2008

Recently received this from Chris who is cruising in Malaysia with his wife Lorraine. They are previous owners of Arctic Smoke and sold her in 2008. Slowing piecing together AS's history.

"Hi Tom,

We are really pleased AS has fallen into the hands of someone with the time and desire to improve her. I forget how long we owned her for....possibly 4 or 5  years. We kept her in Lowestoft and Southwold for that time , having bought her down on the Beaulieu River. The main improvement I remember making was replacing the PVC mustard upholstery with the green stuff. Hope it has lasted OK. We also had the engine out and had it overhauled.

The furthest we sailed her was the south coast. We dried out at Totnes on one occasion which is fun. We also dried out at Snape....well worth the trip and she sits upright very nicely. I can also recommend Sandwich if you have never been there.Oddly we expected to have to dry out there but if you moor to one of the local boats you can be out in the channel even at low water. I suspect we also went to the Friesian Islands in her.

There were 2 guys we sold AS to . The chap you bought her from was something like 84  at the time but his friend was only in his 60s ...but sadly died within months, hence the reason it was not used much.If I remember rightly he had an Asian wife who made some dodgers for it ...one of which she inadvertently labelled with Artic Smoke....which I expect you have been called! We had a previous boat called Soldanella an Alpine flower but were frequently addressed as salmonella!

She was our second boat a Halcyon 23 which we sailed to Holland with our infant kids.Prior to that we had a Vega 27 which we sailed to the Caribbean and back in 1981/2....no GPS and few creature comforts. Our other boats were a sabre 27 and a HR Mistral...beautiful with GRP hull but a wooden coachroof which was its Achilles heel.

Hope you get some joy on the coppercoat...there was a guy laboriously scraping it off his cat in Pangkor...in 31 degrees of heat!

Chris and Lorraine"