After many years of toil, hard work and great sailing, the time has finally come to move on and, very sadly, Tiffane has been sold.

We’ve been out in the boat a few times this year already (as much as possible considering the random weather), with an unpainted cockpit.  Last week though we put Tiffane back in the marina so that Richard could make the most of the warm weather on Monday and Tuesday to get it painted.  So, here are pictures of the new cockpit, the shiny new engine and the view down the river on yet another ‘fine’ British summer’s day.

All in all, this is the best she has ever looked, I think!

The engine was taken out this winter, to get it sand blasted and painted. We also decided to try to solve the water ingress problem in the cockpit once and for all, which meant sorting out the cockpit lockers which leaked like a sieve.  Richard has glassed in the floor, and he’s fitting new side-opening locker doors, and he’s going to replace the old top-opening lockers with solid seats.  We also took the opportunity to sort out the gas locker, so there’s a new sealed unit fitted.  To do this, Dave and Leigh will be moving all the battery electrics, main battery switch and the shunts are moving inboard underneath one of the bunks.  This should actually give us more useable space, because although the top-opening lockers will be sealed up, the gas bottle used to be in the middle of the port locker with the batteries at the forward end, so the port locker was unusable for storage.  With all this gubbins gone, and just a gas locker at the forward end, we’ve actually got space on the port as well as the starboard sides.

This was one of our last outings of 2011, we didn’t get much chance to sail this year as most week-ends seemed to be filled up.  We popped around the corner from Conwy to anchor off Llandudno for the night, and enjoyed some bacon butties the next morning!

A little selection of pictures from the 2010 sailing season.

Richard (Yacht Systems Conwy) did a fantastic job preparing and repainting the topsides.  The disadvantage of paint is it can chip, but the condition of the gelcoat on Tiffane means it would have been a massive job to return to a gelcoat finish.

I can’t recommend Richard enough, excellent quality work, friendly, always listens to what you say and 100% reliable – these pictures speak volumes for the quality of his workmanship.

Here she is just about to go in the water, we’ve just done the antifouling and waterline too.

Here are a couple of videos of us sailing around Conwy bay in September.

A short clip sailing Tiffane off the coast of the Isle of Man