On August 11th, 2008 We purchased a 1978 47' Litton Perry cruising yacht in Southport, North Carolina. She was designed as a blue water cruiser capable of handling the worst the open ocean can offer up and built by Universal Marine company in Taiwan.
The hull is solid fiberglass with a fair amount of Teak trim on deck. The interior has Mahogany plywood bulkheads and furniture faces with Teak doors and drawer fronts, the cabin sole (floor) is a layup of solid Teak and Holly.
Some of the major features are:
Two Cabins with in-suite head and shower
Two A/C - Heater units
Large Freezer/Refrigerator Unit
3 Burner stove with oven
Large Main cabin settee with table
New Autopilot
Cutter Rig - Mainsail, Jib and Staysail
Rollerfurling Mainsail
Rollerfurling Jib
Selftacking club footed jib
13'6" Beam (width)
We were warned that it needed quite a bit of cosmetic work but that it was structurally sound. On the plus side she had a new 100hp Yanmar diesel installed in 2003 which has been run for 800 hours (this equates to about 25,000 miles on a car engine). The cost of this engine and installation is close to what it cost us to buy the boat. There were also a handful of other recent equipment updates that add to the value of this beauty.
Upon initial inspection, all of the structural parts of the boat are rock solid indicating great design and construction. On the other hand the boat is a bit tired and needs a lot of work to get it into like new shape. As I told Julie over the phone when I first saw it "If you stand way back and squint really hard it looks great". The Hull while is in pretty good shape as far as nicks and scratches but the paint is old and faded. The transom is especially ugly where it boast the existing name "Wet Dream" (that's gotta go quick). The dinghy was named "Wet Spot", how clever.
The original teak decking was removed several years ago leaving non-skid and a bunch of epoxy patches where the screw holes where, we plan to sand the entire deck, paint the cabin sides etc.. and roll on new textured gelcoat non-skid decking.
The teak around the gunwales (edge of the boat) is pretty much shot so we plan to replace it with Ipe which is a South American wood that looks similar to Teak. Ipe is used in high end patio decks and has the same waterproof properties as Teak but it is tougher and costs about 1/5th as much. (After seeing a sistership online that replaced the original teak with synthetic decking we were inspired to use Ipe decking.
That's all for now, much more later
