I finally found an Alacrity 19', near enough and within my budget on
Craigslist.org. A wonderful couple from California brought her with them when they moved from the San Francisco bay to a river east of Salem, Oregon. My partner insisted that I see it before buying and it took about 3 weeks to arrange the trip with a borrowed Ford F150. It was love at first sight and I paid only $50 less than their original asking price.
After their wonderful hospitality and coffee around the wood fire I strapped everything down with much
redundancy and hooked it up to the truck. I had decided to take the boat and trailer straight to a local garage to check the
axle and tires, but only made it three miles when the port side trailer fender slipped down and ripped a hole in the trailer tire. The garage instead sent someone to meet me with a two new tires and said the bearings were fine for the 250 mile trip. It ended up being a long road at 40 - 50 mph, the best the F150 could do without overheating.
I hope to document her
fix up and launch in the spring of 2009.
For now I'm just extremely happy to see her backed into the yard and the whole family just loves the look and will be pitching in to get her ready for the water.
These pictures came from the seller and are fairly true to what we found. I'll compare these with what I found beneath the floors. The electrical system is non-functional so the bilge pump isn't working but I found very little water in the bilge to pump out. The rigging is worn and one of the chain plate eyes is somewhat stretched. Theres a bit of rust escaping from the port side keel and a number of bubbles that just crunch on pressing with your finger. But the coaming is complete and the rudder is awesome. The deck and cockpit are strong. The bow pulpit is strong and now cracks where it connects to the bow.
I'm toying with the idea of installing an unstayed mast and making a balanced-lug or 'Junk' rigged sails. I think the mast could easily be set through the cabin roof and braced into the floor joists, but I'll get lots of advice before doing anything.
For now I'm going to photo and log all the before pictures and create a list of things to do and in what order
