We bought our Hanse 415 Trekker new in 2014. While she was reasonably well fitted out, she still needed some work to make her comfortable for living aboard.
My parents named their Alberg 37, and several more of their boats after that, Trekker. My Mom passed away just before we bought our last boat, a Catalina 36 MkII, so as a tribute to her we decided we would name our Catalina "Trekker". After much debate we decided to de-register our Catalina and name our Hanse 415 "Trekker" too. Our first project therefore was to pick locations for the name on the hull, a font, a colour and sizes for the name, and find someone to install them.
We inherited solar power on our Catalina and believe it to be indispensable on a boat that you want to live on, unplugged. Installing solar was project 2.
The Hanse 415 only has a 35 litre holding tank. I guess that isn't a problem if you sail in the ocean where the holding tank can be emptied 3 miles offshore. But if you sail in Georgian Bay, like us, or coastal USA, both of which are no discharge zones, it is too small! Project number 3 was to have an additional holding tank fabricated and installed.
Our old boat had a washdown pump which we found very useful; project 4.
We felt we needed davits or some other form of lifting system for the dinghy and motor. Trekker has a 10 foot wide swim platform that folds down from the transom that we needed to accommodate. That was project 5.Finally, if you cruise Georgian Bay, you quickly learn that a full enclosure with mosquito screens allows the cockpit to be used between dusk and dawn! A full enclosure became project 6.
No doubt after we have sailed her for a summer, we'll discover that some more upgrades would be nice.
Oddly enough, only two of our first five projects was completed as planned. I'll elaborate in future posts.
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