Just when you thought it was safe to venture to the cockpit to get some fresh air….

Those who saw the first Mariadz, the dufour 455, will have had the benefit of seeing that marvel of modern engineering, the Maria Smallwood (now Dunlop) cockpit tent. In the future, these designs will be right up there with Concorde, the harrier jump jet and the Sinclair C5 🙂

Maria’s original design was not, as it appeared, inspired by a greenhouse or conservatory. It was in fact a carefully thought through design to ensure that the tent could be used in all conditions and could also be used when sailing. The join of the spray hood and Bimini were made of clear plastic to aid visibility. The vast amount of clear plastic prided excellent visibility. Unfortunately it didn’t prove Clyde-proof who took approximately seven seconds to escape and end up on the pontoon!

This fundamentally changed out of season sailing for us and allowed us, if you will forgive the mental picture, to go out sailing in pyjamas when everyone else was wearing full wet weather gear.  This also had the advantage of allowing us to defy the doubters and go out in most weather (not too much wind obviously….).  The cockpit tent was equally suited to life on anchor or in a marina and provided additional outside living space.  The easy access provided by the aft cockpit and stern-to mooring worked well.  We even found that the saloon stayed warmer since the companionway was protected from the outside elements. We had the work done by Jeckells, not the sailmakers – the other one, they were competitive and the job was to a reasonable quality.

So it was a little bit of a surprise when, just a few short months after having this wonder fitted, we decided to change the boat! It was no surprise when Maria subsequently insisted that we have the same again fitted to the Moody.

This time we spent some time talking to Paul Gray at Dolphin Sails. In the interim we had seen a beautiful Moody 49 called Mornin’ Gorgeous (a lovely boat owned by a lovely couple).

In their cockpit tent they had a back drop from the spray hood which acted as a mini tent – a porch for the companionway door or a very nice sheltered spot with good visibility if the weather got bad. Maria loved this and had to have it incorporated into our design. Paul also persuaded her to go for the mosquito nets that replace windows in a hot climate at night (normally at anchor). The Bimini part of the design works really well and removed the need for the supporting lines by incorporating this support into the legs of the Bimini.  When the sides were zipped in, it becomes a garden room, I guess the sea is our garden though :). We subsequently had ventilation added since the tent was so good it could cause issues with damp and heat creating black marks. Hopefully the ventilation pockets will resolve that.

The cockpit tent has been fantastic come rain or shine and incorporates the drop that allows a “porch” or more importantly a dry safe area in bad conditions.

As for construction, we had this made with weathermax and strataglass which apparently will not get tarnished like the clear panels did on our old dufour.  I guess time will tell.

However, it does look different in different weather conditions….

When we first got the Moody 54 the original fitted microwave had been replaced by a cheap and cheerful freestanding microwave.

With Maria that wasn’t going to stay like that for long! The first problem is that the corner where the microwave fitted means that it is best to have a right hand opening microwave…..there appear to be no (cheap) free-standing microwaves that are right hand opening – they all have the control panel on the right hand side and open to the left.

Having just refitted the kitchen in our home we had been impressed with Neff equipment and decided that the boat would benefit from the same level of quality.

It is important to make sure that the microwave fits in the gap though….. our gap was a little smaller than required but we were able to squeeze it in.

Moody’s originally had a thick double blue line along the top sides.  This does look good but we fancied being a bit different.  We were keen to change this and this will be done in two phases. Firstly, we asked Geoff at Atlantic Signs to provide a vinyl over the old blue stripe.  We think that this has modernised her.

We think that we will change this again in the future and change the two thick gold stripes to a single thin gold stripe.  That will be later 🙂

We have always been quite partial to “varnished” toe rails but of course the problem is the upkeep. All that sanding down and reapplying would become a nightmare. The research we had done on International Paints Woodskin had been encouraging and having tried it with excellent results on the cockpit table, we decided to do the same for the toe rail, hand holds and pushpit seats.

Preparation involves removing the stainless work and a light sanding but then the woodskin does the rest. It will need a lot of thin coats (4-6 seems good) to get the colour and the protection right and it seems we will need to add a coat every six months or so while we are travelling. Low maintenance and great looking – just like Maria……hmmm 😉 And bonnie approves too..

We also like the teak itself to not be grey and quite often treat it with the two part cleaner. It looks great but then fades away… 😦

 This was before we had put the wood skin on the toe rail but the teak came up really well.

As part of the modernisation of Mariadz, Maria wanted to make the saloon and stateroom look up to date. The old curtains didn’t look good, they were old.  We could have cleaned them up, but we thought they may fall apart and that they wouldn’t look good and could fall apart during the process.  Actually boat Windows, being so small, are not expensive to redo and we decided to go with a plain colour. We think they look great and make the saloon feel really homely at night when they are closed.

When we bought the Moody, it had a very low quality cooker on board.  Again, we suspect that this was as part of the refit after the galley fire caused by a dehumidifier long before she came to us.

Maria hated the one that had been fitted.  It had control buttons on the top, which meant that the pans on the hob pushed the heat sideways and you would burn yourself on the control when you tried to adjust the temperature.  There were also issues with how long it took to cook, with Maria’s roasts taking five hours to make!  Something was going to change.

Maria looked at a lot of different cookers as part of her replacement strategy.  She would keep going back to the stainless steel GN Espace range.  These are designed and built in the UK and are now fitted on a number of luxury yachts. Looking at the range decided that the OceanChef 3 was a good fit in the space that we had in the galley.  As usual it wasn’t an easy fit, although the cooker fitted perfectly into the space, it was a tight fit and we needed some work done to get the cooker to gimbal correctly.  The size of the cooker does mean that it will not go past 30 degrees but if we are trying to cook with that much roll then we are probably doing something wrong!

There was also a minor issue with the gas line that had been kinked and was not letting the gas flow.  Once this problem was rectified, the new cooker worked exactly how Maria wanted it.  We also added the stainless back plate for cleaning and heat protection.

Finally, we needed to have dehumidifier if we were going to live aboard or we would suffer from condensation and damp issues.  In the end we bought our second Meaco DD8L Dehumidifier which was great on the boat and in Italy.  We actually use it in the day heads rather than the saloon and also use this room for drying clothes.

We don’t like grey/silver teak and we know that is how it is meant to look naturally but sorry we like our wood brown!

So we spent some time investigating treatments that would make the wood look good but still allow it to breathe.  Varnish is a lot of work especially in the sun and we would have to sand down and reapply regularly or the wood would look awful.

Eventually, we opted to try International Paints Woodskin. A number of the forums ad good reviews of this and we thought it would make the teak table stand out.

We are really pleased with the results and this is one where a large number of light coats works a lot better than a thick coat.  It just needs reapplying every six to twelve months when you are in the sun and it will continue to look great.

Having had success in this area we decided to use it elsewhere on the boat but more of that later!

At some point prior to our ownership there had been a minor fire caused by a faulty dehumidifier.  This had caused fire, smoke and water damage.  Unfortunately, the previous owners had decided to repair the damage at the cheapest possible price and cut a number of corners.  Apart from rebuilding the galley that makes maintenance even more difficult than it was before, they had also decided to “enhance” the interior by fitting the units in the galley with Formica.  This meant that the French polisher I asked to refurbish the saloon shortly after we got Mariadz, pretty much laughed in my face about the chances of being able to match the wood.  Apparently due to different materials and sun lightening he had identified seven different colours of wood in the saloon alone.

So clearly we needed another approach we spoke to Stevie Pike from Watercraft UK based in Ipswich.

We discussed some options and looked into a way we could return the wood in the saloon to its former glory using an iron-on veneer.

This was not an easy job.  All of the headlining had to come down and each panel done individually.  The temperature is very important too or there can be problems with adhesion.  With lots of painstaking work each panel was recovered and then stained.  Clearly this isn’t going to be equivalent to a brand new luxury boat but the results are impressive and this has made her look 100% better. Now we just need to keep the curtains and blinds closed to protect the wood from the sun!

Unfortunately, Moody yachts are famous for problems with the headlining. Ours was made worse because every window in the saloon leaked which meant that rainwater went behind the headlining and destroyed the glue between the headlining and the fibreglass. when we first got the boat, we found that the headlining near the curtains was actually falling off the wall.

We spoke to Stevie at Watercraft UK about what we could do and he worked with a specialist to try and resolve this problem.  Some of the work was excellent, double stitching looked good etc. The problem we have had is that the glue has not been sticking well enough.  So we are still looking for the perfect solution but it is a lot better than it was. We then did the same in the sea berth but have had problems there too with the headlining sticking to the ceiling – more thought required.