I purchased her in September, despite a rather negative
survey, and am only the third owner.
She is largely in original condition and due to a long
period of lay up is suffering from neglect.
Here are some pictures I took when I first looked at
her, they show clearly the kind of condition she was in.
Things to notice are the non standard but useful boarding
ladder, the reasonable paint work and in the galley.... the swinging
bomb cooker.
The survey showed up the common Centaur problem
of keel flexing. whilst there was no evidence of this it was felt
that there was not enough transverse stiffening and what was there
was delaminating. given that Blue Moonlight will initially be
berthed at Ryde Leisure harbour and thus regularly take the ground,
all the transverse webs have been removed and replaced with larger
ones. The cutlass bearing and stern gland have also been professionally
overhauled. For myself I have chipped the epoxy
off the keels and treated the rust that was hidden underneath.
I then applied 5 coats of primacon. The Antifoul has been sanded
back to even it off and I have primed it and applied one coat
of Flag AF. If the weather lets me a second coat will be applied.
After a season or 2 I plan to have the hull slurry blasted right
back so I can top up the epoxy prior to antifouling. The rather
horrible sl400 loo has been replaced with a RM69 and new hoses.
Two stanchion bases have been replaced and rebedded as has one
chainplate and the stemhead fitting. I replaced the backing plates
on the stanchion bases with thicker ones. the stemhead fitting
had a ply backing plate followed by a metal plate. i have replaced
the ply pad but reused the metal plate. Apart from removing the
bomb and general tidying, that's about it as of now.
