Welcome aboard our boat's blogspot!

Cruising the Bahamas for a few months back in 1986 and then running up the East Coast to Long Island, N.Y., convinced me to organize my life to be able to cruise full time. Shortly thereafter, at the first Safety at Sea seminar in '87, I decided to sell my Morgan O.I. 41 ketch and look for a vessel that could more comfortably take the rigors of a circumnavigation. First on my list were steel or aluminum vessels for their strength, but after searching for 3.5 years and also viewing about 6 CSY Pilothouse Ketches, I found one I liked berthed in Solomon's Island, Maryland and wrote the check. The Pilothouse version had much to offer; ketch rig, large tankage for both fuel and water, inside 2nd steering station, deep draft, large aft cabin and full uninterupted interior access. The design used the same extremely strong hull as the Walk Over and Walk Thru 44' models which had a excellent reputation for rugged dependability as well as the ability to sail the pants off of any offshore cruiser of the day. I felt it was a great platform to 'tweak' into my retirement cruiser.

Well, after fifteen years "Memory Rose" has been 'tweaked' through many costly and time consuming modifications to become what we now jokingly call our, "Sheridan 50". Addition of a 6' bowsprit enabled me to enlarge the Genoa or jib by 125 sq.ft. and add a 260 sq.ft. staysail, making Memory Rose a Double Headsail Ketch. Main and mizzen sails now have added roach increasing their sail area by 15%. Total working sail area has now gone from 950 to 1400 sq.ft. which enables us to sail quite well even in light airs, but we still can reduce sail using many combinations of the 4 sails. Having assisted in building a new rudder for CSY pilothouse #1, "Whatever", owned by the late Bob Jefferies, led me to designing and build a rudder with a more modern design, 15% more area without increasing steering loads. Chain plate discussions led me to more research and a decision to not only change out my 22 year old chain plates in 2000, but to do so with a design I felt stronger and better for many reasons. The pilothouse itself, was made almost indestructible by fabricating an internal grid/matrix fiberglass support structure around the inside of the windows and then devising a double glazing system with permanent storm windows, each layer of which is 1/2" Acrylic. This far exceeds the original design qualities of 3/8" glass, which was already very strong. The entire 3 box refrigeration system was gutted and replaced with a 5 c.f. freezer and 7 c.f. refrigeration box insulated with Aerogel Vacuum panels built by Owens Corning with an R value of 75, the equivalent of 15" of foam. DC 12 volt Seafrost Direct Drive system along with many other modifications and additions that grace the interior and exterior and will be covered later in individual posts. I intend to add many photographs to compliment the future write ups.
Stay tuned and thanks for visiting.

Stay well and keep smiling,
ron