About our first boat and how we found her:

Sailing vessel East of the Sun 1 was a 35ft one-off sloop rig. Build in 1979 as a small-size cruiser for an unknown Dutch sailor. We know with reasonable certainty she was build in Holland, but can’t be 100%. We do know that she crossed the Atlantic ocean twice, spent 8 years in the Caribbean area and than sailed back, spending several years in the Mediterranean sea (mainly Greece and Turkey) before she came back to the Netherlands.

There her previous owner put her on the hard for the winter, but subsequently did not sail her again due to old age, leaving the ship on the hard for three years before finally selling her to us 🙂

However, when we found her she was not “quite” ready to sail (understatement of the day ;). Before the previous owner sold us the ship, he had been selling off various old equipment from the boat for a while, which meant: no radio, no wind meter, no water-maker (which she had previously) and not much maintenance for several years also. She was in poor shape and needed a lot of lovin! So we began the job of restoring her to a new glory! Over several weeks we completely cleaned her out, re-painted a great many of the inside woodwork, replaced all rigging, re-painted parts of the deck and tended to a hundred-and-one other small things that needed attention.

And then….finally we took her for a first motor through some local canals to get a feel for the steering and to practice our boat-parking skills (which took about 7 attempts to park her back in her slip safely the first time) which we soon learned was more tricky than we thought. However after a few short local motor trips and ample practice we soon became very comfortable with her in smaller spaces. And so it was time to hoist our sail and hit a bigger water for our first sail!

The rest of the season was spent sailing as much as we could, getting a feel for our old girl while we kept updating her systems and getting her ready for longer trips and off-shore sailing.

Specs:

35 ft (10,5 meters)
4 births + 1 sea-birth
Volvo Penta 25 HP diesel engine
Beam 3 meters
depth 1,85 meters
Genua 1 (125%)
Genua 2 (110%)
Jib 1 (100%)
Jib 2 (80%)
Strom job (40%)
Main-sail 1 (100%) 3ple reef
Main-sail 2 (50%) 3ple reef
60 liter diesel tank
80 liter fresh water tank
Toilet
Gas 2-stove kitchen
Cabin height 195cm
Avg speed 7 knots
Top speed (so far) 9,5 knots

The new owners 🙂

Our summer of 2017:

This year we finished all the repairs and completed East of the Sun with her new: Open CPM system, and a 300 watt solar array.

In May of 2017 she will be ready for our first series of longer trips. Exploring the: IJsselmeer, Waddenzee and parts of the North Sea.

After a wonderful summer we sold SV east of the Sun to an amazing new owner as we made our transition to our absolute dream boat Spirit! More on it here >>