1983 Jeanneau Fantasia 27 sailboat

[mollybrown]

Greetings Jeanneau owners. Keith and I just bought a low priced 1983 Fantasia 27 in Fort Walton Beach, Florida a few weeks back. She needs quite a bit of TLC - below deck primarily. The bilge area underneath the floor boards/sole is shallow and hard to dry out - I didn't expect that! (What? No room for a bilge pump and float switch???) The cabinetry/woodwork is made of [damaged] plywood with veneer - not good. The deadlights and quarter berth porthole are crazed and leaky, which is one of the first things we are going to tackle. Do we have any Fantasia owners out there who have made their fixer-uppers nice again? Tips, diagrams, specs, resources for parts - all would be like gold to us right now! For example: We need to replace the tiller. Will it have to be custom made? Please share what you know with me. Thanks so much. 

[MalcolmP]

You are very welcome, the Fantasia was a really pioneering design and very successful. You should be able to get quite a few ideas from searching this forum and our main page www.jeanneau-owners.com/searchlinks.html many issues are not model specific. 

There is a large French language site dedicated the Fantasia here: www.fantasiami.com/ if you don't read French this auto-translate whilst far from perfect should help, there are quite a few documents there too.  Also if you are on Facebook there is a closed group for Fantasia's here www.facebook.com/groups/1717743321888018/

That said please ask away here on this forum, we have lots and lots of really helpful and knowledgeable Jeanneau owners who I am sure will try to assist as your refurbishment project progresses.

[rene460]

Hi Mollybrown and Keith,

Welcome to the forum.  As Malcolm says, you will find lots of helpful information and helpful people here.

I am not directly familiar with the Fantasia, but from the links posted, it looks like a great boat.  You are embarking on a great adventure.

Our SO30i has only just enough room under the floors for a bulge pump but the water left behind below the top of the pump inlet is still quite a bit of water.  I use a plastic chamois similar to those sold for car washing, to mop up the water, and wring it out into a plastic ice cream bucket.  Quite easy to get it completely dry.  So long as there is no leakage of course.   The main ingress of water for us is when I swap the speed transducer and blanking plug, otherwise we normally stay pretty dry.

Its is a pity about the damaged plywood, I presume you mean coming delaminated.  I suspect that this will need replacement, but good quality marine grade plywood is easy to work, especially if you have a jigsaw and a router.  I would not worry about it being plywood, but it might be worth treating the lower edges with Everdure or similar, basically an epoxy with additives to give it a low viscosity like water, so it soaks in.  Those products do a great job even on rotting timber.  I have a friend who has another manufacturers boat, a relatively recent model.  It had laminated chipboard for internal bulkheads and furnishing, even in the shower.  That, I would worry about.

It looks like the original tiller is timber, and relatively simple straight shape, so a nice little woodwork project to start on while other activities are planned.  A Wooden Boat magazine will give lots of ideas for timbers if you want something fancy.

Looking forward to progress reports

rene460

[MartyB]

Go to hints and tips at Jeanneau-owners.com
Many articles on people's projects the have done on boats. I've got an interior redo of original vinyl.
I did knot do tiller replacement. Use old as a model. Change as you see fit. I went from straight tapering in back to front, to curving upwards the last foot, extending it a out 6" longer.
Ive replaced the cabin top teak hand holds, part of door. Sons redid wood door. Article in hints and tips.
Just because I have an Arcadia, similar vintage, but 2' or so longer, does not mean basic idea of what I have done, will not work for you. Or even a 50' boat owners idea, may be usable for you.

Marty