The big refit!

When we bought Alchemy in January 2018, she was in truly exceptional condition. The previous owners Kathy and Bradley were meticulous in their maintenance, frequently replacing expensive but critical systems well before there was any sign of a problem. Certainly she was by far the best maintained Nordhavn we saw on our search that included South East Asia, New Zealand, the UK and both the East and West coasts of the US.

Despite this, we wanted to update a few more things before going too far away from the US, where parts and expertise are plentiful (although certainly not cheap!). We therefore decided to carry out a significant refit to make the boat as close to “as new” as possible and to adapt a few things to suit our tastes.
The refit included:

• Replacing or refurbishing all the furniture and most of the fittings in the saloon. This included a brand new dining table that we shipped from Italy, six new custom made dining chairs, new upholstery for the sofa and new light fittings.
• Re-upholstering the sofa in the pilothouse and the headboard in the master bedroom.
• Replacing the carpets and ceiling headlining throughout the boat.
• New custom-made blinds throughout the boat.
• New stone worktop in the pilothouse heads.
• New bathroom sink taps throughout the boat.
• Replacing three of the Vacuflush toilets with brand new units.
• Replacing the coolant circulation pump for the air conditioning system (not because it was broken – it was just getting a little old!).
• Re-painting the two Awlgrip stripes around the pilothouse.
• Re-caulking many of the seams around the outside of the boat.
• New HD CCTV system throughout the boat.
• Two new navigation computers, two new autopilot systems, backup satellite compass.
• A new 4K TV for the saloon TV lift, a NAS based media server system and a boat-wide Sonos audio system.
• Removing almost all the unused wiring throughout the boat – we filled at least 10 large black rubbish bags!
• Running new CAT6 network and two NMEA2000 backbones throughout the boat.
• Installing the beginnings of a full Maretron monitoring system that will allow us to monitor many systems automatically and detect potential issues before they develop into anything serious.
• Replacing all lighting with energy efficient LED versions.
• Replacing the 4x Lifeline 4D engine start batteries.
• A new offshore liferaft to replace one of the two already on board.
• And much more, including a full wash, polish and wax, new zincs, new bedding, new windscreen wipers etc.

Here are a few photos: