Plastic Classic Forum

Ok, so I'm new here. Hello everyone! My name's Tyler, and this is my project boat:


It's a 1967 Santana 22, hull number 182, that I got for free. It had been sitting in a Marina for some time, abandoned, and the marina owner wanted someone to be paying for it's slip, so it offered it for free to anyone who'd pay the slip fees, and I took it.

It wasn't in great shape, but it wasn't really in horrible shape, either. It seems totally structurally sound. No major cracks, or holes, or soft spots in the deck or anything.

But anyway, my intention now is to do a sort of "floating restoration" of the boat. I don't know if anyone's ever used that term before, but when you work on old cars a "rolling restoration" is one in which you try to keep the car drivable the whole time (or nearly the whole time) while you fix it up. This generally takes longer than taking the car off the road to strip everything down and redo it all at once, but it also lets you drive the thing in the meantime, and lets you spread out costs over a longer time period.

I plan on doing the same thing with the boat.

Here's how she looked when I got her:


Not great, but well, still floating, and the bilge was even dry, so that's something. The problem with the boat being abandoned for several years while floating in salt water is that means there were several years worth of growth on the bottom, and well, I'll get to that in a second.

I realized I'd need to clean and repaint the bottom. I don't have anywhere good to put the boat to do this myself, but luckily the marina happens to be immediately adjacent to a boatyard. I figured, well, that'd be as good a place as any to get the bottom fixed up, but first I'd need to figure out how to move the boat, even if it was only 500 yards.

Well, the boat came with an old Nissan 5hp two-stroke outboard, so I decided I'd need to get that fixed up right away. That was project number one, which actually went fairly straightforwardly, and at the end of the day, I had a running engine.


So with that done, I went over to the boatyard and said "Hey, I want you guys to paint the bottom of my boat", or something similar, and they told me to bring it over so they could haul it out and they'd start on it the next day. The picture at the top of this post is the boat sitting at the dock waiting to be hauled out.

When they got the boat out of the water and pressure washed, it looked like this:


Well, they worked on it, and took pictures, and it went through these stages:




Well, that's looking better already! And then it was time to put it back in the water, but first I had to replace a couple of cockpit drain hoses, which stupidly cause the boat to sink if they leak, so here's the new ones, with cool green stripes, and one of the old ones in the foreground for comparison:


And then it went back in the water, and the hoses didn't leak, and I was proud of myself, and she went back to her slip with shiny new paint:


Well, sort of. Shiny on the bottom anyway. The next project (for this weekend) will be to finish scrubbing the dirt off the boat. I've done part of it (foredeck, cabin top) and replace the bilge pump.

Next after that will be standing and running rigging. I've never worked on a boat at all before, so this is all a pretty fun and interesting project. :)

I've also got a website, you can see it here: http://tylerkaraszewski.com/boat/
It's got a more detailed description of some of the stuff I've been doing, and more pictures. Most of this project is pretty elementary compared to what a lot of you guys are working on, but I still think it's a lot of fun, and rewarding.

Writing a long post like this actually takes a fair bit of time, so I'm going to take a break. If anyone has any questions or is interested in anything like the history of the Santana 22 design, post a question and I'll answer it to the best of my ability.

Congrats.

She is a diamond in the (semi) rough.

I don't think I'd ever seen a Santana 22, but used to race a 20. If it goes anything at all like the 20 it will be a ball!!!

The whole deal sounds like a deal!

Should be a fun boat, and fun to polish up.

Good luck

Neat-o!

What a great deal!

Thanks so much for taking the time to make the post - it's great reading.

I have a friend whose first keelboat was a Santana 22 in the Bay area, and he had nothing but good things to say about it. (In fact I briefly wondered if this might have been his years ago, but there are lots of them out there, so probably not.)

Keep us posted, and welcome to the forum :)

Rachel

Welcome to the forum, Tyler.

I've read through your website and enjoyed doing so. The Santana 22 looks like a great boat. A nice design by Gary Mull.

My Shark24 ( www.shark24.org ) is very similar in concept, though the design is a little more dated. In my area, Sharks are daysailed and raced extensively. Being a smaller, simpler and trailerable boat, Sharks get sailed a lot! I'm sure it's the same with the Santana 22.

Keep those updates and photos coming. Sail her as much as possible. That's what it's all about.

Very nice! and welcome to the forum.

I didn't see anything on your blog about replacing the outboard water impeller. If you haven't yet, you might consider it.

No, I haven't replaced the water intake impeller in the motor, that's a good thing to do next time I take a look at the motor, and I will because it's really not idling particularly well, especially when it's cold. I think the carb needs to be cleaned and adjusted. I just got a manual for the outboard, so that will make disassembling it a little less worrisome.

I've never sailed on a Santana 22 before, but everything I've heard says they're great small boats for the San Francisco bay, which is exactly what I want. I figured I'd be best off starting with a smaller, simpler boat, especially since I just plan on daysailing it, and I don't really need much space below if I'm not taking it cruising. Maybe I'll get a bigger cruiser some day, we'll see.

I think they're attractive boats. A lot of people on here have beautiful, curvy, full-keel boats, which I think are gorgeous, but I think this boat still looks good, even if it's a bit more angular. To make another car comparison, you could liken a Pearson Triton to a '57 Chevy -- it has a definite vintage feel, distinctive curves, and it's a beautiful car. My boat might be more like a '65 Mustang. It's actually a simpler looking car. No fins on the back, a little more "square", and compared to the '57 Chevy, it's obviously a newer design, but it's still definitely become a classic? Which car is more classic, a '57 Chevy or a '65 Mustang? I don't think that's a question that can be, or even needs to be, answered.

Can you tell I used to work on cars, back before I started with boats?

Thanks everyone for your positive feedback.

Nice looking project, Tyler. Good luck with it!