For four years Vira lived on Lake Travis: a 34-foot sailboat on a lake with no way out to big water. Like a racehorse in a backyard. In the fall of 2025 I decided to fix that. I called it the jailbreak.
The plan
October 2025. The plan: get her ready for the road. Mast down and tied on deck, tanks drained, everything she doesn't need taken off. Then truck her to a boatyard on the coast; back then I was thinking of Rockport. Put her on the hard for a few months and finally do everything I couldn't do in the water:
- replace the thru-hulls with composite ones
- fix the strut
- add a lightning ground
- check the rudder and fix it if needed
- replace the centerboard hinge pin, depending on how bad it is
- repair whatever I find under water (I was sure there'd be something)
- prep and paint the topsides
- strip all the old bottom paint, barrier coat, new antifouling
- recoat the mast and boom
- new standing rigging
- rewire the mast with a conduit inside and all new wires
- radar, tricolor light, fix the masthead camera
- AIS
Then splash her and take her to a new home marina on Galveston Bay.
First the sails, the sail pack, the battens and the cockpit cushions came off and went below. The boom came off and was tied down. The mast was waiting its turn.
An A-frame from 2x4s
I had to drop the mast myself. Inspired by a YouTube video, I built an A-frame from 2x4s. Each leg is four 10-foot boards, with the middle two sandwiched between the end ones and bolted, so each leg is almost three boards long. The top should be about 3 feet above the mast's center of gravity, around 24 feet up. I cut the bottom board about 2 feet shorter and at an angle, so it sits better on the deck, with the toe rail stopping it from sliding. With 1.5-foot overlaps, each leg came to 25 feet.
I laid the legs on the deck and joined the tops with an eyebolt to hoist the mast from. Then I lifted the frame with the main halyard. Doing it alone was interesting: cranking the winch and walking the legs back into place at the same time. I drilled the toe rail to tie each leg down, then built the cross members and braces to make it stiff.
The cursed day
Mast day was a bit cursed. My friend Eugene and I planned to meet at 7 AM, but he had to make a detour and came around 9. Two cool hours lost. Then I realized I'd forgotten the climbing gear, and drove home and back. Another hour. I really missed those hours later: it was only 26 °C, but in full Texas sun, and at least three times I was right at the edge of heatstroke.
Then we "dropped" the mast about two inches. I was so focused on where and how to land it that I let out all the rope in the lifting tackle and forgot to watch the end.
After that the A-frame had to come down. We took off the cross members, untied the legs and started lowering it forward. The idea was to walk the leg bottoms onto the dock and take them apart there. But I completely forgot about the spring lines that kept the boat from moving forward. As soon as the legs went onto the dock, the boat slid forward 3–4 feet. The frame tilted about 30 degrees, one leg got trapped between the dock and a stanchion, and a 2x4 snapped. Then everything went like a slow-motion movie. The frame came down and landed softly, mostly on the lifelines. We were lucky: nothing broken, nobody hurt. No pictures; we were a bit busy.
Jailbreak day
I had booked the transporter half a year before, for November 11. Of course nothing went as planned. We made it one day late, with a different trailer, a different truck and different people helping with the haul-out. But we did it.
It started early in the morning near Austin. We met at the marina at 6:30 to motor to Austin Yacht Club, where she would come out. Disconnect shore power, and go. Goodbye, Commanders Point Marina. It was a great home for four years, but we were moving on. Vira said goodbye too: her last 30 minutes motoring on Lake Travis.
Loading took a long time. Nobody wanted to go into the water to adjust the trailer, so it took four tries: float her on, check how she sits, back her off, pull the trailer out, adjust the stands, back in and try again.
At about 11 AM we were almost ready to go. Exactly when Rob was about to hook up, Fred, the trailer owner, shouted: "Not so fast! I need to change all six wheel bearings. You'll be ready tomorrow morning." Quite a surprise. The boatyard expected us on Tuesday, I had to take more days off, and Rob hadn't planned to spend another day. Fred's shop worked on the trailer all day and let it go late at night.
The next morning at 7 we hit the road: the truck and trailer first, and me behind in my pickup, mostly to give them room to change lanes. About 220 miles. Only one problem: a trailer tire blew in the middle of the road, and nobody had a jack or a tire wrench. So I drove to the nearest town to buy them. A coffee stop, and back on the road. Then sixty mph in the left lane through downtown Houston, with a sailboat behind us. Houston didn't even blink.
At about 1:30 PM we were at the boatyard. An hour later the owner showed up and spent 20 minutes starting the travel lift. Unloading was quick and easy. Then she was blocked up, 300 feet from big water. She and I had worked four long years for this moment.
Nine days on the hard
Then the work marathon began. Many days were "four hands on the boat": Maria and me, or Vic and me. Some days I worked alone.
The first big surprise was the keel. It looked like at some point she had hit rocks, or somebody had dropped the centerboard too fast too many times. About 18 inches at the bottom front of the keel was completely delaminated. At first I tried to keep some original material for the shape, but later I ground everything back to good glass.
I did a redneck moisture test: a plastic bag taped to the hull. No water came out.
The damage went about an inch deep and 18 inches long. I couldn't get to the back side, because the centerboard sits in its pocket and the boat was on blocks. So I ground back even more, to a 1:20 slope, so I could build it back up. I found a piece of foam to use as a temporary support for the first layers, wrapped in waxed paper so it didn't get glassed in forever.
Then about ten layers of 1708 went onto the front of the keel in one day, in groups of five with a few hours between: small, bigger, bigger, then again. A full-length wrap at the end, from 3 inches wide up to 30 inches around the keel. Polyester resin for the main buildup.
Then I sanded it to shape.
Then patching, fairing and sanding everywhere. One 2-quart set of fairing compound was definitely not enough; I ordered a gallon.
Day 9 was cold, about 9 °C in the morning, so the job was to keep the epoxy warm. I drilled for a new seacock for the AC, in the right place this time, so there are no air pockets in the hoses: a dry fit from inside, a small pilot hole from inside, then the full size from outside. Just out of curiosity, I measured the bottom thickness.
The second pass of sanding the topsides. That's me.
Then Maria and I put on the first coat of barrier coat. Final sanding, a wipe with TotalBoat dewaxer, masking, paint. I forgot the mixer, so I mixed the barrier coat by hand. The first gallon was on me. The end of day 234 of the rebuild: my side, and Maria's side.
Splash
February 2026. The weekend was over, a lot of work was done, and we were ready for the mast, bottom paint on the swing keel, and the water. Good night, sweet dreams, Vira.
On Friday morning the yard helped us with a crane to step the mast. My son Andriy and I had it up and tight enough to climb and unhook the crane in about 40 minutes. We didn't know how close the high-voltage line overhead was. It turned out to be pretty close, but nobody got a shock. Then they lifted her on the travel lift so we could paint the centerboard and the bottom of the keel, and moved the splash to the end of the day.
When she was up in the air, I saw that the centerboard needs serious work. It swings too far forward when released. There's a big gap between the shaft and the bearing, with no slide plates, so the bottom of the board moves about 10 inches side to side. And several inches of the board are chipped. I had run out of time and didn't want another week or two on the hard. Galveston Bay is very shallow anyway, and I won't need the full draft with the board down, about 6-1/2 feet, for a couple of years. So I'll fix it later, maybe even in the water. Andriy cleaned the centerboard and the keel bottom, and we put on two coats of TotalBoat Spartan.
And back into the water she went.
Friday the 13th, a low bridge and fog
We left Hillman Boatyard in Dickinson at 5 PM, waiting for high tide so we'd have enough water in the channel. Destination: Kemah Boardwalk Marina.
Right at the start there was a 44-foot bridge, and our mast is about 46 feet. So we got creative. We heeled the boat: one guy out on the boom, another leaning hard over the side, and a barrel we tried to use for extra weight. We got about 10 degrees of heel. A camera at the masthead watched the clearance. It was tight, very tight, but we made it.
Then came 5.8 nautical miles of the Dickinson Bayou channel, following the markers in skinny water. Then 2.6 miles along the Galveston ship channel toward Redfish Island, staying clear of the big ships, 4.1 miles across to the Kemah channel, and 2.3 more to the marina.
The first part was nice, in daylight. Around sunset, fog started creeping in. Then it got thicker, and thicker, until we could barely see a boat length. We could only see the channel lights from about 50 feet. For two-thirds of the trip we went on instruments only, GPS and compass: moving through total gray, trusting the plotter and listening for other boats. Luckily there was little traffic. Once we were lined up in the Kemah channel, it got easy.
My brave crew: Viktor and Andriy. 10 PM, Friday the 13th, 2026. We did it.
The next day, and a break
The next day: clean the boat, connect a 3 kWh battery to the inverter, align the mast and secure all the turnbuckles and pins, mount the tricolor and the wind gauge, fix the starboard deck light (wired backwards from the start), refill and check the water, test the HVAC on shore power and on the inverter, get the radar mount ready, put the bimini back.
Vira, stay here, make friends, and wait for me a few weeks. I need two weeks to rest after that sprint.
Those three months were probably the biggest and toughest sprint of the whole rebuild. Almost every weekend, plus a lot of Mondays and Fridays at the boatyard. Even at home I was getting parts, tools and plans ready for the next trip. The boat is now about 200 miles from home: 11 round trips between Austin and Houston, about 4,400 miles, and 24 full days on the boat. So now I'll slow down a bit. Probably every other weekend, but full weekends. Let's see how that works for me and my family.
Kemah Boardwalk Marina at night. The jailbreak worked: Vira lives by the sea now.