A hurricane threw this multihull onto a bridge upside down — five and a half years later she was relaunched and pointed at the BVI Spring Regatta.
Most boat tours start at the bow. This one starts with a mooring ball. Standing on the dock at Nanny Cay, the owner of S/V Triple Jack — a 1980 Kelsall 47 — points out where the boat lay before Hurricane Irma, tethered to a heavy-duty ground tackle that ran down to ship’s chain. The mooring never failed. Instead, the one-inch mooring lines tore straight through the boat’s glass-fibre forward beams, on both sides.
Two rounds with Irma
What followed is told plainly, without drama, which somehow makes it land harder. In the first half of the storm the boat broke free and ended up upside down near the mast racks roughly 100 yards away, rig broken in four places and still in the water. In the second half — documented only because someone shot photos during the eye — she was blown clear across to the bridge and launched out of the water, coming to rest half on the bridge, dangling, still inverted.
The salvage plan was simply to flip her and float her, and deal with the rest later; homes and businesses had gone and everyone had bigger problems. But while the yard’s machine was righting her, the second sponson came off entirely. One float gone, the other cracked off at ninety degrees at the forward beam. She sat upside down for a year, then was craned to a worksite the owner calls Tent City, where she stayed for four and a half more.
Essentially a new boat
The list of what was repaired or replaced is, effectively, the boat. The detached sponson was glued back on and the broken one repaired — and as the tour shows, you can’t see any evidence of either job. The shattered coach roof was rebuilt. The deck was reinforced throughout. The rudder was lost in Irma and remade from a donor rudder off a competitor catamaran, then relocated a foot forward. The daggerboard casing was repaired. Then paint, cosmetics, the lot.
Aloft, the carbon mast came off a 40-foot racing monohull, bought a year or two after the storm and modified with diamonds to work as a multihull rig without conventional shrouds and spreaders. The boom came with it and was modified to suit. All the rigging is new and now fibre rather than stainless — the backstays are 14mm Dyneema, made off to owner-built biaxial-and-epoxy chainplates with polished half-inch bolts, replacing the old stainless hoops. Up forward there’s a new ProFurl Race 430 furler, with a new babystay and halyard due the following day. The tiller, built by the owners in Exmouth some 30 years ago, survived; so did one small stay off the old mast.
An engine, and what it unlocks
The most telling change is the inboard. Historically this boat sailed everywhere — onto moorings, off moorings — with only a small outboard, which meant you needed two or three genuinely capable crew before you could go anywhere. The result was that she didn’t get used much. Now, as the owner puts it, you turn a key and motor out with a wife and kids aboard. It also opens the door to races that require an inboard, with the Caribbean 600 firmly on the wish list.
Weight has been watched honestly. She measured 4.25 metric tonnes at her 2016 CSA weigh-in and came in around 4,298kg at relaunch — engine, structural repairs and some deliberately heavy-duty hardware included, such as a 54-series winch weighing 32kg. The trade-off was made knowingly: gear chosen to last rather than to shave grams.
The video was filmed a week after launch, mid-fit-out, with ten winches still to bolt down and the mainsheet system mocked up, ahead of the Round Tortola race and the BVI Spring Regatta. It’s a candid look at a boat in its final stretch — and at what five and a half years of rebuilding actually buys you.
Kelsall market snapshot
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| Kelsall solds, last 24 months | 1 |
| Median sold price | $69,000 |
| Median time to sell | ~469 days |
| Active Kelsall listings | 2 |
| Asking range | $110,000–$115,000 |
Kelsall multihulls trade thinly, so comparables are scarce and patience is part of the equation on both sides of a deal.
| Median sold (24 mo) | $69,000 | |||
| Active low ask | $110,000 | |||
| Active high ask | $115,000 |
For full details and to arrange a viewing, contact listing broker Ted Reshetiloff.