Introducing Salsmic, the latest H28 to hit the water.

The owners are Sean and Sharron McColl with two daughters Alicia 2 and a half years old and Lara 10 months old.

Salsmic was purchased by Tender in June 2000.

The previous owner had purchased it new from Compass Yachts and had worked on it for a number of years. The boat was fitted out in kitset form from the bow to the middle cabin in teak and ply. A lot of this area was disassembled so that it could be fitted in a permanent form. At this time a 30 litre holding tank was installed.

Included with the boat were a number of major accessories, the main item being a new Yanmar GM20 engine, which was still in its crate and original packing. The rudder, tiller, all staunchions, pushpit, pulpit and toilet were supplied also. The boat came with enough teak and kauri ply to complete the boat.

We had a couple of mates who provided a lot of work for us which saved us a lot of time and money.

One mate did the complete fresh water set up for us with two tanks which have a capacity of 350 litres under the cabin seats and all stainless piping. He also built the fuel tank for us, which holds 70 litres. He also made a number of stainless fittings that were required and still has a couple more items to make yet.

Another mate did the complete wiring for us, painted the cockpit area, did the antifouling and helped solidly over a three month period on a number of other items needed to get us ready for launch day. He was a Young 88 owner but became quite attached to the H28.

This boat is effectively brand new and had never made it into the water. We decided to make it 5 berths and remove one of the quarter berths. This allowed us to create a large freezer on one side which goes into the cockpit area, we also have a large external storage area on that side in the cockpit. On the other side we have a small fridge and both are compressor driven. The freezer chills down to about –10 degrees and has stayed below 0 for over 7 days which we were quite impressed with.

We have a large bench top above the freezer and a two burner and oven on the starboard side.

We used a marine engineer to install the motor and a labour only boat builder over a small period to help with the major wood working jobs inside.

The boat was launched finally in May 2002 after approx 18 months effort, we were fortunate enough to have the boat in a factory, which allowed us to work virtually every weekend and weeknight. Sharron took care of the kids and would bring them down to visit so they still knew who I was, the amount of hours available to work certainly slowed though on the arrival of our second daughter. It was a great experience and very satisfying now that it has been completed, but I would be reluctant to do it again especially with a young family.

Since the boat was launched we have spent most weekends finishing little bits off. The mast is now on, dodger and lead cloths are on. The Ladder, Winches and deck fittings are now installed. In hindsight it would have been easier to have installed some of these in the factory. All that is left now is to purchase some sails and then we will be complete.

We have found a couple of issues which are now resolved. A fresh water leak had evaded us and was found to be a pinhole in one weld on our water manifold.

We had the valve lever wrong for our holding tank and it pumped thru our inspection port, luckily only went into one locker but was not a pleasant job to clean. Luckily it was mainly sea water as it has not really been used yet.

We have had it out of the marina five times now and have actually been quite pleased with it’s performance of 6.00 knots going against the tide on GPS and getting it in and out of the marina including reversing it in. Other people had indicated that it would not be able to be done in our marina on a H28.

We would like to thank Kerry and Ritchie for allowing us to go through their boats and the advice that they provided and look forward to meeting other H28 owners out on the water.

Regards