Remarkable Refurb

Russ and Jennifer's story prompted me to throw our recent refurb up and I'm going to steal their idea for the the dry box in the back bench. Impressive story you two!

I used to sail this boat as a boy on Lake Michigan along with Hobie 16s, and other cruisers in the family. This was a favorite for taking folks sailing who were spooked by the whole flying a hull on the Hobie gig and I always remember what a well behaved boat she was. After I went off to school in '91 the boat sat in a back yard in Michigan until this summer. The photos tell the story...

My parents took on the strong arm work of getting the years off of her and evicting the toads, wasps, ants, and flowers that had grown in the beautiful compost soil that had developed. They did a remarkable job and I can't thank them enough! All the lines, hiking straps, and the trailer were replaced or brought back to life. The sails were safely in a garage and held up well. The trickiest work was re-fabricating a hatch since the original wood had turned into soil but we pulled it off nicely.

We drove her from Michigan to Hampton Virginia and she's been in the water every week since. Last week we even had an unseasonably warm November 6th and we sailed out for a picnic. The boat ramp is right behind my office so we dropped in, motored out of the marina with the wonderful MinnKota 30, and with the wind blowing at 15 gusting to 20+ we only threw up the jib to reach our beach picnic spot. Tammy enjoyed the jib only cruising and could point surprisingly well. I remembers sailing main only as a kid but I won't hesitate to use this jib only configuration when it's ridiculously gusty and broad reaching works. With Tammy comfortably at the helm I was able to snap some great pics of the fighter jets landing over us during the afternoon recoveries. Great picnic, great pictures, great boat!

We named her 'Azalea' after the flowers that grew in the cockpit and the fact that Princess Azalea is one of the mermaids honored in a statue in Virginia Beach.

There's plenty more story to tell as there always is with a much loved boat...

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OOOWWWww. that's painful seeing the pic of it posing as a planter box ;) . Great job on the cleanup and putting life back in her sails!! I like your hatch cover. what material did you use for that?

Russ&Jennifer
 
'Marine Lumber' polyethylene. It was all sorts of easy to put a router to for nice curved edges and to cut the groove you need for the upper lip to fit. Easy drilling too for the fittings and we recycled the latch. Completely happy with the outcome.

I'd seen other folks recommending plastic cutting boards and machining them down which would be the same result. I just got lucky cause our local shop had a scrap left for cheap from a larger project.
 
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Could you please tell me what you used for hiking straps and the size you got? I have a 1982 Omega Capri I am refurbishing and although it is work, it is lots of fun! Thanks!
 
We did it with $8 of seatbelts. Search Amazon for "seatbelt material black" and it'll pop right up. We bought it local but it's all 2" wide same stuff. We tried to find the actual stuff but when we realized the seatbelts fit the mounting hardware nearly perfectly we just went with that. I have no idea what the lengths are, we just installed and cut to fit (melt ends with a lighter and is perfect)

Good luck!
 

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