I think she's a one off, designed by a naval architect called Phil Curran in Western Australia. I think he was more into power boat design and specialized in aluminum construction.
She's 47ft on the deck, 56 LOA with bow sprit and davits, 13.9ft beam, 7 ft draft and displaces 41900 lbs and was built in 1986 from aluminum.
When I bought her she'd been sitting on a swing mooring for three years awaiting her fate in a custody battle. Buying her came from out of nowhere, I was surfing the net when one of those little adds on the side caught my attention (boats for sale) a couple of clicks and a search and there she was sitting on Sydney Harbour, made the phone call, got the background info, made on offer $30,000 less than the ad said and hung up (after the yeah I'll get back to you). Two weeks later the phone rang, offer accepted (sh&one&t what do I do now) I've never owned a boat (of any kind)and don't know how to sail BUT this thing in me says YOU could sail it around the world what a life it would be.
Well that was in March. I got my son to go and look at it and he said it needed some work. So I arranged for a survey. Turned out better than I thought, hull in top condition ULTRA SOUND done for New South Wales survey, rigging old but ok (oversize) sails ok for acouple of years, rudder jammed deck rotted (teak) interior nice, some head lining water damaged.
Anyway I bought her (did I tell you I just turned 50, I should be buying a sports car or a motorbike) got the rudder fixed, no major problem, just been sitting too long ( if your in Sydney and need work on your boat don't go past Ferguson's Boat Shed in Pittwater at the Spit Bridge, owned by a young Canadian guy who couldn't do enough for me at a great rate too)
So my first sail on her was up the coast of NSW to a place called Lake Macquaire just 100kms from Sydney ( I took some sailing lessons from my local yacht club, not so much lessons but a social activity where they showed me how to sail) Arranged to put her on the hard for 5 weeks where my son and I removed the windows, removed the old teak deck, sanded her back, filled the deck to make it even and painted her all over, deck and top side and re anti fouled and back in the water. The paint job you can see in the pic was done by brush after rolling, called tipping, it came up pretty good. That was back in May and I had to fly back home so my son has been doing jobs on her since then, he's removed the sails and had them repaired or checked (new sacrificial on the Genoa and a new dodger to house the centre cockpit. There's plenty more to do, I'm trying to get him to repair the sewage treatment system but he tells me there's more important things to do. (hopefully he'll get to it before I get down there at Xmas time)
I could rattle on here for ever but.
See Ya Later
Kevin
Ps. Whats a dolphin striker?
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