Craftsmanship v botch jobs
Lady of Lewis has only had 4 owners in total, that's including me. The boat was commissioned and built in 1983 with the interior being finished in a beautiful mahogany by Taylors boat yard in England. However he then only kept for just a few years before being sold on. I understand that the original owner commissioned the boat with the plan of sailing off one day, to then realise he wasn't all that keen on sailing. Now he clearly was a smart man because he not only had managed to make enough money to commission a rather large yacht but had also chosen one of the most beautiful! Having said that I'm not sure how someone comes to the decision of building a boat without first testing out that you actually enjoy sailing...
The second owner kept her for over two decades and lived on her in France where I am sad to say many of the problems started. The original construction really was fantastic quality which is evident through the parts of the boat which have not been hacked around, although they have clearly lacked some love and attention. The bulk of problems have come from the second owner doing a lot of DIY with little care given to aesthetics and in a lot of places to decent construction techniques, on top of that there was little to no maintenance done on those parts that are still the original construction.
The third owner was in fact the son in law of the second who had clearly begun to work on the boat having professionals involved but did not get very far before stopping, i'm sure much to his dissappointment and my delight. There she sat in the yard in Plymouth for 3 years until I picked her up.
So the aim is for me to restore her to her glory days doing it myself but doing things properly. I only hope I can deliver the quality that I want to.
Now that I'm slightly less overwhelmed by the whole project and have learnt a lot about how not to do things I decided to take all the cabinet fronts off to enable easier plumbing and electrical upgrades. Of course as i did this i have now discovered that even the cabinet frames were am owner number 2 upgrade and therefore are pretty shoddy. Looks like i'll be redoing those too. On the bright side at least I'm going to know every single inch of this boat once I have finished!
