
If you’re thinking of buying a boat, or even if you’ve inherited one or are renovating a wreck, it’s well worth booking a survey. First and foremost, you need to know what you’re letting yourself in for.
Many low-value boats change hands without a survey, but you need to be very confident in the structure of the boat, from hull stiffening, keel attachment and integrity of a cored deck to the rudder and chainplates.
A survey, even on a low-value vessel, can give peace of mind. Costs vary from around £15-£20/ft, plus travel, often with a minimum fee equating to a boat length of around 25/26ft .
A frightening tale
Only the week before, marine surveyor Ben Sutcliffe-Davies had been to see a 1975 yacht. The owner abandoned the survey after 10 minutes after learning the rudder was set 15° off and the keel joint was loose.
“He was lucky not to have lost it,” said Ben. “You’re looking at £6,000 for the keel to be recast, £3,000 for the rudder. We were past the value of the boat already!”
It turned out the boat had been dropped in the past. The keel had gone through the hull and not been properly repaired. Imagine if we’d bought a boat like that? We’d have been landed with a huge disposal fee right away, not to mention yard fees.
“The owner said, ‘Yeah, I did wonder if something wasn’t right’,” said Ben. “How do you not notice water coming through the chainplates and the deck sloping?”
Ben also advised me to check there was no debt on the boat. “You’d be surprised how often it happens,” he said. “Call the yard or marina and check the owner’s fully paid up. You don’t want to buy a liability.”
Day of the survey
Satisfied Maximus was a genuine and heartfelt offer, we found ourselves driving to Dell Quay Marine, a traditional boatyard on a quiet country lane in Chichester, full of old wooden and GRP boats.
Some of the boats were under canvases the size of wedding marquees, though most were lined up against the hedgerows in the throes of renovation.
Then we came across Maximus,a grubby but undoubtedly handsome boat just waiting for her next adventure. I clambered aboard straight away and could barely wait to find out the results of the survey.
“What do you think?” I asked Ben, the minute he started with the moisture meter on the hull. I was expecting him to tell me to wait and see, but already he was smiling.
“Well, I was expecting it to be a little bit wetter than it was, so this is really encouraging,” he said. “We need to see what’s inside the boat, but the hull looks to be in good nick.”
So enthusiastic was Ben, he’d actually started the night before, and early that morning, but even so the survey took most of the day.
I’ll cover the survey in detail next month – there were some fascinating findings – but overall Maximus was in good shape, if in need of rather a lot of work.
After digesting the survey results, I signed the Bill of Sale and sent Daniel a thank you card with a £1 coin taped inside. The deal was done. I’m now a boat owner and the adventure begins…