June 24th, 2008

While I had a pretty ambitious schedule for working on the boat today, the weather gods didn't see things the same way(although they did provide some really exiting thunderstorms) and as a result there is still a lot of the hull to be sanded. On the other hand, this did give me the opportunity to finish cleaning up below, and for the first time in three years the bilges are bone-dry and ready for fresh paint, and I am pretty satisfied with the level of cleanliness down there.

This picture shows the forward view of the cabin. Some touch-ups are needed with the white paint, and the support for the mast needs to be refinished, as do the bulkheads which you can see from the peeling varnish.

Here is the cabin looking aft, which is a lot better than it looks. The hull here is all prepped for paint, so it should look a lot better soon once it is freshly painted. Woodwork still needs to be stripped and refinished, but that shouldn't take too long here (the varnish is already peeling off).

This is a view of the bilge. This is the best its looked in a long time! Free of dirt and debris, dry, some new plumbing in place, and ready for paint.

Once the bilge has been repainted, the cabin sole can go back in which will make it a lot easier to work down below.

Meanwhile, I have gone back to Cambridge for work on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and will be sailing at MIT this weekend. Not to leave the project at a standstill, I loaded all the interior components (cabin sole, companionway ladder, hatches, shelves and berth supports) into my car and have set up shop in the garage at our house in Cambridge.

As you can see, with a couple of old doors I was able to set up enough table space to lay everything out, so the varnishing should commence later this week.

That's all for now...

June 23, 2008

I spent yesterday cleaning the boat, and assessing what lays ahead to get it ready.

As it stands right now, the big projects ahead include sanding the starboard side of the hull and the cabin house, filling any dings in the hull and then fairing it, brightening the teak, prepping the non-skip areas for paint, priming everything, painting, sanding and painting the bottom (the existing bottom is not in bad condition), rebedding the chainplates and cabin windows, and varnishing the teak. For the cabin, the woodwork needs to be varnished (it has already been stripped and prepped), new cushions must be fabricated, bilge needs to be painted, cabin paint needs to be touched up and all new (but basic) wiring needs to go in.

While it seems like a lot, I think once the ball is rolling it should get moving pretty fast, and there aren't any major structural projects left - its all just finish work now to get this beauty shining again.

Hopefully I will have more frequent updates soon as work picks up again.

Here's a picture of what she'll hopefully look like soon, just imagine it in red...

Then I took a break

In the weeks that followed, a lot actually got accomplished, but not enough to get the boat in the water by the end of the summer. Highlights include stripping the paint off the starboard side of the hull, removing the pulpit and stanchions (and filling the holes), stripping the interior of most of the woodwork (taken home to be stripped and refinished) and cleaning up/fixing the boom, which had come apart in pieces over the years. It was kind of one of those times that things definetly had to look worse before they could get better, or at least that is what I am telling myself.

Aside from that work, I decided on a color scheme for the boat. While initially I thought I would do either Flag Blue or black for the hull, further reflection made me think this would be a bad idea. Aside from the fact that half the boats in Marblehead seemed to be showing up in blue (my own family was already guilty of that), I also worried that with the older hull the print through of the original fiberglass could be an issue, and since I would be painting it myself, I wanted a color that would be a little more forgiving in terms of application (dark colors show imperfections more). Ultimately, I decided on using Interlux Perfection paint for most of the project, the hull in New Rochelle Red, Mediterranean White cabin house and boot top, black bottom and Hatteras Off White decks.
I think that this should look very sharp, but is still pretty classic. When the toe rails and coamings are freshly varnished, and the mast and boom have been refinished (they are finished bright), the boat should really stand out.

Despite my enthusiasm for the project, I had to head of to college in the fall, and the project got put on the back burner for a while. I covered the boat up, thinking I would be back the next summer to pick back up where I left off. Unfortunately (for the boat, not for me), the next summer I was coaching sailing full time, so I didn't work on the boat at all. And the summer after that, I was living in Boston and interning at at financial advisory firm, so the boat was, sadly, the last thing on my mind. I spent my weekends sailing dinghys all over New England, but rarely made it back to M'head with the time to work on the boat.

Thankfully, in the summer of 2008, I found myself back at home (at least four days a week), and with enough time to actually work on the boat. Coupled with that fact was that our big boat was on the hard for the summer having work done, and the fact that we would lose our mooring in Marblehead harbor if we didn't put the boat in the water by the end of the summer, which would result in waiting at least 15 years to get it back, giving me plenty of motivation to get the project rolling again.

So that's where the boat project is at now, and hopefully it will be in the water by August.

Moving Outside

After cleaning the interior out, I turned my attention to the exterior, which had showed the effects of being uncovered for a number of years.

Port side of the hull, which is probably the best view of the boat.

Starboard quarter, which shows the dull paint and peeling varnish.

Here's the stern, or what you can see of it at least.

And this shows the cockpit. The mainsheet had been left out, but the tiller was still centered, so at least that hasn't been swinging around...

And lastly, here is the cabin top and forward deck, which shows the peeling paint on the companionway hatch and the old pulpit.

And then it begins

So the first task of the project was cleaning the boat out. When the owner told me that "everything you could need is there," I didn't think he literally meant everything was in the boat. But everything was. Sails, life jackets, cushions, the boom, coolers, batteries, lines, fenders, assorted spare rigging parts, tools, gas tanks, safety harnesses, stove, electronics and cleaning supplies. Did I mention that the boat was uncovered, and it there was no drain at the bottom of the keel? So it was a mess...

So this is what greeted me when I opened up the boat. The picture below shows the galley, complete with an icebox that they had left drinks in over the winter...

So I spent the better part of a day removing everything and sorting it. While everything smelled a little gross, there wasn't really that much damage to anything, so it made the trip back to our house where everything dried out, and I figured out what was worth keeping and what needed to be replaced. The covers on the cushions (yellow vinyl, naturally) were covered in mildew, and the foam smelled pretty gross, and now, even after drying out for 3 years, they still do. In the course of removing everything from the boat, I found 5 wasp nests, and some old lines provided a warm home for a family of mice, but shortly all of that was cleared out. Our garage was full pretty quickly, as at the same time we were renovating our house so it was already pretty full of furniture from that endeavor, but pretty quickly the interior of the boat was looking better.

In the Begining

So this whole project begins back in the summer of 2005. I had just wrapped up high school, wasn't working in the summer, and just hanging around Marblehead. At the end of June I was in the boatyard, working to get my Mako 20 ready for the 4th of July. Taking a break from varnishing, I wandered around the boatyard and noticed a much-neglected sailboat at the back of the yard, half under vines, cover less and looking for a new owner. While at first I didn't think anything of it, as I got closer to finishing restoring my Mako I realized that I was going to miss having a project to work on, and partially wanted to get a new sailboat anyway. I pondered it a little more, and spent some time googling, trying to figure out what kind of boat it was, and anything about it. Eventually I discovered that it was a Sailmaster 22, designed by Sparkman & Stephens, and built in Holland in the 1960's. Everything I found online about the boat seemed pretty positive, and it seemed like a great opportunity for a project and then a great little boat. Why I wanted to get rid of the Mako that I had just spend years perfecting is beyond me, and maybe I should have paid attention to this paragraph in a Spinsheet Magazine review:

"Prospective owners should keep in mind that these boats, if not already there, are rapidly approaching 40 years old and are likely to require a significant amount of work to restore or maintain their condition."

Well regardless, I was pretty interested and contacted the owner, and quickly, perhaps too quickly, I had a deal to purchase the boat and before I knew it, I was the owner of the boat. We signed on July 17th, 2005, and I began working the next week.