hir 3 – Page 2 – Voilier 'HIR 3'

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We plan to sail around the World on board a legendary 34 foot ‘HIR 3’. It’s a unique opportunity to test the best people, equipment and products in the extreme ocean conditions!

25/09/2015 sasaLeave a comment

It has been a while since the last time a Croatian sailing yacht circumnavigated the World… so we want to change that with our project ‘HIR 3 across 3 Oceans’. We plan to sail around the World on board a legendary 34 foot ‘HIR 3’, like Mladen Šutej, Ozren Bakrač and many others did 30 years ago. It’s a unique opportunity to test the best people, equipment and products in the extreme ocean conditions! Everyone and everything that circumnavigates the globe and rounds the Cape Horn will be worth something:) We are filming a documentary about it, writing a book and all the media (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and internet) is already covering our story…

Join us! Drop us a line… sasa.fegic@gmail.com. We believe that it’s a great marketing opportunity…

Sails…

Sails are an important and quite expensive part of a boat. When I bought HIR, I got one old mainsail, one completely new mainsail that has never even been used, one old spinnaker, storm jib, storm mainsail and a genoa that has been rolled around the forestay for years without UV protection cover.

11/07/201511/07/2015 sasa2 Comments

Sails are an important and quite expensive part of a boat. When I bought HIR, I got one old mainsail, one completely new mainsail that has never even been used, one old spinnaker, storm jib, storm mainsail and a genoa that has been rolled around the forestay for years without UV protection cover. We took it down immediately and I have stored in in my basement in Zagreb and almost forgot about it.

Recently I decided to have a closer look, so I took the sail out and cleaned it a bit. T be honest, it doesn’t look great, but I decided to patch it up and use it for a while, since I really can’t afford a new one. I stored it in the forepeak for now and hopefully it will work well it light winds, since it’s 42m2… until we get a new and shiny one 🙂

My good friend Marko from Biograd recently got me a slightly used, great looking, big gennaker in a sock which I think will work great on HIR. I can’t wait to try t out!!! Thank’s Marko!!!

My way

Whenever you are starting a new project, people are always keen on giving their opinions and advices. The same thing happened to me when I was thinking about buying ‘Hir 3’. I will probably do everything MY WAY! 🙂

03/10/201403/10/2014 sasa1 Comment

Whenever you are starting a new project, people are always keen on giving their opinions and advices. The same thing happened to me when I was thinking about buying ‘Hir 3’. It was interesting because my friends who are beginners in sailing, or don’ even sail at all supported my idea… but people who I think know quite a bit about boats were all very much against me buying a boat in such a bad condition and they wanted to talk me out of it…

I decided to buy ‘HIR 3’ because I just thought it was the right thing to do and that if I didn’t do it, that I would probably wonder for the rest of my life if I should have done it.

Now that I started restoring her, everyone support me (at least they say that they do:), but again everyone has their own idea what I should do and how I should do it. Some people say that I should completely remove the interior and start from scratch, others have ideas on what to do with the deck equipment… I fell lucky that over the years I have learned a thing or two about boats, so I always listen to what everyone has to say, but in the end… I will probably do everything MY WAY! 🙂

Good old boat

HIR 3 is definitely a good old boat. She was build to last and she proved bulletproof too:)

17/09/2014 sasa1 Comment

Back in the day, boats were built to last and the main requirement was that she had to be seaworthy. Now, most shipyards (with few exceptions, of course) build boats that have to be cheap, light, fast, pretty and have accommodation for a lot of people. Build quality and seaworthiness unfortunately belong to the past and are now synonyms for good old boats.

HIR 3 is definitely a good old boat 🙂 The hull is made of thick solid laminate that shows no signs of osmosis, has a lead keel connected to the hull with twelve stainless steel plates and a full skeg to protect the rudder. She has an oversized 15-meter keel stepped mast with backstay, running backstays, baby stay and double spreaders that end up on a stainless steel plate on two bulkheads connected to a 2.5 ton keel made of lead with added antimony for stiffness. There are eight oversized winches (on a 34 foot boat!), two large travelers on each side for the genoa and one on the coachroof for the mainsail. All the bulkheads and main frames in the interior as well as her tiller are made of solid teak. In the galley and in the salon there are boxes for plates, glasses, cups and bottles, and one special for a bottle of Jack Daniels:)

She was build to last and she proved bulletproof too:)

True colors

I finally decided that it was the time to start painting the interior. I just couldn’t watch the boat like that anymore, so I had to do it to boost my moral:)

05/09/2014 sasa2 Comments

I finally decided that it was the time to start painting the interior. There might be more important jobs to do, but I had to make the cabin more appealing. I just couldn’t watch the boat like that anymore, so I had to do it to boost my moral:)

I‘ve put on my working clothes, mask and gloves and then I started… First I put one coat of primer, which actually bleached the wood, and then another coat. After that I painted it and finally I varnished the wood.

It was really a difficult job to do, because even though I opened all the hatches and windows and in spite of the fact that I had a mask on all the time, I just couldn’t stay inside for more than half an hour at the time because of all the (probably toxic) evaporation from the paint. The only real joy was the swim I took at the end of every day.

It was a long and painful process, but it had to be done… The only problem was that when I was finished, it all looked much better, except the bilges that looked simply awful, so although I didn’t plan to do it, I then painted the bilges too.

I know that there is still a lot of work to be done, but I think she looks much better now… 🙂

Tiller

The first time I checked the boat it was good to see that the original tiller made of solid teak was still there, so I took it off and brought it to my friend Davor for restoration.

28/08/2014 sasaLeave a comment

The first time I checked the boat it was good to see that the original tiller made of solid teak was still there, so I took it off and brought it to my friend Davor for restoration.

Davor who is a great guy and runs a boatbuilding school for kids repaired a few holes, cleaned it and put some teak oil… and it looked great!! THANK’S Davor!!!

Coin under the mast

Sailors and shipwrights have been putting coins under masts of ships since the ancient times. We found an interesting one on HIR 3!!!

29/05/2014 sasa1 Comment

I was cleaning the bilges with a sponge which was a really dirty job, but someone had to do it. Water was brown, it wasn’t pleasant and it seemed like it would never end with the water coming from all over the place. There was a lot of small rotten plywood parts inside the bilges, but I came across a round object that seemed a bit different, so I stopped and had a quick look. It seemed like a coin, but it was covered in dirt and I couldn’t really see what it was. I showed it to Maja. She immediately went to the pontoon to clean it so we could se what it was…

It was really cool to see a coin which actually turned out to be a medal from 1981. Adriatic Regatta for 2nd place in category IV!

‘Sailors and shipwrights have been putting coins under masts of ships since the ancient times. The ceremonial practice is believed to originate from ancient Rome. One theory is that, due to the dangers of early sea travel, the coins were placed under the mast so the crew would be able to cross to the afterlife if the ship were sunk. The Romans believed it was necessary for a person to take coins with them to pay Charon, in order to cross the river Styx to the afterlife and as a result of this, coins were placed in the mouths of the dead before they were buried. Another theory for this practice is that the insertion of coins in buildings and ships may have functioned as a form of sacrifice thanking the gods for a successful construction, or a request for divine protection in the future (Wikipedia)’.

Now I know what I have to do with the medal. I will keep it safe until we put the boat in better shape… and than we will organize a ceremony to put the it in place under the mast. I can’t wait! 🙂

I showed the medal to my friends at Dobro More sailing club in Zagreb and my friend Jelena offered to clean the medal with a special acid for bronze… she brought it a week later looking like this… Great!! 🙂 Thanks a lot Jelena!!

Stormy weather

Ever since we started working on the boat, the weather doesn’t really want to cooperate, so every time I plan to go to Vrsar, forecast predicts rain, but I now decided that stormy weather won’t bother me. If I can’t go to the boat, I will work in front of our sailing club on the wooden parts we took out from the interior.

15/05/2014 sasaLeave a comment

There’s a lot of work to be done. First I have to sand everything, than I will try to fix the holes and scratches and finally paint & varnish it all…

Last weekend I started sanding and fixing the drawers. My friends Davor and Mario borrowed me a sanding machine and a multi master tool, Elvis helped me a bit, but it’s still going very slow… and the stormy weather in Zagreb isn’t helping. Patience…

Stormy weather…

Voodoo?

08/05/2014 sasa1 Comment

I have found an interesting icon when I was cleaning the boat. We took it out and cleaned it, had a little discussion about what we thought this night be, but nobody really had an idea about what it was…

I asked Mladen Šutej about it and he said that it was a souvenir from Haiti from 1983… Voodoo Child??

When we were leaving the boat, Maja said that we should put the icon were we found it, so she took it and went back… but it fell down and a small ring that was in the ear broke, so Maja thought that he/she didn’t want to go back inside. We took it home and decided that we will put it back on the boat when we finish the refit…

Patience…

Patience is the word of the week… People think that I am a very patient man, but when I think about HIR, it seems that I just can’t be myself.

28/04/2014 sasa1 Comment

Patience is the word of the week… People think that I am a very patient man, but when I think about HIR, it seems that I just can’t be myself. I wanted to go to Vrsar again this weekend, but the weather forecast was really bad, so I had to give up on that. Instead of working I spent the weekend browsing catalogs and ebay in search for anything that I might like to have on the boat.

I realized that having too much time is dangerous. I have found so many cool gadgets that I liked. Now the difficult part is to restrain myself from buying anything I don’t need right now, so I don’t spend little money I have left. I need it for much more essential things, like crane and dry berth, antifouling, marine plywood for the interior etc.

However, I am trying to do as much as I can, even when I am not on the boat. I have contacted the original owner, Mladen Šutej to tell him about my plans. He was very supportive and I think he is pleased that someone is trying to restore the boat. He told me about a few items I have found on the boat and sent me a cool photo of ‘HIR 3’ in Torres Strait with Australia in the back from 1989. We’ll be back! 🙂

In this project PATIENCE will be essential…