Just in case anyone was curious, Jeff and BLJones were (as usual) spot-on: she is a lifeboat conversion built by someone's grandad here on Lake Ontario some 40 years ago. She's apparantly been all over the lake and back and forth to Rochester many times. Grandpa passed away last January, and the grandson had posted on Craigslist last week saying he was looking to donate her - that's when I put the picture here, trying to figure out what on earth she was.
Well since then the grandson called me back and said he wanted to give her to me, or more precisely to our youth group (!!)
I was a little floored.
So I'm seriously contemplating taking her. Lots of things to work out - where to keep her and if any of the marinas or sailing clubs around here will give us a little break on slip fees, getting a title if we need one, insurance, will I really have time, etc etc.
I'm hopefully going out to Hamilton next week to take a look and shmooze with the grandson some more - she's sitting on a trailer at his grandparents' house. He swears she's bristol, a little varnish on the masts every other year and keep her painted and you're good. He's a sailing instructor himself, he's taking grandad's nearly-complete 37-footer, so this boat is one more than he can handle.
There's an amazing wooden boat thread here:
http://www.sailnet.com/forums/genera...n-boats-1.html with some great back and forth between Jeff and Cormeum on the pluses and minuses. (I should copy some of those posts to Smackdaddy's Salt's Corner thread)
I'm enough of an engineer to know that most things are pretty darn good if well maintained but a disaster to get back into shape once things start to slip. Specifically, Cormeum (of the S&S woodie) swears wood will be less maintenance if it's really been well cared for. It for sure can avoid some of the scary structural issues of old GRP that's been flexed and stressed too many cycles, as Jeff mentions in a lot of places. And tho I'm not that old (30), I've seen that older stuff can often be better built - evidence my parents' house from the early 50s, with its steel center beam and structural flooring of 2x4's, vs. my early-80s house with floor layers of chipboard (yuck!).
And I'm enough of an engineer to know there's more than one way to look at stuff. If you read all of Dave Pascoe's stuff, he swears by older fiberglass techniques and would much rather a 35 year old hull thickly laid up than "newfangled" framing and a much lighter outer skin. And he's got the experience (and pictures!) to back himself up. On the other hand, Jeff here has been around as long and swears the new hi-tech stuff is far more seaworthy (not withstanding that a coastal boat isn't built to bluewater standards from the outset).
So anyhow, I have to finish reading that wood boat thread (not today - need to do work!)
I'll hopefully see the boat early next week and post pictures so everyone here can share the fun and chime in. And I'll try to get over there again with my local sailing mentor (away till next Thu) who's got wood boat experience.
It'll also be interesting to see how easy it is for me to get a group of friends together who want to make this happen financially, assuming I take it. We can do stuff through our nonprofit, but it's not budgeted, so it's gotta come from extra donations. I'm hoping I can get a some sailing-minded buddies, along with a some youth-minded buddies, together and cover most of the slip costs. If we take the boat, we'll at least having willing help from the teens for basic upkeep stuff.
Till then, I'm happy to hear what the SNers have to say
I've read a lot of Pascoe's stuff, and all Sailingdog's stuff on boat inspection. Any thoughts unique to scoping out a woodie?
Connect with Facebook
