Restored Telstar 28 Launch!

[agprice22]

I got my new-to-me Telstar in the water yesterday! Ah! 8 months of grinding, filling, fairing, reinforcing, laminating, wiring, and painting, oh and BUYING, are done, for now!
We put the mast on and stepped it to rig the genoa at home. We then unstepped the mast and took the boat to Watkins Glen. We stepped the mast on land and launched the boat. My wife did the interior.
Here she is... Firefly.

 

[BlowMeAway]

Nicely done Andrew...nicely done! We spent Sunday and Monday on Cayuga. 5-10 knots of breeze (except for that 4:30 pm Sunday shelf cloud and downpour). Our sails were down before the blow arrived and made it back to the slip by 5:30 for the shrimp and burger barbecue. We saw some awesome sunsets, had happy admirals, and didn't have to work too hard with my No. 1 crew. The only casualty was the heavily used Craigslist Dink we bought last year. A seam blew out in the parking lot of Wegmans, before I even had a chance to get it wet. Rigid dinks from now on. Looking at a Watertender 9.4 now.

 

[Gunni]

The Telestar/Gemini factory - Performance Cruising was wedged in next to our old slip in Annapolis. I probably breathed the polyester resin fumes from your boat! Some friends just bought an older fixer-upper Gemini. I hear Tony is retired and trailering a Telestar on the west coast.

 

[agprice22]

The Telestar/Gemini factory - Performance Cruising was wedged in next to our old slip in Annapolis. I probably breathed the polyester resin fumes from your boat! Some friends just bought an older fixer-upper Gemini. I hear Tony is retired and trailering a Telestar on the west coast.

That is cool. Tony was a visionary with trimarans and cats. The Telstar seems a very nice compromise between room, vroom, and portability.
I had a 272 for the last 4 seasons, and my wife admitted she does not like to heel. She drew me a picture of "training wheels" on a napkin and said she wanted them for our boat. Well, I explained I could not add them to our 272, game as I am for a project! I recognized a trimaran in her drawing, and I saw it needed to be folding in terms of our desire to pull it ourselves. I found the Quorning Dragonfly, my number one pick, but waaaayyyy too expensive, the Corsair, less expensive, in the ballpark pricewise, but you cannot easily fold it and put it in a regular slip, and the Telstar 28. We started looking for Telstars and found one in Western New York. It sailed nicely, but it was in bad shape. At only 11 years old, it was worse than my 30 year old 272 when I restored it. Anyway, we made an offer with a restoration in mind! We got it, restored it, upgraded it, and this Saturday, it will be ready to sail!
Personally, I would own a monohull, but I love that my wife is willing to sail, and I can be flexible to get her out there. She loves her new boat. I cannot wait to sail it!

 

[JRT]

Very cool, how is the head room? My wife has heeling issues right now too. I drop the sails to help reduce for her but this looks very cool.

 

[agprice22]

Very cool, how is the head room? My wife has heeling issues right now too. I drop the sails to help reduce for her but this looks very cool.

Right at 6' headroom. Everyone expects a really small cabin when they see it, but then they are surprised! It come with a marine head that we removed. I did lots of cool upgrades.

 

[Ken Cross]

Nice job. It looks great.

 

[JRT]

I'd love to see the upgrades. We are buying a new house this month 30 minutes from our slip instead of an hour. Plus no HOA anymore so I could bring a project home some day.

 

[agprice22]

Here are some photos of the restoration:
The first is a "before."
Then we stripped the hardware.
We reinforced the "wings," the salon-top decks, the fore and aft outrigger decks, the underside hull-deck joint on the outriggers, and the hatches with fiberglass. The decks and joints were reinforced with biaxial mat. The hatches were reinforced with several layers of lighter cloth.
We rebuilt the hull-deck joint on the port outrigger. We moved the sink to the opposite side of the boat. We moved the batteries forward to a less used area. We removed the marine head in favor of a portapotty. We replaced all the plexi. We used 1/2" plexi for the hatches and 1/4" plexi for the portlights. We filled and faired all the spider cracks in the entire boat. We sprayed awlgrip high-build primer, sealer primer, and topcoat. We plan to wet sand it next year and spray more coats of topcoat and clearcoat.

 

[agprice22]

Part 2:
We installed:
Stereo with interior and cockpit speakers
Courtesy LED lights in the cockpit
A sub switch panel to separately switch accessory lighting
A water pump
Water bladder
Water deck fill
LED nav lights
Charger / inverter
4 ipod chargers
New hull liner
New cushions
New sink
New portable waste water tank
New CDI furler
New forestay

 

[Gunni]

Wow, that is an impressive refit! This would be the boat to explore the shallow sounds of North and South Carolina and the Everglades.

 

[JRT]

I love it, I'm posting it officially here and now that if you all ever get bored or ready to move on I would like a PM so I can rush up with cash in hand!

 

[capta]

Not that I understand peoples' aversion to heeling, as every boat has some motion and in most cases heeling is preferable to what you get if you don't, but I really enjoyed sailing my Brown Searunner 37 about 2/3rds of the way around the world. It was by far the best cruising boat I've ever sailed, bar none. We called her our stable platform from which to set sails.
I haven't sailed a Telstar, but I'd bet you are going to have a lot of fun, even if it is alone. Put a happy face on one of your transoms 'cause a lot of folks are going to be looking at them a lot.
All the hard work looks great; now go have some real fun.

 

[Gunni]

I met Jim Brown years ago on the Carolina coast when I was involved with competition kayaking. We were adapting sails and outriggers to light boats and Jim was hanging out full of curiosity. He seemed knowledgeable and shy so I introduced myself, "THE Jim Brown of Searunner fame, Proa designer. Yep, that's me. I felt like I was talking to Herreshoff himself.

 

[capta]

I met Jim Brown years ago on the Carolina coast when I was involved with competition kayaking. We were adapting sails and outriggers to light boats and Jim was hanging out full of curiosity. He seemed knowledgeable and shy so I introduced myself, "THE Jim Brown of Searunner fame, Proa designer. Yep, that's me. I felt like I was talking to Herreshoff himself.

Never had the pleasure, but had I, I think I would have hugged him like a dear friend. What a marvelously safe and comfortable cruising boat he designed! When one is surfing a boat that is 37' X 22' wholly on the face of a wave in a storm, and she responds to your commands like a well trained dog, there's no one to thank but the designer.

 

[agprice22]

Here is a little sailing action.
Going about 7.5 mph in 6-7 mph wind.

The boat moves!

 

[JRT]

Amazing, I have to get my wife and I on one someday.

 

[agprice22]

Amazing, I have to get my wife and I on one someday.

Come to Seneca Lake, and we will take you out for a sail. I had the boat up to 12 mph last Sunday, and we got it up to 11 mph last Saturday. You can really feel the boat accelerate! I think 15-18 mph is not impossible.

 

[Bad Obsession]

Boat looks awesome. I saw the Telstar 28 at the Annapolis Boat show in the past and I always thought that they were really cool. I too oogled the Dragonfly boats. You will enjoy that boat a lot!

 

[agprice22]

Boat looks awesome. I saw the Telstar 28 at the Annapolis Boat show in the past and I always thought that they were really cool. I too oogled the Dragonfly boats. You will enjoy that boat a lot!

Thanks. We busted our butts on it! It has lots of deck space. It is easy to sun and swim off of. It doesn't hurt to have it be fast and fun too!