Several years ago in around 2021 my brother and I stumbled on a great idea. We have been sailing dinghies for years, and did do one long passage on the Alba Ventura, from Scotland to the Artic circle. But we have never owned our own boat. The opportunity arose, just after the COVID pandemic, a nice little Hurley 22 for an outrageously low price was available in Edinburgh. So, we did what all sensible engineers would do – we did a cost benefit analysis! It turns out to be one of the best decisions we ever made. The boat was in surprisingly good condition, and we were able to sail it the week we bought it. Its an interesting boat in many ways, and quite good as a first boat. It is small, but since everything from mooring fees to insurance is based on boat length, that also means its cheap to own. It is, even within the context of Hurley 22s quite unique in having a long fin keel and an inboard motor. The long fin keel means the keel is fully encased in the hull, making for a very seaworthy and stable vessel. The inboard is a nice feature in that it makes marina manoeuvring a much more pleasant experience when compared to the more common outboard configuration. What you win in manoeuvrability you lose in maintainability. The Hurley 22 is a tiny boat for an inboard, so there really is not much room to do any work on the engine.

We also got somewhat lucky with our marina. We did select it intentionally, but could not have known how up our street it was until we became members. The club is called Forth Corinthians, and it bills itself as ‘Affordable Sailing For All’ and is very much a do it yourself sort of place. Almost without exception, the club members are people who do not shy away from a challenge and there is no shortage of audacious plans and ideas. A quick walk around the marina and you will find people of all ages, tackling maintenance, repair and upgrade jobs of all levels of difficulty. As a nice example, our neighbouring club, the Royal Forth Yacht Club had one of their boats sink in the marina. This did not deter the Corinthians, one of the club members bought this boat, that was sitting on the sea floor, and set about re-floating it. The wonderful thing is that he was not alone, other members rallied around him and within a few short months the boat was afloat and restored beyond its former condition. This community spirit, and optimistic outlook is what I love about this club.

We have over the last few years had our fair share of challenges to deal with. Having never previously owned a yacht we had much to learn. Some simple jobs turned into big jobs, like changing the impellor on our inboard motor. The small space and limited access we had to work in on the 22 foot yacht meant it took us several days to remove the necessary bolts. Some jobs we never expected also came our way, for example when we set out to sail one day, started our engine. A fatigue crack in the engine mounts propagated at that moment in time far enough that the mount catastrophically failed, taking the battery starter cable with it. Thankfully there was no additional damage, we removed the engine mount, had it repaired professionally and rewired the starter motor. We were back in business, just in time for the weather to turn and ruin all our remaining days before lift out!

Lift out is itself a huge operation. Again, the club rallies together and makes sure the day is a success for all club members. I was on site for the full day, and around midmorning it was time for Tily Mint to make her way over to the crane. I had three club members assisting me on my first lift out, and thankfully since the boat has been moored at the club for years, there were experienced hand on deck to help me. All in all, the lift out was a success and I look forward to many more days spent at the marina, whether we make it out sailing or not!