Sailing Vessel Northern Comfort, only leave footprints behind.

ep14 new crew member joins us on the lake — ep14 a new crew member joins us on the lake

This is a journey from start to finish, sailing keeping dreams alive!

Only leave footprints behind.

It’s taken a while, but I think that there is a certain peaceful acknowledgement to minimalism, buddhism, a sort of zen like feeling. It seems that as society we’re all caught up in the wasteful consumption of things. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t consume, but rather just try not to waste so much as we go through life. Can we leave our Earth in better condition than when we arrived?

In the case with Sailing Vessel Northern Comfort, we are trying to reduce the waste and fuel consumption by converting our sailboat, SV Northern Comfort, to electric. But it’s beyond that, we also want to try and make sure that we leave the earth a little better than we found it.

That is why we think that only leaving footsteps behind is a good philosophy to orient around and try to live by.

What’s on this site anyways?

Herein is a collection of videos, but more notably DIY SV Northern Comfort projects as she gets built back up from a good condition 1975 Hughes Northstar 35/1500 into a more modern look and feel. SV Northern Comfort is a sloop class sailboat, built in the 70’s when they didn’t really have a lot of fibreglass knowledge (take strength for example) and tended to overbuild. There is no wood core anywhere, it’s a solid fibreglass hull and Northern Comfort is hull #17.

Sailboat Revival Projects

Originally equipped with an Atomic 4 engine that is still supported by the team at Moyer Marine, it didn’t run when she was purchased from the original owner. After diagnostics, the head gaskets was blown through cylinders 1&2 and 3&4 so there was no compression in any cylinder. The three things you need to run an engine fuel, spark and compression. Definitely wasn’t going to work like that.

It seems that the engine was installed without a water muffler, and water had backfilled into the engine. After a teardown and replacing the gaskets, performing 5 oil changes we managed to get her to start and we launched late in the season in 2019 and did a little cruising for 2 months. Afterwards, we made plans for the winter haul out to take care of some major projects including:

gutting the entire cabin
removing the fuel tank and water tank
reenforcing the floors
removing the engine
performing a gas to electric motor conversion
rebuilding the cabin
LED upgrades
Raymarine instruments and chart plotter
Can you believe we had to install a VHF radio

… the list goes on.

This blog is to help record the progress and we are looking forward to all the feedback along the way.

If you can help support us to make videos, and live on our own terms, please visit Patreon where we have much more detailed information about the upgrades, DIY work, the electric motor conversion project and much more.

You can watch us on YouTube, view clips and keep status of us on Instagram and we occasionally remark or repost on Twitter.

Why do I sail?

“A personal life journey, a reflection, an introduction. Only leave footprints behind.“

Where are we going?

Although my first sail was in my teens, and I dreamed of circumnavigating the globe, as I am approaching retirement I realized that I am running out of time and need to start working more proactively towards this dream. I am blessed that my family is helping me along the way and encouraging me while we work out a family, life, and work balance. It isn’t easy, or simple, or everyone would be sailing along keeping their dreams alive.

So far, we are over half way through the do-it-yourself (DIY) retrofit; we are making good progress. The electric motor conversion is done, the hull repaired, the deck painted. We have left to complete mostly cosmetic, finishing up the interior finishings and hull windows.

Please cheer us on, and anything you can do to help us reach our goals would be amazing.

Thank-you! We look forward to hearing from you!

Dan, Julisa and David