Sea Star is a 1980 Niagara 35 built in St Catherines, Ontario. To get the boat ready for our offshore adventure we moved the boat to a friend's farm where we replaced all the Lexan and neoprene gaskets in all the hatches. We installed a Cape Horn windvane, Lofrans electric windlass and a new holding tank. We removed the old poly water tanks and glassed in intergral water tanks, increasing our capacity. The Volvo MD11c was removed and overhauled as was the saildrive.Engine instruments were moved from inside a locker to the cockpit.We installed an inner forestay, replaced the forestay and mounted a main traveller arch.A Garmin 76 GPS is mounted down beside the chart table and a handheld Garmin Geko GPS is carried in the abandon ship bag along with the EPIRB, flares and survival gear. We replaced the analog sounder with a Garmin Blue 100 Fishfinder with speedo and installed a new trilight at the top of the mast. A 45 lb CQR and 200 feet of 5/16 hi tensile chain is our primary ground tackle, with a 22 lb Bruce and 35 lb Danforth as backup. A big thanks to all our friends who helped us get Sea Star ready.