We're now Pagans!


Erbas has now been sold and we've moved onwards and upwards to a Westerly 33 ketch we've renamed "Pagan"

Come and visit our new blog at svpagan.blogspot.co.uk

Friday 5 August 2016

The end of the road

And unlike Quo we really mean it!

Today, Jane and I signed off the final paperwork relating to the sale of "Erbas" and she is now officially in the hands of her new owner

And there she was, gone.



But not forgotten

Wednesday 3 August 2016

The end, all but

There's just some paperwork left to sort out on Friday but to all intents and purposes our time with Erbas has come to an end

Yesterday, Erbas was craned onto a lorry and set off for her new home at Glasson Sailing Club in Cumbria

Unfortunately I missed her departure which was earlier than expected

Happily, Erbas has gone to a good home with an enthusiastic new owner who I'm sure will care for her as she has been cared for by her previous owners

We wish her new owner Richard fair winds and great adventures and we know Erbas will look after him as she has looked after us

Our adventures continue with our new boat "Pagan" and you can read all about them at svpagan.blogspot.com

Friday 29 July 2016

And now, the end is near...

A couple of trips to Burnham over the last couple of days preparing Erbas for sale

I've, as agreed with the soon to be new owner, installed a new battery charger and the other job has been to remove the sails and all the canvas



Everything is now ready for the yard to remove the mast, which they're doing today or Monday and then on Tuesday she's off by road to her new home in Cumbria

Saturday 23 July 2016

Sold STC

We've accepted an offer on Erbas. More to follow once the paperwork is done

Tuesday 31 May 2016

A quick wash and brush up ...

We were pleased to find the other day that, at last, Erbas has been lifted out and is now ashore in the Clarke & Carter sales area

We were less pleased to find she was looking a bit shabby!

She was dusty and pressure washing had inevitably removed what little was left of the last antifouling

We want her to catch the eye of passing potential buyers so we were back the next morning with brushes, rollers and a tin of jollop



Jane set about covering the bottom with the roller whilst I cut in the line of the topsides by eye with a brush (I'm pretty good at it too, if I say so myself. I did for a time paint and sign-write narrowboats for a living!)

Despite several breaks to stretch aching muscles we had the job done in about three hours








And how much better she looked too!

She's still looking for a new owner to love her

Sabre 27 for sale

There's been lots of interest but no buyer as yet

Saturday 30 April 2016

For Sale! The best 27 footer on the market :)

Well that's what we think anyway

Erbas is up for sale with Clarke & Carter at Burnham on Crouch and available to view six days a week (they're closed on Sundays but arrangements could be made)

1976 Sabre 27 For Sale


Get in quick, she's generating a lot of interest!

Thursday 14 April 2016

The Final Voyage

A final round of removing the odds and ends I'd missed over the last couple of days and one last wipe over the inside saw "Erbas" ready for her last trip under my command (if everything goes to plan!).

I set off down river on the last of the ebb and made good time to Burnham Yacht Harbour where I moored up on the allocated berth.

Then it was up to the brokers office to do the paperwork and that was that.

"Erbas" is now up for sale with Clarke & Carter and priced to sell at £10,950 but we're open to sensible offers.

Then it was up to the train station for the short trip back to Fambridge and the long walk to the Yacht Station. The walk was shortened by a lift down Ferry Road from Wiggy who was on his way to do a job in the yard.

I'll no doubt see "Erbas" again as I intend to pop down to Burnham around once a week to keep her aired and clean. That's assuming she doesn't sell quickly given that the broker was on the phone to a potential buyer to say she had arrived as I left the office!

I've said it before and I'll say it again, "Erbas" has given us enormous fun and pleasure in the short time we've owned her and she's looked after us when things have got sticky. She'll hopefully find a new home with people who'll appreciate what a fine boat she is

I'm not particularly emotional about the parting. It's not as if we're giving up sailing and we have a new pride and joy to get stuck into. But I will always look back on our time with "Erbas" fondly

Goodbye old girl, here's hoping you have many more miles to go with a new crew ....

The Penultimate Cruise

It's been two days of clearing out and cleaning to make Erbas ready for her last trip (if all goes to plan) down to Burnham Yacht Harbour today

It's amazing how much "stuff" you can cram into a twenty seven footer! And apart from some out of date or nearly so galley stores every bit of it is stuff we need and use!

As each item was removed I asked myself "do we use this?" and "do we need this?" and the answer was yes every time.

At the end of the exercise Erbas was floating a good inch higher in the water as evidenced by the visible weed line!

Pagan, of course, swallowed the lot without a hiccup but she looks like a bomb has hit her! That's not the top priority right now.

Once everything was cleared out, which took most of Tuesday, it was out with the pressure washer yesterday. After the chilly weather of late, washing the decks and cockpit in the sunshine in a T-shirt was rather pleasant!

Then it was down below with the cleaning materials for a thorough spring clean.

High tide was around six in the evening so shortly before I fired up the engine for the first time in several months and went for the aforementioned penultimate cruise. All of about 30 yards to raft Erbas up outside of Pagan!



Big sister and little sister!

The similarities between the two boats are obvious! Same hull colour, teak interior, classic seventies styling etc. It's no wonder really that Pagan was an instant hit with us.

(We said we wanted a bigger Erbas and we found one!)

But it's only when you put the two boats side by side that you realise how much bigger Pagan is



She's twice as much boat near enough when it comes to internal volume.

And it was laughable how many times I hit my head whilst cleaning inside Erbas! For two and a half years I've managed perfectly happily on board her but how quickly one gets used to the extra space and headroom!

There's a few final jobs to do this morning and then I shall set off on the final voyage. The brokers already have people interested in her and she isn't even technically on the market yet so hopefully she won't hang about.






Tuesday 12 April 2016

Mixed feelings and more to come

I've spent today transferring all our gear from "Erbas" to "Pagan". Excited as I am about our new pride and joy, seeing "Erbas" as an empty boat was quite sad really.

Mind you, she's floating rather higher in the water!

"Pagan" is a shambles as a result, kit everywhere that needs to be found a home be it permanent or temporary

Tomorrow I get to clean "Erbas" inside and out and on Thursday I move her downriver on what will be my last voyage with the boat that has done us so proud over the last two and a half years

She'll be up for sale with Clarke and Carter at Burnham Yacht Harbour by the weekend and they've got a potential buyer already lined up to come and look at her

I hope she finds a new owner or owners who'll have as much fun with her as we have. Our ownership has been a short period in our boating life but an important one as it is "Erbas" that has convinced us to move on and up to a bigger boat and spend most of our time afloat

Sunday 24 January 2016

A winter weekend, or was it?

Well it really doesn't seem much like winter! I think winter was last week!!!

But first, the latest and hopefully anti-penultimate update on the house sale saga

The outcome of the survey of the drainage system was that there was no fault to be found so the finger of blame for the cracks in the walls is now being firmly pointed at the neighbours Leylandii hedge (which was my firm conviction all along). The recommendation being that the hedge should be removed or a root barrier installed and the cracks monitored.

To cut a fairly long story short, we ended up having to agree a reduction in the sale price of the house to keep the buyers on board. Our estate agents weren't happy as they wanted us to go back to the market and find a new buyer but we simply do not have time now. We're losing money every day we delay the move and it would probably take at least another couple of months to go through the whole conveyancing process again with the added prospect of the same stumbling block getting in the way

So now we are just awaiting the buyers receiving a revised mortgage offer from their lenders and everything is in place to exchange contracts. We're hoping that will happen this week so now the hunt is on for a place to rent as a stop gap.

So back to boats at last ...

So what of the hunt for a bigger boat? Well as I posted on the SV Pagan blog (and apologies for duplications but it's tricky deciding which blog to post stuff at the moment) the combination of the reduced net proceeds from the sale of the house, the costs of the abortive house purchase and the attendant extra outlay renting for six months means our Bigger Boat budget is now rather less than we'd hoped. That pretty conclusively rules out "Safe Return", the Vulcan 34, unless there is a minor miracle.

So we now need to look in the £20k to £30k price range and we won't have a huge amount of spare cash for improvements and upgrades so we need to be careful to buy the right boat at the right price to keep the total spend within budget

With nothing to keep us at home this weekend, Jane and I pootled off down to Essex at lunchtime on Friday and headed straight to Burnham Yacht Harbour to have a look at a twin keel centre cockpit Westerly Discus ketch that appeared on my radar the other day

I've had my eye on the Discus for some considerable time, even posting about the marque back in the Brigantia days in a post about future boat possibilities ...


... in a post called That's settled then ... way back in 2011!

However, we'd never had a chance to actually get on board a Discus and have a good look.

Overall it shows promise. We really like the main cabin, heads and v-berth setup. It's near ideal. The settees could bear being an inch or two wider, especially the port settee but that settee pulls out to make up a double which would be a great "chill out" feature as well as extra guest accomodation

However, as we half expected from the photos and the blurb, the "walk" through into the aft cabin is cramped and the aft cabin itself is rather poky and restricted. It would serve as a guest cabin but it wouldn't be very usable as a second living space for us. You do get a plethora of hanging lockers with one in the v-berth, one opposite the heads and two in the walk through though.

However, the price paid is a distinct lack of deck storage. There's just the one cockpit cave locker and it's not huge. Our conclusion about the model in general is that it would meet our needs very well but we might actually be better off with the previous W33 model without the walkthough.

The W33 is the same hull and a nearly identical deck moulding but with the access to the aft cabin through a hatch at the aft end of the cockpit. The aft cabin has two good single berths which will be better for guest accommodation and may serve better as a second living space too. Plus you get a second cockpit locker instead of the walk through which would be a definite help

So what of the specific Discus? Well on our initial visit on Friday we were sufficiently interested to plan to go back on Saturday for a more detailed look on a warmer dryer day.

Meanwhile, we entertained Tony for dinner and a couple of beers once back aboard Erbas but none of us felt like a session so we made it an early night

We met up again for breakfast at the Yacht Club on Saturday morning and then, after stopping off for a brief chat with Carol (owner of 'Safe Return') to update her on the latest developments, Jane and I headed off to Burnham once again

This time aboard the Discus it was about details and I'd benefited greatly from following Toby around whilst he surveyed "Safe Return" for us a couple of weeks ago. I'd got a much better idea of what to look at and what to look for and it wasn't all good

There's a list of good points - the sails are all less than five years old, indeed the genoa is totally unused, she's got a cockpit tent, she's well set up (in theory at least) and there's no indication inside or out of any significant keel problems. The headlinings are recent, the deck soles have been protected by carpet and are undamaged and the woodwork, excepting the trim around a couple of deck hatches, is in very good order

You'll have figured out by now that there is a but. Actually, there's quite a few buts ...

The main and mizzen many only be five years old but the stack packs are starting to disintegrate. There's holes and splits in quite a few places. Worse still, a cursory examination of the sails by unzipping the stack packs showed, after I'd avoided half a dozen or so hibernating wasps (!) that the sails are grubby. They'd probably come up OK with a valet but the stack pack fabric would need replacing and that would be a good few hundred quid

The cooker is the original Flavel Vanessa and whilst it looks clean it has no flame failure devices and would have to go.

Unsurprisingly, the instrumentation, such as it is, would need totally updating - the VHF is non-DSC, there is only a basic elderly GPS, and there's no system integration at all.

The upholstery in the saloon is nearing the end of its life although it's in better nick elsewhere.

On deck, the deck itself needs repainting and the 16 year old standing rigging would have to be replaced in its entirety. There's significant visible surface rust on all the rigging and guardwires and I could feel distortion in the rigging wires in a number of places just running my fingers up it from deck level (which means strands have kinked or parted within the wires).The running rigging is all virtually life expired too.

There were other problems besides - unsecured batteries, a leak under the helmsman's seat, ratty wiring all over the place and so on and whilst the engine is claimed to be reliable and in good order, it is a raw water cooled Volvo Penta which is getting on towards 30 years old and we'd have to buy the boat on the basis of having to re-engine at some point if not immediately

After due consideration, we walked away from that particular boat at least for the time being. The asking price somewhat below top dollar for a Discus but nowhere near low enough!

We've decided to keep looking and only go back to that particular Discus if we're not finding anything better in a few months time.

Boat viewing over, we headed down to have dinner, drinks and chat with our good friends aboard the good ship Laurin. As always, a great evening and good Scotch having been consumed we stopped over and after breakfast this morning headed straight for home

The focus now for the next two or three weeks is (hopefully) on getting moved. Meanwhile, we'll keep our eyes on the boat sales websites and await developments

Oh and the outside temperature readout in the car reckoned it was 14 degrees today! In January! Winter? What winter?

Monday 11 January 2016

Hold it!

Things have gone somewhat pear shaped over the last few days and it now looks increasingly unlikely that we'll be buying the Vulcan 34 "Safe Return". More detailed reasons for this unwelcome turn of events are over on the Pagan blog which I'll keep alive until we do find "Bigger Boat"

There is still an outside chance we will get back in the game on "Safe Return" but I'm not counting on it

Friday 8 January 2016

Two boats...

Means two of everything including two blogs!

If you haven't already, come on over to svpagan.blogspot.com for the latest on our purchase of our new boat

Meanwhile there'll still be updates here as we through the slightly sad process of putting Erbas up for sale and finding a new owner for her