Windara’s Refit

We knew when we bought Windara that a refit was in her near future. Now that we’ve had a couple years on the boat and know her systems and how we use her, we realized it was time. It was SO hard to make that decision, especially since it was one we had to make while we were still in the Bahamas last season. But we both feel like it was the right call, and Windara continued to reinforce our decision as the season progressed. We debated an early departure, pushing to get to wherever and having the work done over the summer so we wouldn’t miss a cruising season, but that felt like a mistake. Working and cruising is hard enough without throwing a deadline into the mix.

With that decision made, we now had the entire east coast open to us. We did our research and found that Maine has some amazing shipyards, and labor is significantly cheaper. Maine was already on our cruising “must-see” list, so felt like the perfect fit. We got quotes from Maine Yacht Center and Front Street Shipyard, and it was an incredibly difficult decision. It was important to me to find a yard that would take me just as seriously as they do Chris. Over our years of boat ownership, I’ve dealt with several marine professionals, not all of whom took my concerns/questions/opinions/troubleshooting seriously. I went through part of our project list with both, and I appreciated that they treated me as an equal in the conversation. Both yards were incredibly knowledgeable and professional, and I honestly don’t think we could have made a bad decision.

We ultimately decided on Front Street Shipyard – we love Belfast, we got a good vibe from everyone during our stay, we were impressed with the volume and variety of boats they handled from commercial vessels to luxury sailing yachts, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that part of my decision was influenced by the ability to spend more time exploring the Penobscot Bay and beyond.

Projects

Our project list is pretty extensive:

• Repairing soft spots in the deck
• Fiberglass repair
• Rebedding the stern pushpit, forward hand rails, whisker pole attachment on deck, and any other deck hardware as necessary
• Replacing the windlass motor/gearbox (it was beyond being on its last legs)
• Fixing the fresh water wash-down pump
• Replacing all thru-hulls
• Replacing the blackwater hoses and removing lots of extra hose from the forward head
• Fixing the generator
• Servicing the engine/troubleshooting the transmission
• Fixing an engine mount
• Servicing the propeller
• All new rod rigging (our rig was original to the boat, so it was time!)
• Servicing the mast: inspecting sheaves, fixing a bent spreader, new boots for the ends of the spreaders, new LED tri-color masthead light, and diagnosing and hopefully getting some of the friction out of our various halyards and reefing lines, servicing the track/sliders for the mainsail
• New staysail halyard
• Servicing blocks/jib cars
• Replacing all rope clutches
• Full replacement of our electronics suite
• Cleaning up the wiring spaghetti
• Resealing all cockpit lazarettes
• Fixing the fridge compressor
• Dinghy outboard maintenance

We continue to be impressed with Front Street’s work and everyone involved with our project. As they’ve worked through the list, they’ve brought up any new areas of concern that they’ve encountered, and by the same token, they’ve talked us out of a few things that just weren’t necessary. The work is progressing well, and many of the projects listed above have already been completed.

In the meantime, we’re working on going through all the stuff we took off the boat and getting rid of what we don’t need. Spares are great, but only if they go to a system that’s actually on the boat. When we had Silent Sky, we had the opportunity to weed through everything each fall when we took everything off for winter storage and again in the spring when we brought it all back and started putting it away. We’ve weeded through some of the spares and gear aboard Windara, but never to the same extent. We got rid of a lot when we moved off the boat, and we’re continuing to consolidate while making a list of new gear/spares we need to get.

I’m also redoing our inventory and maintenance list. Again, with Silent Sky, we had a good maintenance list and had from November to late April/early May to turn the boat into a workshop (at least until we went cruising), and her systems were a lot simpler. Since that’s not the case with Windara, it’s important that we establish a regular maintenance schedule and log what we’ve done when. I’m trialing a new app, YachtWave, to help get everything in order. So far, I’ve found it easy to use and it covers pretty much everything I was looking for. My previous Google Sheet was a perfectly fine idea, except we were terrible about updating it and we couldn’t schedule recurring tasks or get alerts for upcoming maintenance. It’s a bit of work to populate the app with all our systems and gear, but Rome wasn’t built in a day and it will save time in the long run.

We’ll be renting a seasonal mooring at Front Street this summer, so we’ll take the first few weekends after launch to address our own list of projects, deep clean, reorganize, sea trial all the work we’ve had done, and make sure Windara is fully ready to go wherever the winds may take us.