This all started with an idea to buy a dingy again. Maybe another Mirror either ready built or as a kit. So these days you look on ebay, Gumtree and the like. My basic conclusion of that was that even a half way decent ready to use dingy costs about the same as a much bigger boat which would take some work to get it back on the water. So what would be a reasonably ideal boat?
- If I am going to be sailing it for a few years then some shelter from the elements would be good. I am not going to want to be in and out of cold water even with a wetsuit when I am 60 ish.
- If my wife Helen is going to stand any chance of coming too then we need a decent headroom and a stable boat.
- If we are going for a largish boat with a cabin then it needs to be either a trailer-sailor or have bilge keels to dry out on a mooring close to home. There are a couple of possibilities on the Humber and such a boat can even get up rivers (eg the Trent) or canals around here. Blame Dylan Winter for that conclusion and much of what follows!
Combining that basic specification with what was appearing on the internet had me looking at potential project boats up to about 24 feet long. After watching a few sell on ebay it looks as if you need to pay around £1000 to get a trailer, outboard and a just about sailable bilge keel boat which needs some work. If it has the basic navigation and safety kit as well then maybe £1500. Good examples of similar boats stretch to higher prices and you can pay more than 4 times as much for a good one compared to a “project”. Many of the boats I was looking at came with no trailer or one which looked unlikely to be road worthy without needing work right at the outset and I didnt want to be trekking all over the place trying to get the combination mobile right from the start. A new trailer suitable for a 20 foot boat loaded on rollers can start at around £800. I didn’t find any for bilge keel boats other than much more expensive “car” trailers so stage 1 is to buy a moderately reasonable trailer and adapt it for a bilge keel boat.
I spotted a potential trailer and my son Matthew bid for it and won. He and I went almost to Nottingham to collect the 4 wheel trailer which was no-longer needed for a 25 foot boat. Looked reasonable and we were told it had been used the week before to launch it’s 2 ton former occupant so theoretically more than sufficient for the sort of boat I was looking at. The journey home was livened up by the antics of a rusty looking lightweight trailer bouncing about and trying to shake my plastic lighting board to bits. Stopped three times to try to reassemble the increasingly fragmented board and attach it back onto the trailer.
Having got it home to Matthew’s drive, work started on making the trailer presentable, creating a stronger lighting board, checking brakes and bearings, fitting mudguards and then making the decks for the boat to stand on. About half way through the trailer work a couple of possible boats came up on ebay but sold for more than I was prepared to pay and anyway I would not be ready to collect them by the time the auctions were up. Then I spotted a “Snapdragon 23” being sold near Gravesend. I think the description was putting everyone off as the seller was very clear that this was a project boat and he could not be responsible if someone bought it and couldn’t handle the work required. 
Even with a re-listing, the auction ended with nobody offering the opening bid of £399.
On 19th June I called the number and spoke to Dave. He had had no other interest at all. He said that he had owned the boat for several years and worked on it with the intention of getting it back in the water. The friend he went sailing with had died and from then he had lost enthusiasm for the boat and even sailing with other 
friends. The boat had been neglected and outside wooden locker lids rotted and let in the water. The hull was described as being sound and she had a partially re-fitted refurbished inboard engine. Currently on a yard trailer but there was a crane to do the transfer to a road trailer.
My trailer was progressing but not yet ready. I ordered the steel for the keel trays on 28th June. At this stage it needed to be adaptable for any bilge keel boat because I had no idea what it was actually going to have to carry and didn’t have any dimensions for the keels of any suitable boats. Basic “design”, if you 
can describe it that way, is no have two movable trays made by adding an angle iron frame round a sheet of perforated steel decking. That can be clamped down to the trailer frame anywhere it is needed using threaded rod and suitably drilled angle iron offcuts. This meant I got to practice welding properly and I think the outcome was reasonable. Previously I had only tried welding 1.5 mm plate steel into semi structural parts of a VW camper van and that was more of a case of blowing holes through the old and new metal so they were joined around the 
edges of the melted hole. To give a little more cushioning and spread the load on the steel tray I cut pieces out of a very heavy rubber mat so they fit inside the trays.
Eventually I discovered the Snapdragon & Mirage owners association and their website gave access to some detail of the various boats built by Thames Marine and even had some technical drawings. A Snapdragon 23 seemed to fit my rough ideas of a suitable boat having around 6 foot headroom in the cabin, bilge keels, a deep cockpit and the ability to go offshore safely in the right hands. Apparently one has even crossed the Atlantic so it seems like a capable boat.
My idea was to go down and look at the boat, see if the work required was really as much as implied but take the trailer so I could bring it home in one trip if I was happy. Well that didn’t happen in anything like the timescale I anticipated. I was intending to work on the boat over the summer but it proved very difficult to organise my time to be able to go to Gravesend when the seller’s crane operators were available.