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The Pearson 424, Silverheels, was for sale briefly last spring. But I needed her to live aboard a while longer, so I took her off the market. She’s still off, but is likely to be for sale again by around Christmas. Full specs & more at http://www.silverheels.us
Tor
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Captain Tor Pinney
http://www.silverheels.us
admiral@silverheels.us
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fetching-martinique.jpg
Dan,
The credit for utilizing the dead space outboard of the shower stall belongs to someone else. I saw it done on a 424 I inspected before I ever bought Silverheels, and many other owners have created access to that space before and since. It’s a no-brainer upgrade.
When I got my boat, the PO had been content to dump his shower grey water into the bilge (!!), the pig. I installed a direct, shower-pan-to-thru-hull overboard sump pump beneath the head sink, which has served well. For what it’s worth, I attempted to convert Silverheels’ original fiberglass shower sump box, athwarships forward of the V-drive, into a seawater intake distribution box. After a couple of failed attempts, I built a seawater intake manifold instead and have used the old, now-lidless shower sump box as a down under gear locker.
Tor
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Silverheels/424#17
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Ewan,
I wrote up few dozen of my 424 projects as Cruising Tips and, in some cases, longer articles for the magazines over the past 10 years. Two-dozen of those tips wound up posted online at http://www.tor.cc/articles/c-tips.htm , and others at http://www.tor.cc/articles/tips.htm . I plan to keep that http://www.tor.cc website going even after I eventually shut down silverheels.us, so those pieces will still be accessible. In fact, I have another dozen or so still to post there when I get around to it.
Of course, there are scores of Silverheels projects that I did not write up as (what I call) “Tor’s Tips.” When asked, I described some of them to this forum in some detail at the times I did them, often with photos. I don’t know if those emails were preserved by pearson424.org. I’m sure I have them because I file all correspondences, but I don’t plan to do anything with them. At some point I just figure it’s all dust in the wind anyway. 😉
If anyone is interested enough, they are welcome to peruse http://www.silverheels.us/for-sale.htm , which will remain online until Silverheels is sold, and let me know if there are specific projects & upgrades listed there that you’d like more info on. I’m always happy to share stuff like that with other sailors.
Thanks,
Tor
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Silverheels/424#17
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A few closing comments:
– Since I have my own domain, I can (and do) set up exclusive email addresses for all kinds of things. My address here, 424@silverheels.us, is unique to this group. No one else has ever seen it outside of this group. If it were compromised, I’d know in an instant that the 424 database had been hacked – or that one of you owners was peddling our emails 😉 Obviously, knowing Ewan, I’d never consider any other possibility. Anyway, I can say absolutely my email address has been safe here.
– Juniper83, if you’re getting that many spam emails, plunk down $30 a year for SpamArrest. I used to get up to 400 spams a day (!). I signed up with them and the spam dropped to less than 1 a month.
– Regarding you all supporting this forum, Ewan, you’re way too nice. Me, I’m naturally cantankerous when I feel it’s warranted. I tried to help you with this issue a couple of years ago, a few sensitive children here were offended, and you backed off and have been carrying the full burden ever since. Now, I’m outta’ here soon, so it’s not my problem anymore, but all of you who will continue to own 424’s and to benefit from this great forum, shame on you for leaving it all on this one, way-too-nice guy. And kudos to those of you who have stepped up to the plate.
And that’s all I’ll say about that. For now.
Good luck,
Tor
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Silverheels/424#17
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Chris,
That’s a pretty severe accusation. Ewan has busted his butt and his wallet for all of us for a long time, now. Unless you have incontrovertible proof that he sold your email address for profit, you owe him an apology – and also your fair-share contribution towards the costs of the website and forum, along with everyone else reading this.
So, what proof do you have that he sold your email address? (Hint: Getting spammed at chris.olsen06484@gmail.com does not constitute proof of collusion, only of hacking.)
Tor
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Silverheels/424#17
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I guess you’ll have to wait for other owners with the same layout as yours to chime in. It’s hard to imagine that Pearson didn’t make that table convertible, that being such a common arrangement in boats since forever. Maybe there was a short pipe that has been lost over the years. Of course, you could install a rim for the table to rest on, too, but might need something extra to prevent it from leveraging up when someone sits on the inboard edge. As for the cushions, it sounds like you may have to re-cut some of them to double as bed fillers. Strange, though, that all that wasn’t done by Pearson.
Good luck. Have fun.
Ryan,
I have a different layout, but yours is common in sailboats. Your table is almost certainly designed to drop down. Some of the vertical cushions are just as likely sized to fill that area, forming a full bed. If there’s room below the floorboards, the table’s support pipe probably drops down. If not, then there will be a short pipe laying around to replace the long one when converting to a bed, or else you just dispense with the pipe and the tabletop sets on rims.
Ryan, if you do eventually take that boat cruising, you’ll find that wifi can sometimes be scarce, precious, expensive, and very slow. To download a couple of 1MB photos takes a long time and can be frustrating when the same photos, resized in advance by the sender to 60kb, would have served the same purpose. We all look forward to seeing your progress with your new boat, but it would be a kindness if you (and all of us!) would please resize photos before you share them in emails. If you don’t know how, ask any kid to show you. 😉
Tor
Sure, I deflate and stow the dinghy for offshore passages, too, but much of my cruising is island-hopping. Then I’m often using the davits and the windvane simultaneously.
Silverheels’ “homemade hardtops” are awesome. I like the way they look, and love the way they last. No more getting the bimini re-stitched in every other port of call! The attached PDF is a pretty detailed account of the project that appeared in Cruising World. I think the idea is catching on; I’m still getting emails about it from readers more than a year later.
South Africa to NZ? Wow. Where are you and Miss Kathleen now?
Tor
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Silverheels/424#17
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Attachments:
6310413108254366920.PDF
Dennis,
You’re right about Silverheels’ “almost there” davits. A tad higher is all they need now, plus more and stronger hoisting purchase to have the option of lifting the dinghy with its 8hp outboard on. I may leave those tweaks for the next owner, though.
As you’ve indicated in your email below, the stern gear on a cruising boat is best approached as an integrated whole. IMHO, less is generally better, as I suggested in my little rant against jungle gyms earlier. Simple, strong, widely spaced davits are a real plus for cruising. I also wanted a windvane. That presented some conflicts, but I eventually worked them out. All windvanes except one (as far as I know) present an obstacle to carrying a dinghy in davits, requiring the davits’ arms to be disproportionately long so the hoisted dinghy can ride abaft the windvane. The one exception is the Auto-Helm windvane, made in America by Scanmar Marine, the same guys that make Monitor Windvanes. The Auto-Helm’s airvane connects to its trim tab by flexible cables instead of a rigid post like all other windvanes, so it’s easy to leave an open space for a hoisted dinghy to ride in between, snug against the vessel’s stern rail. Wide davit arms allow for a sizeable solar panel on a 1-plane pivoting mount, which is worth its weight in gold for the additional solar power output.
Of course, a windvane requires offsetting the swim ladder, but Silverheels already had an offset boarding gate cut into her pushpit, so moving the ladder over was a no-brainer anyway. Admittedly, it’s a squeeze to use the swim ladder when the dinghy is hoisted in the davits, and with the mizzen sheet, a stern anchor, and other stuff “back there,” it’s kind of cluttered, but altogether the setup works. The one notable compromise I had to make is that I cannot tack the mizzen sail while the windvane’s airvane is upright because the boom won’t clear it. But dropping the airvane for the occasional tack offshore is not a big deal; only takes a few seconds.
The attached photos may be more useful than my thousand words.
Tor
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6785169704647887048.jpg
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I once half-wrote an article I was calling “Back There,” looking at all the crap modern sailors pile onto the stern of otherwise beautiful sailboats. Joe, I’m sure yours is a functional work of art, but a walk through any crowded boat yard or marina will reveal how far those things are sometimes taken. Perhaps poor, deprived sloop owners have to come up with something to compensate, but ketches really don’t need much “back there.”
Consider that a wind generator is ideally mounted halfway up the mizzen mast (and the radome on the mainmast). Extra antennae perch happily on the mizzen spreaders, and if you simply reverse the mizzen sheet (which takes one second if you’ve led it correctly), you then have a ready outboard motor hoist. So, then, what would any ketch owner need a jungle gym for? (Oh, right, you can mount spotlights on it. But why?)
Davits – just plain davits – are a real plus on a cruising boat. Add a cross bar between the arms, set well aft, and you have a perfect 1-plane swivel mount for a 200w solar panel. Period. End of construction. Anything more seems like a lot of flashy, expensive deadweight on a ketch, and often an ugly deadweight at that. IMHO.
Tor
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Silverheels/424#17
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I can measure Silverheels’ davits for you, Dennis – just tell me which dimensions you want – but I can’t recommend them. One was bent and badly kinked, when I bought the boat. (The seller said it happened when he forgot to pull out his dinghy’s drain plug one time and it rained hard that night.) I straightened it and had a welder add struts, which have since proven themselves sufficient. Then I realized the arms were too short to actually fit even a small (9′) inflatable, so I had extensions welded on, at a slight angle to increase the hoist height. The davits could still stand to be a couple of inches higher – raising their base mounts is on one of my to-do lists – but they lift the dink, engineless.
These appeared “locally made” from the beginning. Now they look doubly so. They work, but only just. If I were doing it again, I think I’d invest in better-built, better designed davits.
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Thanks, Charlie. Now I need to figure out how to get a copy of that to Nero. He’ll be tickled.
I first sailed down there in the late 70’s, and have returned many times since, most recently this past summer. Palm Island, being private, doesn’t change much, but most of the other islands have changed a lot. C’est la vie.
