New Boat

The new Sunbrella canopy in Dune was fitted on Thursday.

Also the new Silvertex cockpit upholstery in Champagne was fitted.  It is hard when choosing a colour scheme based on small swatches of fabric, but we had a little help courtesy of photos from another Hardy Seawings 355 Ibis which is for sale at Essex Boatyard www.boats.co.uk. Moonshine's new look is in our opinion outstanding and we are really pleased with the finished job, the transformation is like us having a new boat...just don't mention the blue fenders, that subject is an air of contention at the moment!

 

A small job this last week was turning the void space under the forward bed into useable storage. The boards were painted, the void space carpeted out, a removable hatch lid made and the cushion covers were taken home and washed.  Perhaps things that we don't need to get at that frequently would be best suited for that part of the boat, as it means disturbing the bedding to get at it.

 

 

The out drive trim pumps have both been  refitted after removing them last weekend for stripping and repainting and new ATF  was put in the reservoirs after installation.

 

 

 

We only have 1 saloon door lock key on Moonshine, and that to obtain spares would be a sensible thing to do.  Therefore 3 Mobella key blanks were obtained from www.keytrader.co.uk . We didn't realise that our key was not the correct key and that a locksmith would not be able to cut from it.  Therefore the correct coded key was obtained from eBay after obtaining the key code from the inside of the door lock...top boat security I know, and had we known this we would have just purchased the full set from eBay originally. Anyway, the new key blanks look better quality than the new key, so now we can just take all of these to a local locksmith for them to cut. But talk about taking the long way around!

 

 

We have had Moonshine now for one full year as of the 21st December, and over the last year she has come on in leaps and bounds, I think her previous owners would hardly recognise her now.  Perhaps her original owners wouldn't recognise her at all since she was formally known as Premier Crew.

 

We have noticed that another Hardy Seawings 355 Porkys Revenge II that was for sale at the same time we bought Moonshine is at long last under offer http://www.plymouthyachts.co.uk.  She certainly has taken a long time to sell, a good 4 years we think.  It was from Porkys that we got the idea of installing a Lewmar size 1 Portlight in the mid ships cabin back in May to allow more natural light in.  Since all of the 355's had slight differences it is nice to improve on Moonshine using different ideas used on the other vessels Hardy built.    

We still have more jobs to do both mechanically and internally, but next weekend we intend to enjoy her since she is all 'ship shape' again, and are planning a little inland cruise but not sure where just yet.