About Steel Appeal

Steel Appeal is a Steel 36 foot ‘Van de Stadt’ with a wooden mast. She was built in 1992 buy her previous owner Ray Harris who was a professional boat builder and had his own boat yard ‘Ray Harris Marine’ in Cardiff, Wales. He had also built a 34 foot Van de Stadt before he built Steel Appeal. She was originally commissioned for one of his customers, however they pulled out so Ray and his wife Pauline decided to take over the project for their retirement.

She has been beautifully fitted out specifically for a cruising couple. Ray is a wonderful carpenter and made a fantastic job of the wood interior which is American white ash (none of that dark oppressive wood that you see on so many boats) He actually picked the tree for the mast which is really something!

She is powered by a BMC 1.8 diesel engine, selected for its reliability and worldwide availability of parts. We call the engine “Postman Pat” because of it’s extensive use in the old Royal Mail Sherpa Vans.

We have the Seatalk range of instruments, GPS and auto pilot plus a Hydrovane windvane autopilot for long passages. We also have a small Garmin chart plotter and a raft of PC based plotters. Alas we have no Radar, so bear us in mind if you know of anyone throwing one away!

We became the proud owners in April 2007 (see ‘about us’ page for details about this)

Here are some pictures of her interior and a diagram of her layout.