Creating Secara

We started the new year sending the boat off with a stranger! We had debated painting her ourselves, as we had painted our previous boat and done an amazing job, but this time we decided it wasn't the right weather for painting a boat outside. After a bit of searching Ian found Adam who owns Kustom Kolor, a local vehicle painter not far from us. So off she went with Adam to get her new colour.

However there was no shortage of jobs to do while we waited. The engine needed servicing and sorting. There’s no point in having a beautiful boat and an ugly engine. In theory, this should have been a simple job. Remove the existing paint, sand her down, prime it, paint it, add the detail. Oh how far from simple this was! As you can see it looks beautiful here, but it took so many attempts. For some reason, although it was the correct primer and paint, the paint was problematic.  Ian had to strip it back and start again. Incredibly frustrating, but eventually it got sorted.

When we went to collect her after her paint job, there she was sitting in the yard, gleaming. She looked stunning, certainly not like an old 1980s boat, but Adam persuaded us she needed just a little something extra, so we agreed to bring her back a few weeks later for a bit of free customisation.

Once she was home we set to work refurbing the trailer, replacing her bearings and wheels and then replacing instruments so she will work well on the water, and fixings that, as always, meant tiny spaces with no room to manoeuvre.

Fortunately, we had a willing helper in our young next door neighbour Bruno (who was keen to be credited for his work :-) ) who didn’t mind fitting tiny nuts to hard to reach screws! I suspect we will have to repay him with a trip out around the bay, but that’s a small price to pay for a day with less back pain!

As things began to come together and she looked more like a boat again, she needed a name. She hadn’t had one previously so we had no worries about the superstitions on changing boat names. It took us a while as somehow her name didn’t leap out at us, but eventually we settled on Secara. A slight take on the Latin for 'cut'. It sounds good and we hope she will slice through the water.

The job Ian had been dreading was the antifoul. Antifoul is important as it stops all the wildlife attaching to the bottom of the boat as she sits in the water, but is horrible (and expensive) stuff to apply. She isn’t big, but it wasn’t a fun job, but although you really can’t see it here, she looks so much better with it done..  

Next was fitting the bilge pump (a little pump that automatically switches on and pups out any water when necessary), again, not difficult, but getting this pile of cables and attachments in place, reaching down into the depths of the boat, getting the pump to sit on the floor, with a big stiff plastic tube pulling it in the wrong direction does not make  for a comfy afternoon’s work. However we made it, and it seems to work. While we were there, we fitted the fuel tank too.

We haven’t yet decided if she will live on the drive, or in a boat yard, on the water, or a bit of each, but wherever she lives, she is going to need a cover that works while she is both on and off the water. Covers are expensive, so after a bit of investigating we decided to have a go ourselves. How hard can it be, shaping a cover to fit a boat from thick waterproof fabric, with no pattern and a very cheap sewing machine?

Most people cut their fabric to a manageable size (it soooo wasn't a manageable size at any point!) on the drive on a freezing January day don't they?

It turns out, if you aren’t too fussy about perfection, it's not too bad! Coping with huge amounts of fabric isn’t easy and UV resistant thread is thick, but overall, between us we did a reasonable job, and she now stays dry inside.

Doing it in the dark and rain made it even more fun!

Our final few jobs before returning to Kustom Kolor really brought her to life. The new seats went in, we added a little solar panel on and we were ready for her finishing touch.

She may be small, but she looks amazing.

Once the engine is on and steering connected, she is ready to go!