Moody 47

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The owner of a 1986 Moody 47 lives aboard and sails it often in heavy weather off the northwest coast of Scotland, with strong winds and sometimes big seas. He says he fitted a 1500 W Lofrans Tigres windlass in its own compartment at the bow, with a deck hatch to a sail locker that is also reachable from inside the boat.

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The owner says the boat is cutter rigged but he has not really used the staysail; he plans a self-tacking arrangement to sail it as the cutter it is designed to be. He installed two new backstays and changed the running backstay system so he can bring it down to deck level beside the shrouds from the cockpit.

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The owner bought a 1986 boat on purpose because it was "built at a time when boats were overbuilt." Drilling the hole for a bow thruster tube, he found the hull 25 mm thick, against 10 mm on a 50 ft production boat being fitted in the same yard. He adds that the deck-to-hull joint is fiberglassed together and bolted every 6 in along the toe rail.

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The owner says the boat is well set up for short-handed sailing and that half his sailing is solo. He describes a cutter rig, medium displacement, with a ballast to displacement ratio of "about 40%." To windward it "does not slap. It cuts through the waves," and with the sails set right it will "just sail in a straight line" without the autopilot.

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The owner likes that the boat has its own small engine room, with good access to the engine and space to mount the electrics, instead of having to take furniture apart to reach the engine as on many slightly smaller boats. He also wanted a separate shower area, a side-entry aft cabin berth and a front-opening fridge, and found all three here.

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After four years of refit, the owner says the labor would have come to "over quarter of a million" pounds at professional rates, plus over 100,000 pounds of new parts. He bought the boat cheaply because it was "in a bit of a state," and has redone or redesigned every engineering system including the rig. Cosmetics are the part still to do.