Yachting and Boating World forums: Updating

Some thoughts on bringing some modernity to a classic.

I have been thinking about doing an internal refit to a 30 foot Hillyard to make her a bit more user friendly. I appreciate the warmth of old mahogany and period fittings, but the use of space is hardly efficient.

The config. has the main cabin with single berth/setees either side with cooker and sink either side midships. V berths in the fore. Locker and heads either side between. The port berth had a trotter beneath the sink. That's gone, replaced by a 12v fridge, shortening the berth which is still OK for our 7 year old.

The plan was to bring the cooker over to the port as well, sacrifice the berth, but then build a U shape dinette on the starb'd converting to a double berth.

Is it worth it? Don't want to go back to a floating GRP caravan, but would character be sacrificed for more comfort and efficiency. BTW, I used to restore classic cars, wherever possible taking them back to the original, but that didn't stop me using modern rust preventers and cataloy instead of lead loading.

Any views?

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