We bought a turn-key ready to go trawler to begin The Great Loop. A 2007 Mariner 40, ready to go, nothing else needed … right? Maybe, but after spending a bit of time aboard, we’ve been customizing her for our living & cruising style. So what have we added?
Cuisinart Microwave Convection Oven … no oven aboard, how was I supposed to roast veggies? Plus we quickly discovered, we can bake 6 or 8 cookies at a time — warm cookies melt in my mouth … and prevent me from eating the entire batch! Currently the price is only $175 – when we bought it, it was $249, which compared to the alternatives was still a deal.
Magma Newport Gas Grill … Optimystique came with a very nice grill – a portable model that grilled very nicely on the dock. David wanted the same grill we had aboard Winterlude, so now there’s a shiny new Magma Newport grill on the back rail.
Mantus #55 & FX23 Fortress Anchors. We totally upgraded the anchors and added 150′ of 5/16 hi test chain spliced to 150′ of 5/8″ 8 brait line. Sleeping well is one of our priorities.
Navionics+ US&Canada navigation for our Simrad chartplotter at the upper helm. I also added AquaMaps to the IPad and IPhone so we had up to date Active Captain data. We got Navionics from West Marine which was not the least expensive, but I wanted to physically go to a store and play with it to make sure it had coverage all around The Great Loop. It seems so, we’ll see!
Charts & Cruising Guides… luckily the boat came with Florida charts & guides, but we purchased 90 pounds and $900 of charts & guidebooks specifically for The Great Loop from Landfall Navigation. Who knew charts for the Loop would be so expensive! We’ll write a complete post on this topic, it’s far to complicated for here. But in the meantime, if you want to see the PDF I downloaded from Landfall Navigation listing all their recommendations, click here. (note: we didn’t buy everything, the weight would sink the boat and the expense would sink the bank account!).
Folding Bikes. We used the hoist to put our full size Giant Bikes up top. It worked, but was cumbersome and as everyone knows, the more difficult something is, the less use it gets.
So, after much debate, we added Ford Folding Bikes – made in the Dahon factory with alot of the same Dahon parts, but less expensive. Are they as good as the expensive Dahon bikes, probably not, but we got two for the price of one of the least expensive Dahon Mariners. Plus they fold and weigh just 28 lbs each to store easily in our back lazarette (below decks).
Backup Handheld VHF … Standard Horizon … not an Icom as I would have preferred, but much less expensive and it’s a backup, right? Plus it floats, is waterproof for long enough to snag it out of the water, has a water-activated light to help find it and 13 hours of battery use. The thing it doesn’t have is 6 watts of power, only 5 watts, but it radio tested just fine.
VacuFlush Head and Custom Holding Tank … plus plumbed for fresh water instead of salt water. Read the saga here: My New Boat Stinks … or here: More Scoop on Poop. Holding Tanks
New Interstate 8D batteries. One of the two old ones tested “unstable battery” with the West Marine Load Tester. So we replaced both, as well as the generator battery. The other 4 Trojan T108 6v batteries were installed in 2015 and test fine (whew!).
Taylor-Made Round Ball Fenders. The scoop on the AGLCA forum is that locking (i.e. 100+ locks on The Great Loop route!) is better with a couple of big round ball fenders. We have 4 good sized cylinder fenders. We also added Maine Coast Marine covers for all 6 of our fenders – these folks had a more reasonable price than others we checked. Plus they came in forest green!
Dyson V7 Car & Boat Vacuum. So far we love this vacuum. The negative reviews said it didn’t have a long enough charge, but for us aboard, we’ve never listened to it whine down to dead like we did with our old vacuum. David even used it to vacuum out the truck after I used it on the boat. Expensive, but so far a good addition.
So if you think you’ll buy a boat ready to go and sail off into the sunset … it’s possible, but at least for us, not practical. My advice? Think through your own lifestyle and what you plan to do with the boat. Before you buy the boat, set aside money to customize for you. Then allocate time before you plan to leave on your adventure to live aboard long enough to customize your lifestyle aboard. We spent 3 months. And ENJOY!
11 days and counting … but first we enjoy a week at Disney with grandkids, then drive the truck back to Central Illinois, leave it & fly back to restart Optimystique’s Great Loop!
What have you added to your boat that exceeded your expectations? Please leave a comment and share! Cheers: Jan 🙂
Nice. You can never have enough stuff!
Drift Away was a derelict when we bought it. It needed everything. And by that, I mean everything. It was even the topic of a blog entry and is one of the most popular Drift Away blog posts of all time.
Google “Trawler Drift Away” and scroll down to “popular blog posts”, click on “how much does it cost to buy a boat and cruise”.
Hi Dave! Or I can just go to my bookmarked blogs & read all about it. I’ve had Trawler Drift Away bookmarked since you started. Wishing you & Pam a great day! 🙂 Cheers! Jan
Jan – those are great additions to your trip. Unless I missed it in an earlier column, what do you have for a dinghy and are you going green with a Torqeedo or maybe a propane Lehr or a gas outboard? Love your website. We’ve done some local cruising across FL and up and down the coast in our 23′ center console but in a few more years we should be able to cruise away with something bigger when retirement comes. BTW, some of the FL lock walls can be greasy so you may want to save your fender covers and then slide them over the fenders after exiting the locks so they remain looking nice.
Hi Steve! We opted to go with the same dinghy & outboard we used in cruising the Western Caribbean – a 9’ AB aluminum RIB with a 9.8 Tohatsu. Our buddy boat went with a Torqeedo, but we like the range of the “old school” outboard (plus we know how to fix them!). Cheers, Jan