New 1988 oday 240 owner, first boat

[oday240ny]

I purchased a 1988 oday 240 yesterday on Lake Ontario NY and found this forum and am hoping to find info about general maintenance and parts/sails/rigging for the oday 240.

This is my first boat. My wife and I took the ASA 101 class this summer and took part in a learn to sail class with a local yacht club on J24s with a day of regatta racing also. For our class we sailed a Dufour 24. All 3 boats feel similar in handling to a newbie like me and the points of sail don't change so the experience feels cumulative so far.

We hope to enjoy day sailing on our days off and maybe an overnight trip to a location close to our harbor next summer, even if it's only 2 hours away. As we learn the distances possible to travel round trip we'll figure out what is managable for little adventures.

I look forward to reading the old posts here and about some of the overnight/1-2 day trips people have taken with their sailboats as we look to explore what's possible with our new friend. I can already see that having good weather Monday to sail out isn't good enough and needing good weather Tuesday for the return trip is very important to avoid having to get a ride home and paying dock fees at the location until a return can be made to sail back to home port.

Next month, aside from removing the sails and cushions to store in our garage and winterizing the motor, does anyone have winter tips to share? Our harbor will move the boat out onto our trailer and park it for the winter which is so helpful to a new owner. Thank you.

 

[Project_Mayhem]

Get some tarps for the winter. I can guarantee you that your fittings are leaking either into the cabin or into the balsa deck. Removing all the fittings and rebedding them is a lot of work and something that you might want to do a little at a time. BedIT butyl tape is probably the best choice for 90% of the fittings on your boat.

If I remember correctly, the 240 has an enclosed head with a porapottie style toilet? The pump out (called MSD) style with the hose attachment is a really nice feature. However, I didn't have a great experience with this style of toilet. They were prone to issues and I never won the battle of the stench. West Marine's ExterminOdor was the bet I found but still fell short. Emptying the head often helps more than anything.

A new group 27 battery can store an impressive amount of power but your outboard's alternator doesnt put out much power and it's totally unregulated. A 50w or two 25w solar panels would work well without being a hassle to mount. Morningstar or Victron charge controllers are recommended for safety and to ensure your battery doesnt die prematurely. Renogy controllers have been known to start on fire. Their solar panels are fine and I own a 100w that I'm quite happy with.

For creature comforts, You'll probably want a small fan. We have this small, dual head fan that you can clip anywhere. It's versatile and powerful.
You dont need the worlds best cooler. Keep it out of the sun and the ice will last for days. The built in cooler in my O'Day 25 had cheap white styrofoam insulation that someone had patched on it years ago. Ice lasted 2-3 days on average. If you need to cook, take a look at propane and butane burners. Those butane cans last a lot longer than you'd expect.

One of the best items I ever installed was a tiller clutch. It allowed me to walk away from the tiller to put up the sails, give my arm a break, etc. I had the one rated for up to 25' but would recommend the bigger one as mine sometimes slipped a bit.

For cleaning, we recently discovered Spray Nine and it works amazing! It's recommended to wax (not the nonskid!) your boat not only for looks but for UV and stain protection. Basically your boat will be easier to clean. Star brite Premium polish won testing in Practical Sailor tests for stain protection. We recently added a sun shade to use as a boom tent. It blocks out most of the sun, keeps the cabin cooler and keeps the cockpit bird poop free
Do you plan on sailing to a destination or towing and then sailing?

 

[oday240ny]

Thank you for the reply Project_Mayhem. There's a lot to learn as a first time boat owner.

We will tarp what we can for the winter. I hadn't thought of the fittings leaking, our first concern was it looks like the seal around the front window has a leak and the two small back vents behind the large windows also. The starboard rear vent window is missing a 1 inch piece of rubber seal from the [__ _] seal around the vent on the lower right part of it.

Our boat included a new port-a-potty, we only plan on using it for an emergency. We don't have any plumbing in the head space to worry about.

A previous owner on our boat added an electrical hookup from the port side of the cockpit. The seller is giving us a newish battery and has installed a new bow red/green light. We don't plan on going out at night in our first year but want to have it working in case we get in late some day. Yesterday was our first day out sailing solo after our test-drive last week before buying. I found a few old dried up hornet nests in various corners below deck and one was on the electric panel so it might need some work. There are speakers and a CD/FM radio with a 3.5mm aux in installed too which we haven't tested yet. I used portable bluetooth speakers and my phone to play some music yesterday while we cleaned and then listened to a baseball game.

I agree a fan seems essential. It was 79F yesterday and felt like 85+ cleaning in the cabin. We have a small battery powered fan but with the front window open it wasn't enough.

We're used to camping and backpacking and have been bringing a small igloo type carrying cooler with us to the boat. I don't see any kind of built in cooler but this works well. We have butane jetboil stoves for backpacking if we end up going on an overnight to make the essential coffee, cocoa or soup.

It looks like our tiller has some type of clutch with the line running through the handle inset in a circle mechanism. I haven't looked closely at it yet as we've liked holding onto it so far.

For cleaning, we recently discovered Spray Nine and it works amazing! It's recommended to wax (not the nonskid!) your boat not only for looks but for UV and stain protection. Basically your boat will be easier to clean. Star brite Premium polish won testing in Practical Sailor tests for stain protection. We recently added a sun shade to use as a boom tent. It blocks out most of the sun, keeps the cabin cooler and keeps the cockpit bird poop free.

I'll look into Spray Nine. I scrubbed the top of the sliding cabin under the boom yesterday with just an all-purpose cleaner and also the anchor locker too. I hadn't heard of boom tents yet and did a quick search, that could be the answer to staying cool while at dock doing work. Very cool.

Do you plan on sailing to a destination or towing and then sailing?

The boat came with a trailer for getting it out of the water for winter. We plan on staying at our harbor because raising and lowering the mast and towing a boat this large seems hard. We'd like to explore the areas of Lake Ontario we can get to in a day of sailing each way and maybe with a few days off over two weeks we could make a 3-4 day trip away from our harbor to go somewhere else, then go back to work for a few days and come back to turn around and go home. That pesky work gets in the way of a nice 2 week voyage to go far and back at all once.

 

[Project_Mayhem]

I picked up a sunshade off of amazon for $40. It blocks out 90% of the light and 50-90% of rain depending on how heavy it is. If you can keep the sun off of your cabin top and deck, the temps below will also be reduced. It will likely expand your usable space. We secure it with four adjustable bungees.

D and R marine has a lot of parts for O'Day sailboats

Coolers are easier to clean. Built in ice boxes can be prone to mold/mildew if not treated properly.

My O'Day 25 took too long to setup for it to be a trailer sailor, even with the electric mast raising system I built