Logbook
The refit week by week: what we fix, what we get wrong, what it costs.
Refit · Electrics & systems · Sailing · Behind the scenes
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The engine runs, the teak lives again, the ceilings come down
Three days aboard at the end of summer: the engine finally fires, the cockpit teak gets its colour back, the ram is fixed with 3D-printed bolts — and six of the eight cables in…
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The €14,000 debt I never saw coming
There are subjects you would rather never have to write about. This one comes down to one simple word, which takes on a very different weight when you buy a boat: trust.
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One week to rewire the whole boat
That week there was no clean plan on paper. There was a boat, a pile of new gear out of its boxes, and the idea that we were finally going to drag the electrical…
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They had it all planned. The weather had not been told.
A weekend of work with a crew, planned down to the detail, that the weather decided to rewrite. What got done on CQS Evidence anyway.
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A weekend alone, a whole hull, and arms giving out
There are weekends where you make progress, and weekends where you finish. The end of scraping the antifouling off the whole hull, alone, in one weekend.
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Replacing the skin fittings and seacocks on an old sailboat: the job that decides a boat’s fate
There is work that shows, and work nobody ever sees that can decide the fate of a boat. Taking the original skin fittings and seacocks off a 1979 Mikado.
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First jobs on CQS Evidence: clearing out, lithium batteries and stripping the hull
Clearing out, fitting the lithium batteries and starting to strip the hull: the first weeks of work aboard our 1979 Mikado.
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Our 1979 Mikado: the story, the refit and the start of CQS Evidence
Why a 16-metre 1979 CNSO Mikado ketch, how we found her and what it commits us to: the first entry in the logbook.