Quest 30 Hull #6 Kincora rebuild

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Going for a training session with my team mate Jim Andersen.

After selling Samba hull #1 for business reasons I was able to look for another boat a year later. While looking I came across another Quest 30. Do I really want a third Quest 30? The boats are pretty fun to sail and have a gift rating by 20 sec a mile, but are not built very well. But the price was right, and I bit the bullet and dove in headfirst and went for it. This is the last Quest I will own.

First summer I added the NKE gyro pilot with basic instruments and just went sailing. Yup, she sailed like a Quest, but to me felt heavy after Samba. Samba is 6250 lbs my first Quest was 9100 lbs. And yes, both were on the same digital scale I borrowed. So now I needed to weigh this boat. And she came weighing 8000 lbs.

After the first fun season of putting on some miles I was set to remove weight, and do some major changes I felt the boats needed below and on deck.

I worked with Randy at Waterline Systems to secure a space inside, and started work early Nov and finished April. All while working close to full time for my company.   This was a very busy winter.

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Tucked in Waterline Systems old building for the winter.

The first two stages of the rebuild pictures are as follows.

  1. Removal of all electrical gear, inboard/sail drive, plumbing, and anything else in the way.
  2. I knew the foam in the crash bulkhead was wet so I went at that first. To my surprise the bulkhead was two layers of soaked ¾” plywood, with wet and heavy foam inside. After the rebuild it was 100+ lbs lighter in this area. Big change for the bow. I never liked the aft cabin and felt the boats were just dragging their butts around. So everything was removed from the aft cabin and the rotten ¾” plywood companionway bulkhead was replaced. This made the area stiffer and ¼ the weight.
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Training with Jim driving after the rebuild.

The Quest was originally designed to be 4800 pounds by Rodger Martin. Now this boat at 4800 lbs and less freeboard would still be fast in today’s racer/cruiser market. But as with a lot of boats, marketing gets involved and they add weight thinking it is better boat at boat shows. I feel bad for Rodger that this happened because he did a great job on the shape, balance, and sailing ability for a 30 boat designed and built in the 1980’s.

Next week we dig into the aft cabin bulkhead, new navigation station, and main bulkhead.

Here is the link on my site to the first two rounds of pictures.

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