INVESTIGATOR 563

Nice setup Ray.

Your trailer lights mounted on the mudguards is very practical, but do you have some clearance lights rearward of that?

Geoff,

No clearance lights. My boatramp is at the end of the street, only a few hundred metres, so not much need.

Well that's handy. Wish my street came with a boatramp!

Ozzie wrote: ↑Sun Apr 19, 2020 5:51 pm Great refurb Ed. Nice to see new owners with lots of enthusiasm and lots of new posts going up. Helps old owners like me try and get a bit of it back

Thanks Ozzie, It’s good to see the forum active and I hope to inspire others to post as well!

So Tikirri has a manual bilge pump that attaches to a hose with some holes in it to presumable suck water up through, this hose however is only on one side of the bilge and I’m getting the impression that water can’t pass from one side of the bilge to the other unless it goes over the top which would be a lot of water! Is this an acceptable setup and how much water can I expect to get in here?

It’s a bit of a pain Ed but water has four areas to sit in the 563 all dammed off from each other in the bilge. The front area where the front lead ingot slots is the hardest to drain . I have a post prepared on my bilge pump to put in the technical section, just about to take a few pics to go with it .

Ozzie wrote: ↑Tue Apr 21, 2020 1:57 pm It’s a bit of a pain Ed but water has four areas to sit in the 563 all dammed off from each other in the bilge. The front area where the front lead ingot slots is the hardest to drain . I have a post prepared on my bilge pump to put in the technical section, just about to take a few pics to go with it .

That is a bit of a pain, I plan to generally go away for 2 days at a time and potentially up to 2 weeks. I’ll probably end up painting with some kind of bilge paint but how does water generally get in and how much Is a “reasonable” amount of water?

I noticed the lifting lug on the front Ingot has rusted fairly badly so water at least sometimes gets in there. For the most part the boat will be under a tarp so rain shouldn’t be coming into the bilge too often.

Ok, so you’d recommend a barrier paint over a “bilge” paint?

I know that one of the windows is leaking a little bit as I gave it a decent wash when we firs got it. I went and checked for leaks and that’s the only place I found a bit of water although the cushions seemed to catch it haha,

Thanks mate, I’ll definitely be coating inside the cockpit lockers as the paint in there is flaking off!

Once I’ve taken it out for a sail and can see everything is actually present and functional I’ll begin modifying things but for now I don’t want to do anything that I may have to undo.
For example I’m considering lengthening the starboard berth into the locker by cutting a hole and making a dome or similar out of fibreglass for my feet so I can sleep a bit more comfortably (I’m about 6’1”)

Just so keen to get it out onto the water!


My windows are not standard unfortunately, they are just Perspex screwed onto the outside and some silicon sandwiched in between

well Ed your Post has really gone off 40 replies . Well done. As a thought for your quarter berth, it’s something I’ve planned for a while too and I’m only 177 tall. The only thing I would say is it’s the narrow end at the berth that’s a cramp up for sleeping too. We are going to experiment this summer with moving the head into the cockpit in our pop up beach tent at night and sleeping me athwart next to the companionway and Mrs Ozzie in the v berth this gives us both length and width to sleep comfortably. Spritz actually came with infills to turn the main cabin into a narrow double bed but we’ve never used them. You do have quite a bit of length at the widest part of the beam. Just a thought you might try before you do a mod. Cheers that’s 41 replies

I noticed this topic is on “fire” haha, good to see and a good time to be asking questions since there isn’t a whole lot of sailing to be done haha.
There is few more views on the photos than there are participants so you guys reading should login and comment

That’s a cool idea and I may go that route but the main attraction of lengthening the berth is that I can jump straight into bed when I want so after a big swim/dive I can just crash lol.

I have a question for you all!
There is a piece of timber dividing the v berth at it’s narrowest, I can almost imagine it’s there to stop children kicking each other at night but perhaps it has another purpose?