April 2026  Siskin

By Antoine Maartens

I believe it’s been more than eleven years that I bought Siskin, Newbridge Coromandel #77, sight unseen from eBay. Not a wise thing to do, I know. ‘Interior lining slightly peeling at sides’ turned out to be an understatement when my brother and I went to pick her up at Flushing from her mooring on July 29th, 2014. After a quite eventful trip back to the Netherlands, we set to work to get her back to a more or less good sailing condition. And ‘we’ mostly means me paying someone to do real work while I office-clerked somewhere else although I joined the work during weekends.

Her bottom was sandblasted and left to dry for almost a year. After that the bottom was rebuilt using several epoxied glass layers. Her rudder skeg, that could be moved by hand, was re-bedded. We removed the stanchions and closed up the holes. We took out the interior lining and 2-pack painted the cabin white, making for a brighter interior. Her windows and portholes had been removed and rebedded prior to this.  And we gave the mast a sleeve that makes it more or less practical to lower. We added a Whale Gusher pump and increased the self-bailing volume of the cockpit considerably. All other through hull openings were closed up at this time. And after all this it was time to go sailing. To my surprise most things worked straight away.

After that initial short season I sailed her back to the yard between Christmas and New Years eve to continue with some additional modifications. We moved the engine to the stern of the boat adding an electric outboard, closing off the engine bay permanently in the process. We removed the heads separation wall, further opening up the interior. We changed the flimsy hatch with a solid GEBO one - no leaks there anymore. And now the cockpit lockers close properly.

In this setup we happily pottered around for about six seasons, using her for about twenty to thirty days per year. When my mother passed away my father told me to go out and have a new sail built - at his expense! In a process of about half a year, a sailmaker built a SJR for her, adding some extra sail area. It took quite some time to get this setup working properly. Moving to slippery Dyneema lines and using low friction rings helped, but still my implementation of SJR is not an easy one. All counting, I fear eight lines are attached to the rig of which four get really used at any one time. Still the others require some attention which is not the idea of junk sailing I believe. Still, the thing works.

She now claws upwind quite well and, when running, she flies like a witch on a broom. I added a mini electrical system to charge devices and we added a masthead navlight.  She got a skulling setup, and all deck lockers can now be locked safely.

With this arrangement I spent four weeks on the Waddenzee drying out and visiting friends on the Frisian islands. She is perfectly suited for this type of shallow cruising, drying out on her twin keels and big strong rudder skeg.

My wife finds my sailing practices spartan as I sailed this way in open Drascombes for 37 years. I use no cushions, and chose instead to spend the money on hull and cabin maintenance. 

I found that she developed a luffing tendency with the SJR so apart from adding the lines to get the SJR set up the way it needed setting up, we added endplates to the rudder and those really perform. At that time, I also switched to AMC Coppercoat for anti-fouling. Last addition was a boarding ladder in addition to the boarding loop that is always attached to the boat. Slipping over the side is one of the real dangers of the design as her cockpit arrangement makes for difficult boarding from the water.

*What’s left to be desired? Quite a lot actually. Electric self steering through the pypilot (raspberry pi based) system needs finalising. I expect some additional power usage from that, so adding some solar panels would be nice. I would like a bigger electric engine with a bigger battery. I lost my anchor hatch some years ago and replacing that would be nice. I also bought a mechanical self steering device which I still haven’t mounted. I would like a hard dodger to further do away with foul weather gear and fix the rotten wooden sliders of the cabin hatch at the same time. I have a sculling setup that could do with an upgrade to a Trilo-sculling/yuloh-like arrangement. I would like a deck light. A better cooking stove would be nice. I would enjoy some small miniature heating device to extend the season. I have a vision of a far lighter mast that would be far more easy to take down and that would also let me set and lower my sail more easily. And a toilet seat for my Bucket-and-Chuck-it arrangement would be great. I would like some sort of tender at some point as having a tender on many occasions would have been beneficial. 

All in all, this little gem does all I ask of her and then some. To me it makes complete sense that she is boat of the month.

Our "Boat of the Month" Archive is here, and the forum discussion for comments and candidate suggestions is here