The Wind Rider 17
Series:
Today I started something I’ve been circling for a while: properly going through the Wind Rider 17.
I bought it about ten years ago and had a couple of good seasons — kids aboard, friends aboard, plenty of fun. Then life got in the way: heart surgery, COVID, the long quiet stretch after losing Mum. The boat sat. And boats that sit don’t wait for you — they quietly fall apart.
So today was the honest inventory day. Walking around it with a notebook, naming every broken thing out loud. It turned into a long list.
What’s failed
The motor
The electric motor doesn’t run. That’s the big unknown — could be the battery, could be a corroded connector, could be the motor itself. I won’t know until I pull it apart.
The ropes
Every rope is stiff and tired. Sheets, halyards — all of it salt-hardened and crusty, some with silicone worked into it. They feel strong underneath, which is something.
The metal
This is the one that worries me. The trailer is rusted solid throughout. And there’s a plate low in the boat — semi-structural — that’s gone powdery, with most of the bottom edge simply missing. Metal doesn’t grow back.
The trailer
Beyond the rust: rollers missing, slides with no carpet left so the boat slips straight off them, the winch completely seized, the jockey wheel barely turning.
The electrical
Connections that should be waterproof aren’t. The chartplotter mount, the depth transducer, the anchor light — all need redoing.
…and the obvious stuff
Both trampoline nets torn through at the edge. The jib sun-cooked. The rudder full of water and sealed so it can’t drain. The pontoons so stiff you can barely slide them out.
The main sail is fine. One thing. I’ll take it.
It would be easy to be discouraged by a list like that. Oddly, I’m not. A few months crewing on the Enterprize — bending sails on and off, knowing they strip all the running rig off yearly — taught me that none of this is mysterious. It’s just work, one rope and one fitting at a time. That’s the plan: strip it right back, and put it back together as if it were new. I did not have confidence to do this in the past, now I do.
I’ll add photos to the Wind Rider gallery as the rebuild goes on.