I have never understood the mentality of some boaters. The 12,000-dollar world cruiser: any old sailboat with a 406 EPIRB, handheld GPS, and a new life raft.

The first few years I had the Bristol I didn’t sleep well aboard. I worried about the standing rigging mostly; about the chainplates, about the ground tackle; the important stuff that can break and get you in trouble. I had accepted ownership of a boat already 20 years old and had no real idea if anything was on the verge of breaking.

The scary fact is lots of people put to sea or at least sail offshore in such boats—ones that have earned no respect yet because someone else owned them, sailed them, and maybe repaired and improved them properly—or maybe didn’t. To them, safety at sea is a shiny new life raft canister strapped to the cabin top, an emergency locator beacon so someone can come save you, and a GPS so any fool can sort of navigate. Yet, until you know your boat’s real condition and the real level of sea worthiness, sailing should be confined to an afternoon in the bay activity.

For me, rebuilding an old boat is the act of verifying her condition and correcting what is wrong, while bringing the boat up to like new condition, engineered at a strength level that can successfully handle sailing long distances. I’m not sure if you would call it refurbishing, or rebuilding, or restoring; I think of it as re-engineering. For me, going thru the whole boat, every inch gives me the assurance that I know how to fix anything that breaks and that I’ve already beefed up all of her systems so she is not inclined to break. The results let me sleep soundly.