After looking over the boat for a few days and cleaning out the (55 gallon trash can's worth) of pinestraw I was able to get an initial assessment of what it needed and where I stood.
The Good:
- Hull is sound and seems pretty stiff. One of the problems with the early fiberglass (FG) hulls is that they get flexy over time. For this reason, the early formed wood hulls are still prized by the top-tier class racers. I have zero desire to race, but it's nice to know the hull is capable of being at least locally competitive.
- Sails are in A1 shape. Like a motor boat without a motor, a sailboat that needs sails is worth less than nothing, at least in the bottom-feeder price ranges I'm operating in.
- Hardware is in good shape, including new-looking shrouds. All the fittings for the rigging (blocks, cams, cleats) and the metal wires that hold up the mast (shrouds) add up to a lot (LOT) of money when you start replacing. She's missing a couple bits but not much.
- Running rigging is usable. Not pretty but all functional and solid. See also lots of money to replace.
- Brightwork (the wood trim) is ugly but structurally sound for the most part.
- Trailer is solid and made it home at near-interstate speeds with no incidents.
- lots of spare parts - brand new set of shrouds, an extra rudder and tiller, parts for the trailer wiring, other stuff
- Have a nice sunbrella cover that needs a few patches but is mostly solid. Designed as a mooring cover to be used with the mast up.
The Bad:
- Good LORD what do all these ropes do??!!
- One angle brace on the front grate is loose. Like laying in the bottom of the boat loose.
- The front and rear grates, the thwart, and the centerboard cap are all shedding the last flakes of their varnish. The wood is all dark gray or black and desperately needs cleaned and refinished. Some of it is cupped and cracked and will need to be replaced. That will mean completely disassembling all the woodwork, much of which is epoxied in.
- The teak rails were covered with fiberglass and resin at some point in the past. They are now shedding this mess with a determined effort. Every time I get near the boat my forearms end up itching like I've been installing attic insulation. Plus it looks like pure hell. If the rails aren't in good shape underneath it could mean building a 20' long template to custom bend and lay up the curved rails from carefully cut 1" strips of extremely expensive wood and then mating them to another strip while gluing everything to the loose floppy hull. Teak is about $33/ board foot right now. Did I mention I've never done much woodworking?
- Interior paint is abandoning ship. At a prodigious rate. In large flakes that are much like broken glass. Apparently the original gel coat on the interior was a lovely light blue that was painted over in the past with a sturdy coat of off-white marine paint. It's decided to retire after many faithful years of service. Mostly a cosmetic issue , but it reveals...
- All the internal tanks are separating from the hull. The seats, the bow tank, and the stern tanks were created as separate fiberglass pieces and then mated to the hull with resin and filler at the factory. They serve as flotation tanks to keep the boat from sinking if you get blown over or swamped. Every tank has at least a few places where the filler is cracking and falling out or just damn gone. The seats specifically have nice 1/2" wide gaps where they are no longer attached for a foot or two at a time. None of the tanks are about to fall out, but none of them are sealed either. Crap. This is going to mean a lot of grinding, fileting, and fiberglassing. I'll have to cut/grind out all the loose stuff, filet the joints, then lay fiberglass tape and resin all the way around the tanks and to cover the new repairs and reinforce what hasn't cracked yet. Which probably means repainting the entire interior. Which should mean sanding all the old paint back to the gelcoat. Crap.
- Transom curl disease. The transom is a piece of plywood bedded under fiberglass - a thick layer on the outside and a thin layer inboard. When the glass cracks, water gets in and the wood swells causing the transom to curl toward the rear. Old Dog has the very beginnings of this issue. The only real repair is to cut and chisel out the wood and bond in new wood, then reglass it.
- Registration paperwork. I already filed the state registration for the boat, so no big deal there. But when I started cleaning I found the hull number in the bilge along the keel line, 2694 in barely legible black dots. The state registration lists the boat as 2496, so that's not quite right. It also lists the boat as a 1962 model, but with #2694 (or the incorrect 2496 for that matter) it would have been built in 1968. Either way, it's pre-1972 when Hull ID Numbers (HINs) were begun, which means a hull number isn't required for GA paperwork so it doesn't really matter if it it's wrong. But I'd still like it to be right. I also need to get a set of registration numbers ON the boat.
- Trailer tags. The trailer has no manufacturer ID number and the PO never tagged the trailer. That means I have to get a Trailer ID Number (TIN) issued from the local tag office, permanently affix the tag, have it inspected by the sheriff, and take the signed paperwork back to get a road-legal tag. Getting it inspected means I need to fix the wiring for the lights and put safety chains on the trailer.
Goal Setting, or How Not To Collapse Crying From The Overwhelming Amount Of Work You've Just Bought Yourself.
Step 1: Do just enough that you can at least take the boat out for a sail or two. If you hate being on the boat, no need for spending hundreds of hours of your life repairing the boat. I kind of doubt we'll hate it, but hey, I want to sail!
Step 2: Figure out how to attack the other issues. Fixing the fiberglass is paramount, but the boat is really cramped so removing the woodwork may be the best way, but that means doing the whole project at one time. And how do I clear enough room in the shop to do that?
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