Bruce Roberts is an Australian yacht designer born in Victoria (where my Mother and Brother’s currently live).

He studied yacht design through the US-based, Westlawn Institute of Marine Technology.

Founding BRUCE ROBERTS INTERNATIONAL YACHT DESIGN and opening his first “International design office” in the USA in 1972.

Roberts designs cover a wide range of sail and powerboats that have been built in fibreglass, steel, aluminium and wood epoxy. The design proved popular with the self-builder and the professional with over 30,000 of Bruce’s designs in service worldwide.

Despite that pedigree, the Bruce Roberts 43 is not as common as you would think.

Eclipse is a Bruce Roberts 43 with a GRP hull and long keel which was moulded by Ocean Mouldings in Loughborough in 1985.

When she was built, she was fitted with teak decks laid on GRP with the bolts holding the teak planks to the GRP deck.

The centre cockpit offers wheel steering which isn’t as seaworthy as a tiller but is perfectly fine for a boat where a tiller might be a challenge to use.

I believe she is a Norfolk 43 design given her uncluttered top decks and this offers a secluded aft deck for sunbathing and my impromptu workshop as well as a spacious forward deck for safe deck working.

She has a Kemp mast and Selden boom with single lead reefing lines.

Currently, she has a fully battened mainsail from Banks and her foresails (staysail and yankee) have a Schaefer roller furling on both.

The keel stepped mast is supported by 10mm S/S rigging (Danish) and true to blue water design she is over rigged.

When I bought her, she had davits but I have removed these to avoid the damage that a pooped dinghy could cause.

There is a boarding ladder astern and a detachable one for midships. It’s clearly safer to board midships where any pitching motion from the swell in minimized.

She has an electric windlass (needs servicing) to pull the 45kg CQR anchor up. The intention here is to replace it with a spade or Mantus anchor with some additional chain rode.

Below decks, she has a V berth forward and a double stateroom aft. Starboard aft, there are 2 pilot berths that double up as a ‘garage’ at the moment.

A spacious saloon is midships and seats around 8 comfortably or a dozen ‘friends’.

Fitted for blue water cruising, the galley storage is large and there is a chest fridge freezer port side aft which can be run from the inverter or generator.

The stove fitted was a Taylor’s stainless steel 041, which has been removed for a more modern replacement. I decided upon a Bainbridge Neptune 4500.

The heads on a yacht get a lot of use and so I have removed the older fittings and replaced the Lavac toilet with a composting toilet from Airhead. This is a trial in the short term and the skin fittings are still in place for a water toilet and holding tank should this experiment not work.

The engine is a BMC 1.5 L 40HP. This is a popular engine in the UK and is in service on many narrow boats. It is, however a little dated now and spares getting harder to find. So my plan is to upgrade to a Betamarine 70 and have the BMC refurbished for sale.

The fuel tank is 50 gallons with a 10-gallon day tank fed from a manual lifter pump. There is also storage for diesel below and on deck. This is small for a main fuel tank (225 litres) despite 45 litres in the day tank. Fortunately the ‘cruising life’ calls for more sailing than motoring.

The water tanks are 100 Gallons plus space for another 80 gallons in separate containers. This gives a good amount of water for ready use plus the contingency of additional water which should remain free of any contamination. I’d like more but perhaps a job for the future.

The navigation equipment is serviceable but a little tired and will be updated in due course. There is a Garmin 65 GPS which is locked to the Furuno 1621 radar. Both are serviceable and my experience with 1980’s radar systems means that there is a homely feel to this set up.

Basic ray marine wind and depth instruments complete the setup. I supplement this with a Navionics app and GPS feeds on my iPads and phone and clearly, paper charts are a sailor’s standard navigation fare.

Overall, she is a well-built lady who has already crossed the Atlantic and seen several more years of cruising in the Med. And like ‘ladies of a certain age’ there are bits of her she is really proud of and parts that she’d frankly not want you to look at!

My task then is to take this maturing lady and turn her back into the head turner she has previously been (and continues to be).