Contessa 26 Refit: Part 1 — How I accidentally bought a boat

An accidental purchase

I wasn’t planning on owning another boat for a couple of years as I’m mid way through a house renovation and my job is pretty consuming. But one came along and I kind of bought it by accident.

I already knew the boat I would likely buy — a Contessa 26.

Even when I had my old boat, a Sweden Yachts 36, which in almost every way is immeasurably better, I kind of hankered after one. They’re really pretty little boats and are sometimes referred to as the “first fibreglass classic”. I also like their go-anywhere pedigree (many have sailed round the world or had similarly epic adventures). And I was really sold on something much smaller because (in theory it would be cheaper to maintain and easy to single hand). They’re also relatively affordable compared to my ideal pocket cruising yacht — a Hallberg-Rassy 29.

Typically Contessa 26's go for between £5,000 and about £12,000. My game plan had been to (one day) either go for one immaculately refitted (unlikely) or buy a solid one in need of a big refit and get it as cheap as possible.

I had an active eBay search running just to keep an eye on what was going on for “some day maybe” reasons. A few weeks ago, I got an email alert showing one listed on eBay for around £400. This was only a starting price, but I kept an eye on it.

I kept an eye on it for the first few days of the auction. It kind of floated up to £1200 with about a week to go and just stayed there. Then three days before, it got another couple of bids and went up to £1500 and stayed there again. With eBay stuff tends to happen in the last few hours and so I thought this one would likely have a load more bids in the last 24 hours. I was in a meeting when the last minutes of the auction were happening and my phone vibrated to notify me. It was still at £1600. Almost without thinking, I put in a cheeky offer of £1750 in the last few seconds of the auction and then focussed on the meeting.

When I got out of the room, I checked and saw the following:

Ooops. But also yay!

I then spent the commute home pouring over the pictures in a lot more detail to see what I’d actually bought. #hownottobuyaboat

On my commute that evening, I started to study the scant details on the eBay listing to find out what I’d actually gotten myself into. She looked in good condition. The hull had no signs of blisters. The interior looked ok. There was no water up to the companionway. The engine looked too good to be true. I decided to be more encouraged by the broker’s assertion that “It could probably be sailed away with a little preparation by a competent person.” and “Not a difficult boat to bring back to good condition.” rather than be discouraged by the more ominous “The Yacht has been left here in our yard for some time and the owners have asked us to dispose of it for them”.

First viewing

She was in a boat yard about ninety minutes drive east of where I live, so I jumped in the car on Saturday to go and find out what sort of condition she was in and complete the transaction.

Upon arriving, I was greeted by an older man who asked what I wanted. Apparently he lives in one of the boats and owns several more in this yard. I told him that I’d bought the Contessa, waving at it. He said “I was bidding on that too, but you beat me” and led me to the office where the owner of the yard gave me the back story.

Apparently the previous owner was using it regularly and then had a baby. He planned to take a year off. One year turned into two. Two turned onto five. Five turned into ten. I felt quite sad for the little boat sat there all alone. After years of nagging on the part of the yard owner, the boat owner agreed to sell it and the rest is history.

I went to go check her out. There was a ladder waiting for me and I climbed up into the cockpit. It was a bit more tired than I expected somehow. I don’t know what I expected for a forty or fifty year old boat. The companion way hatch appeared to be locked and I cursed myself for not asking for the key before climbing up. Mike, the yard owner, anticipating my problem shouted up saying that it wasn’t locked, but that the washboards were just swollen and “a good tug should do it”. A good tug did do it and I was in. Like the cockpit, the interior was also looking a bit sad. The cabin sole was almost floating as the bilge was full of gravy coloured sludgy bilge water. The unusual galley configuration which seemed quite clever in the pics was clearly an amateur job. But bizarrely, the brand new engine was just sat there gleaming. It seemed so incongruous with the rest of the boat. A cursory glance at the sails suggested they were in good condition.

Back on deck, almost all of the deck hardware looked past its best. However the most obvious thing in need of repair was that the toe rail on both sides had been ripped out of the deck amidships. It wasn’t clear what caused it. Given the symmetry, a collision seemed unlikely. An overtightened rig seemed a possibility, incompetent crane operator or perhaps some poor cradling of the boat. I later developed a theory as to what caused it — but more on that in the next chapter.

Upon looking over the rig, discovered an awful roller-boom furling system and started musing on how hard it would be to convert it back to slab reefing.

The hull was in surprisingly good condition. Excluding the engine, it was the best part of the boat. There were no obvious signs of osmosis such as blistering. The gelcoat was in average condition. Some parts were very good… others had some deep chips. But nothing urgent. And the rudder looked to have been remounted at some point just before she was abandoned in the yard.

I paid the broker and negotiated three months of storage. My plan was to get her back in the water pretty quickly by doing the minimum required to make her safe and moving her closer to home so I could. But as I drove home I thought more about the complexities of doing half a refit, then sailing her home and then taking all sorts of things apart and then doing more of the refit. My thoughts started to drift towards refitting her properly where she was.