Well, I finally did it! I bought a sailboat. And, man is this going to be a project! She is tired and about as dirty as they come. She was sitting on flat tires and apparently she holds water pretty well. Its an older (1970 something) Sandpiper 565, A 18 foot day sailer. These boats were made in Canada. The hull appears to be quite solid. The biggest issue with this boat is that the sails are missing. The story is that they were stolen. The interior cushions are all there and they are in good condition, the only part of the boat that is. I think almost all of the standing rigging is there and looks to be in pretty good shape. The running rigging will all need to be replaced.
The keel is a crank up lead filled fiberglass centerboard, It seems to crank up and down nicely. The interior fiberglass is in great shape. These few shots are of my first looks at her! It takes a real visionary, or a lunatic to see value in this baby.
The ad on Craigs-list said Sandpiper sailboat Needs lots of TLC, $175. I watched this boat on Craigs-list for over a month, I couldn't bring myself to go take a look, she looked just a bit too far gone. I don't know what made me change my mind, but I decided to research the Sandpiper history. It seemed like a nice solid boat, hand laid glass, well built, and the group said it makes a great first sailboat; Hmm, maybe I had better go have a look. Well, after a half hour of poking around and thumping on the hull, doing a basic inventory of things I would need to buy, like sails and new tires for the trailer and about 50 gallons of gas for the pressure washer, LOL, the only real problem I could uncover was the soft cockpit floor. Let the negotiations begin; believe me, the owner was pretty motivated to have her out of his yard, Actually, I could hear his wife saying "make it go away", or something like that. We finally settled on $120. Actually, I only had $119 in my wallet, so thats where we ended up. I am now the owner of a pretty gungy 1975 Sandpiper sailboat.
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