At long last I have settled on 'the one' for me and have become the owner of a proper little ocean voyager.
Jasmine08 is an amazingly well built and fair hulled 32ft Samson C-Mist ferrocement boat.
Based on the William Atkin 'Eric' of Suhaili and Sir Robin Knox Johnston fame the C-Mist was designed for themselves by naval architects Peter Noble and Ken Davies of Samson Marine as a Gaff cutter.
The seller bought Jasmine08s well built hull near Johannesburg, South Africa in 2008, had it trucked down to Richards Bay, and completed the build at Zululand Yacht Club where she was launched in early 2011, rigged as a Bermudan cutter.
After only around 70 miles of successful sea trials her owner decided to emigrate to Alberta Canada in 2014 with the plan to return for Jasmine08 later and sail her via the Panama Canal to Vancouver.
All provisioned and ready to go in January 2019, last minute illness forced the cancellation of this planned voyage which I suspect disappointed Jasmine08 greatly.
So there she was, patiently waiting, when I saw her listed for sale late last year and ultimately completed negotiations, parted with the agreed amount and became her chuffed new owner in March this year.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to so many of the JRA members who have been amazingly generous with their advice and counsel to date.
My sincere thanks to each and every one of you.
I have decided to convert Jasmine08 into a JR Sloop and in particular I must thank two wonderful JRA members for their amazing input and patience with my emails to and fro.
The first of these true gentlemen is Arne Kverneland who, in his inimitable fashion, (Yes Arne I have seen how you have helped so many others over the years.) patiently discussed with me the plans I had for future sailing and the choice of rig.
Having already done so for another boat that I was about to purchase, Arne once again drew up some sailplan options for Jasmine08 that certainly were excellent in concept and technical detail.
The second of this Norwegian duo is Victor Winterthun who was equally as willing to draw up a sail plan for Jasmine08 for me to consider. For no reason that I can explain with logic and know how, I have chosen the eight panel cambered sail he drew for Jasmine08.
As the conversion work progresses I plan to add to this thread hoping that the metamorphosis of Jasmine08 will at least be interesting to some of you and that it may even inspire one or two newcomers or convert a fence sitter to the JR.
For this initial post here are some pictures of Jasmine08 as I found her, my first sail on her with the seller's son and the sail drawn by Victor with which she will be sailing here in South Africa in the near future and, if my ambitions are fulfilled, will cross at least one ocean.