Motor Boat & Yachting — August 2017

James Maxey thought

he’d created his perfect

boat by fi tting stabilisers

to his 52ft trawler, but

it turns out there was a

bigger twist still to come

Words & pictures James Maxey

DOUBLE

THE

TROUBLE,

TWICE THE

FUN

OWNER’S UPGRADE

R

egular readers may remember the
article I wrote last year about refitting
our sturdy Scottish trawler yacht
Silver Dee for use in the Med (‘Silver
Lining’, MBY December 2016). The
upgrades made it much better suited
to its new life in the sun but at the end
of our first season in Antibes, our thoughts started
to turn to zero-speed stabilisers.
The Vosper mini fins fitted to Silver Dee had
served it well since 1976 but rough seas could
overpower them and of course, they weren’t
zero-speed units. A couple of sleepless nights at
anchor with our seven-year-old twins on board soon
demonstrated to us that unless we fitted zero-speed
stabilisers, we’d have to restrict ourselves to marina
berths even when we’d prefer to be at anchor.
We’d been on other boats in the area fitted with
Sleipner’s curved-fin zero-speed systems and found
them to be very effective, so we went straight to

Sleipner for a quote. Bryn and his team at Sleipner

UK proved to be extremely friendly, helpful and

knowledgeable. We took the plunge and wrote

out a cheque for the whole kit to be delivered to

our home in Cheshire so that we could drive down

to Antibes in a convoy of vans with the team from

West Coast Marine at Troon, who had done all the

previous refit work on Silver Dee.

FITTING THE FINS

On arrival in Antibes, the first job was to carefully

take out the old system so that we could try and

re-sell the bits and pieces later, then we set to

work on Silver Dee’s unusual hull. The multi-chine

hull was designed by Allen McLachlan at G L

Watson as a prototype for the RNLI’s Arun lifeboat,

without any consideration for future owners wanting

to retrofit curved-fin zero-speed stabilisers! This

involved lots of careful measuring and grinding

away, both inside and outside the hull, and then

building it back up to make sure the fins had

sufficient clearance.

Once the hydraulic actuators were in place,

my engineer friend Alec glassed in additional

aluminium supports for extra strength, as these

fins are much bigger and more powerful than

the previous Vospers. The team then divided, with

Alec fitting the control panel and GPS wiring and my

dad Fred tackling the wiring for the hydraulic unit,

which is driven both from a power take-off on the

port gearbox and an auxiliary power pack from the

generator (for the stabilisation at rest). West Coast

Marine tackled the fibreglassing for the installation

of the fins and the hydraulic power pack itself.

After a week’s concentrated work in the yard, we

put Silver Dee back in the water (it’s a lot cheaper

in the Med to be in the water than in a yard!) and

got the excellent Hydraulique Méditerranée out to

plumb up the hydraulics. A couple of weeks later, it

was time for the first test. The auxiliary power pack

SILVER DEE

James’s original

52ft trawler yacht

SILVER ECHO

James’s new Aquastar

Explorer 74