(For the uninitiated, that means she was built in 1978 by Westerly Yachts to a design by Laurent Giles. She has a single long fin keel, a centre cockpit with an aft cabin and two masts)
Her specs are ...LOA 33'3" / 10.14m (Length Overall)
LWL 28'5" / 8.68m (Waterline Length)
Beam 11'2" / 3.4m (Width)
Draft 5'5" / 1.66m (Depth)
Displacement 6.5 tonnes (Weight)
Ballast 2.7 tonnes (erm Ballast!)
She carries a roller reefing genoa at the bow, a main sail and mizzen sail and, not seen in the photos, a cruising chute (a large reaching sail similar to a spinnaker)
The engine is the original Mercedes OM636 42hp unit which appears, so far, to be in good working order
On deck, she has nice wide side decks with easy access around the deck.She carries a telescopic whisker pole for downwind sailing but otherwise everything is fairly basic and original. That will change!
She has an excellent cockpit tent, a great boon in the inclement British weather and especially useful when on our home berth in floating cottage mode 
The cockpit is a good size for a centre cockpit boat and despite the presence of the mizzen mast easy to move about in.All the sail controls fall easily to hand and she's a comfortable boat to helm
The cockpit lockers are simply vast! No shortage of space for deck gear, dinghies, ropes, fenders and all the other paraphernalia a cruising yacht tends to accumulate.
Access to the aft cabin is via the cockpit rather than a "walkthough" below decks. This is a minor inconvenience as we don't intend to use the aft cabin as primary living space. It will be used for guest accomodation and, ultimately when it's been refitted, as a man cave!
The advantage of not having a walkthrough is a doubling of the cockpit locker space
Below decks ...
Starting at the aft end, we have the aft cabin.This cabin does not have full standing headroom but it offers two single berths and can be made up into a large double.
There's ample storage below the berths and in the side lockers.
The cabin is in need of a bit of a refit. The headlinings aren't great, the woodwork needs attention and so on. It's the only really shabby part of the boat
The saloon, where we spend most of our time, is spacious and yet packed with oodles of storage spaces. Both settees make up as comfortable single berths and as sea berths plus the port settee pulls out to make a very usable double berth
The saloon table is big for a boat of this size. Seating six to dinner is no problem, seven or eight would be do-able at a pinch
To starboard as you enter the saloon from the cockpit is the galley.
The galley is compact but very usable. A three burner hob, grill and oven is sheer luxury, there's a good sized sink and a cold box under the galley counter which is going to become the main fridge
There is a bit of a lack of work surface (the later Discus, optionally, had a 'U' shaped galley with a shorter starboard settee) but we can work around that.
Opposite the galley is a good sized chart table and a very usable navigators seatThe instrumentation is slightly dated by current standards but in no urgent need of replacement.
She has a good sized chart plotter on a swivelling bracket, VHF, AIS transceiver, radar, wind, depth and log instruments. Everything, pretty much, one could wish for.
Forward of the saloon there are two good sized hanging lockers to starboard. One is accessed from the companionway, the other from the forward cabin
To port is the excellent heads compartmentFacilities are basic but "Pagan" will soon have hot and cold running water, instead of just cold, and a shower
We'll also be fitting a small toilet holding tank in the cupboard behind the heads losing a little storage space which can be regained by fitting shelves in the currently unusable lockers below the sink
Forward of the heads is the forward cabin with a typical v-berth. It's not quite as spacious, surprisingly, as the v-berth on Erbas but it is adequate. Storage is primarily two open shelves above the berths. Once again, we have plans! The headlinings in the v-berth are shabby to say the least. Not actually falling down but tatty. They're also stuck directly to the inside of the GRP moulding which is a recipe for condensation. Like the aft cabin, this cabin is slated for a complete refit
A fin keel with 5'5" draft probably wouldn't be my first choice for pottering around the Thames Estuary. However, as our plans are to go much further afield (round Britain, the Northern Isles, over to Ireland etc.) the advantages of sailing faster and closer to the wind compared to a bilge keeler will be worth any minor inconvenience in home waters
At the time of writing (August 2016) we have an extensive to-do list. You can follow the progress of our refit through the other blog pages and the blog timeline. We hope to have Pagan sailing before the summer of 2016 is completely done and ready for more adventurous travels by the spring of 2017
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