No Span

It’s fun and rewarding to work on a boat, giving her the TLC she deserves.

July 2020

Lex, my neighbor, really wanted to pick up sailing again. He’d been sailing mostly in dinghy’s but hadn’t sailed much the last couple of years. That’s when in July 2020, he bought No Span, a Dehler Delanta 80 AK.  A real nice boat and very suitable for the next step!

When I suggested Lex to come along and sail with him someday and to have a look at the boat, he very much appreciated my offer.

No Span came with a berth at de Kaag, a couple of smaller inner lakes, which was more a place to sail dinghy’s. The berth itself wasn’t much of a berth. It was a crappy pontoon with no room for maneuvering and with a bit of stronger westerly wind you couldn’t get out or in. This boat obviously needed some more room and proper water for serious sailing. It didn’t take long for Lex to find a very nice berth in Numansdorp at the Haringvliet. That’s the perfect place for proper sailing with a boat like this. You can make day/weekend trips, nice anchorages, visit nice little towns/marina’s and you can even go out to sea through the locks when the weather is nice.

The first time we went sailing, I noticed there were some issues about the outfit and equipment. The mainsail itself could be reefed but there were no reefing lines, nor any fittings to rig reefing lines. A vang was also missing. The winches on the cabin roof were mounted in front of the jammers for the main halyard and the topping lift so when the mainsail was set you couldn’t use the winch for any other line like a reefing line, but that was missing anyway…

Also there were no instruments like a depth Souder, log/speed or windex. A bilgepump was also missing. The gas piping was crap and also the stove. In short, No Span was in need for some serious TLC and (re)fitting. I offered Lex to help him out a bit, which again was very much appreciated.

I worked out a plan and in the next couple of months we upgraded her to a proper and safe sailing boat. As always that took some more time than planned. While working, all the wiring needed to be replaced, and so on and so on. Still, it was real fun to do this together and by doing all this Lex got more and more into what it’s like to sail small yacht instead of a dinghy.

Of course we went out sailing too. We had some very nice trips and I was happy to share my sailing experience a bit with Lex.