Refurbishing Shirley Rose: Part 1
Shirley Rose, a well-worn Santana 27, sorely needed refurbishing. When I took ownership, she was on stands in a sorry state looking for someone to bring her back to life. Since then, I’ve replaced or repaired most of her major systems and also done a fair bit of cosmetic work.
After poking my nose into pretty much every nook and cranny you can think of I realized that while the previous owner may have fixed things when they broke, he didn’t do much in the way of preventative maintenance. Corrosion was rampant. The batteries could barely hold a charge. I often found myself thinking how much easier all this would have been if he had just taken a little bit better care of the boat in the first place.
That said, I can’t harp on the previous owner too much. He’d had the boat for over a quarter century and did his best to maintain her when not busy raising a family.
