The Beginning

We have decide to do a complete boat refurbish.  I am a residential contractor.  We have never attempted this before but thought " how hard could it be?"  We just bought a boat and have just committed to the project.  I decided that it would be a great learning experience for us and with modern technology, I could make it a great learning experience for all of you.  We just bought "The Project", and I have just started this blog.  The following will be our journey through the restoration of our boat.  We hope through this blog you can share our fun, frustration, and finishing of our boat.  And so the story begins.............




My family and I are avid sailors, meaning we think about sailing every day, multiple times a day but we only get out once or twice a year.  The reason we only get out once or twice a year is that we do not have our own boat and our taste in boats tends to be the million dollar variety.  So once or twice a year we lease a 50+ foot catamaran and sail somewhere in the Caribbean. 


We decided earlier this year that it would be beneficial to get a small lake boat, that would enable us to sail weekends, increase our skill level, and keep us in practice with the sails.  With that decision made we now had to decide our price range, vessel style and size.


We decided that we wanted something that we could basically camp in.  This would give us the ability to take the boat out to a lake on a Friday night, hang out, sail all day Saturday and then come back on Saturday evenings. We also knew that the boat would have to be trailerable since we live in the land-locked state of large ponds, also known as Colorado.  This meant that we were going to be looking at sail boats in the 20' to 28' range.  


We decided that we like the Macgreggor 22' and 25' and Catalina 22' boats the best.  Catalina was our first choice.  I then started watching Craigslist and ebay for boats.  Our price range was low.  We wanted to keep our cost below $3,000.  I also wanted something that I could work on without feeling like I was ruining our investment.  Since our dream is to spend 3-6 months a year sailing around the world, I felt I needed to have a boat that I could tear down and put back together as a learning tool.  The more familiar I was with all of the gear, equipment, and body of the boat, the more capable I felt I would be out at sea if something broke, got damaged, or was lost.


Thus began our hunt for the "perfect for us" boat.