Life is short

I have a decision to make. Work on the Achilles has slowed to a standstill for a variety of reasons. Do I continue, or do I get on with my life and direct my sailing attentions elsewhere? Neither alternative is particularly ideal. Let me explain, why.

First off, let’s take a cold, hard look at the value of the boat. I’m not talking about her “value” as a nebulous term, involving the freedom to sail the high seas, and so on. I mean the cold, hard cash one might expect someone to pay to take the boat off your hands. You can purchase an Achilles 24 in the UK for around £4,500. That works out to around €5,400 in todays money. At that price, she is probably in mint condition. In all likelihood, better even than when she rolled off the production line. Mind you, thanks to Brexit, if you’re in the EU you’re going to have to pay VAT on that. In Ireland that would bring the total price up to €6,642.

My own Achilles is showing her 51 years of age. With a lot of effort, attention and expense, I could bring her back to a nominal state where she could be sold for at best, €3,500. But at what cost? For example, when I stored the boat at the side of the house, I propped up the road trailer on blocks and removed the wheels. The wheel hubs were also in a bad way, so I removed them.

In late 2022, I decided that the worst issues were the holes in the cockpit for the Morse gear and the original engine hatch. I decided that the best course of action was to reinstate the road trailer and tow the boat to a yard, for remedial works. In other words, “whatever it costs, make this boat seaworthy!” I purchased four wheel hubs, four wheels with tyres, and a new tow hitch. I was motivated to get the boat into a roadworthy condition, so I could tow her to a yard. The replacement trailer parts cost around €1,800. As I can’t tow a boat of that weight with my car, add another €500 to have her towed to the yard. The yard might have charged me (at a wild guess) €2,000 to do the repairs. So now I’m spending €4,300 on my own boat, which might have a resale value of 80% of what I spent. I didn’t care, because I had decided that the true value of the boat wasn’t the sticker price but instead, the value of having a sailing boat. In other words, I was happy to pay over the odds to restore her.

Boat economics: spend €4,300 on your pride and joy, and have a boat worth €3,500.

Unfortunately, I made a fateful discovery. The road trailer supports were heavily corroded. The black paint was holding them together in places. Yes, yes, I should have discovered this before ordering trailer parts. There was no way this trailer was going to make it 80 or 100 kilometres to a yard. I ended up re-selling the trailer parts at a discount. You can probably see where this is headed.

In the short term, I decided I would have to do the fibreglass work myself. I persuaded myself that if I could repair any leaks (all are above the waterline), she could be launched. How I move the boat from my driveway to the sea is another issue. I would also need to insure the boat before launch. Insurance would require a survey. A surveyor would say the keel bolts needed to be removed/inspected and most likely replaced. Whatever about the standing rigging, and who knows what else they might discover? Again, this negative equity situation of boat economics was predicated on having a boat to sail. Eventually, the question raises its head: “would you not be better off, buying a second-hand boat in sail-able condition, and sailing that?” Nikea was just that boat - I could fly to Greece and sail for two weeks without worrying about fibreglass repairs. But here’s the thing - Nikea is now up for sale.

So, I suddenly find that my sailing options are reduced to a boat which is a long way from the sea in all respects and I’m not getting any younger. Most of us, I’m guessing, postpone our sailing dreams for a future date when whatever stars we need in alignment, suddenly find themselves in the right position. I’m not the first person to say “life is short.”

It seems like the end of the road for the Achilles. The sum of her parts are definitely worth more than the whole. The mast is in good shape. Similarly, the boom and the spinnaker pole. New winches were added, a few years ago. The sails aren’t terrible, and so on. But here’s the thing - the Achilles 24 is a design by Chris Butler of Butler Mouldings. Only a fixed number were made, and many are still navigating the high seas. It would be a complete tragedy to take a perfectly-good hull and carve it up because of the implied cost of restoring her to a useful condition. The options distill down to these paltry three:

1. Repair the fibreglass (etc) and re-launch the boat.
2. Sell or donate the boat to someone willing to take on the work.
3. Sell off the parts, cut up the hull, and dump it in a skip.

To date, I have been focused on option #1, but I’m now of the opinion I don’t have the time or the facilities to complete this work. I have long-since given up on the idea of selling the boat, or even giving her away. I’m not sure there are many people as daft as me, willing to take on such a project. But option #3 is so final, so terminal. It’s not like the boat is unseaworthy or that the keel is liable to fall off, or some reason to justify a total write-off, so it seems terribly unjust to take a saw to one of the remaining Chris Butler hulls. At what point does a “project boat” become unsalvageable?

I am going to try an experiment. I am going to offer the boat for free (or close enough), with some ground rules. The first rule is simply so that someone doesn’t come and take the mast and say they’ll “come back later” for the rest. Now I have a boat which doesn’t have a mast - that’s definitely a chainsaw job. Take the hull first or together with everything else. The second rule is a bit trickier. Someone can show up, decide “yeah, I want it…” and then disappear into the ether. I don’t want to put time constraints on someone having to move the boat from my house to wherever they plan to do the work. I know first-hand that it can be hard to arrange such things. But I also don’t want to find I’m still looking at the boat a year later, and now I can’t do anything about it because I “sold” it to someone. So the second rule is you need to come and get the boat in a timely fashion. Sure, it will take some organising. I don’t mind if you’re contacting me to say “it’ll be another week” or something like that, but I really want to avoid the situation where I’m writing a blog post this time next year, with a boat still by the side of my house. I’ll create a mini web site (off this one) for people who might be interested. I wish it hadn’t come to this, but there you go.

On the plus side, I am now in the market for a new boat. One which is in the water and ready to sail. Life is too short!