Westward II

Westward II – a Jim Young 43

Westward II was purchased by us in August 2005, after a 2 year search across Australian, New Zealand and by internet around the globe. In October we had a delivery skipper and crew bring her across the bight to her new home of Fremantle Sailing Club (FSC), with us joining at Albany for the last 2 days of the trip.

Designed and built in Auckland by Jim Young in 1985, she was brought to Australia for the 1986 Sydney boat show, spent a couple of years at Hastings NSW, before relocating to the Sandringham yacht club in Port Philip bay for the next 17 years, cruising around the bay and with the occasional trip to Tasmania and up the east coast.
Construction is a GPR centre cockpit, masthead cutter sloop rigged, lined with dark oiled teak, a Perkins 4:108 diesel motor, 1000Ltrs of diesel in 3 tanks, 8oo liters of water in 2 tanks.

Westward II was a little run down when we purchased her, so we’ve done a lot of work to bring her back, a small area of osmosis was found during the survey where the keel joined the hull, so we decided to replace all the gel coat below the water line, this should give us many years of trouble free cruising. The interior had been neglected, but after some elbow grease and oil it is looking a lot better and loved again.
We are planning to head off on a long term world cruise, so April 2007 we moved onboard permanently, joining the live-aboard community at FSC and becoming active members of the FSC cruising committee.
The major work has been adding dingy davits that have 3 x 80 Amp solar panels and 2 x Rutland 913 wind generators incorporated, also added has been a Katadyn powersurvivor 40 (desalination), and radios have upgraded to Icom’s VHF with DSC. The fridge and freezer had to be replaced as the installation had rotted, so now we have a separate fridge and freezer each running Danfoss BD50 units. Electrical system has had some work, installation of a 2000w inverter and 6 x 120w gel batteries. In one of the water tanks we have installed 2 x 200 liter bladder tanks with one dedicated to drinking water including a manual pump. We will only fill this tank from desalination or from reliable sources.
Our cruising area for these last few years has been around Fremantle, day trips to Carnac Island or around Cockburn sound and over night trips to Rottnest or Garden Island and Rockingham. Longer cruises have been to Mandurah, Bunbury and Busselton.