Here it is in my backyard. I unfortunately have no pictures with it fully rigged.
The lower hull is good, aside from one spot above the water line where some apparent dock romance scratched through the gelcoat and slightly exposed the fiberglass. The upper hull has a lot of superficial cracks in the gelcoat, and in about four places, chunks on the order of a square centimeter or so have flaked off. Here is the worst such spot:
I was under the impression that this sort of damage to the upper hull can be taken to be largely cosmetic...if there is a pressing need to address this someone should let me know. I have noticed some cracks getting worse after I have taken it out, probably as a consequence of the boat sitting in the sun for two straight years before I bought it, and I have reinforced the hull in the front to try to minimize this. Notice in the above picture, that the winch, winch support, and cable were all replaced immediately before I purchased the boat.
When I bought the boat, the cabin had nothing more than a battery inside it, and looked like a neglected toilet bowl. The 70 pound deep cycle battery had a good mount in the far bow; its bracket was screwed into half an inch of laminated wood which was glued to the hull. I did not want to move it, but there was a lot of wasted space around it, so I built that partition, held in place with velcro, so I could stuff the life jackets up there as well. I am not sure how good of an idea it is to have something that heavy mounted permanently that far forwards in a 900 pound boat, but I don't know where else to put it. I have slept in here, and it has to be done with your head towards the bow so your feet can slide under the cockpit, but it is actually roomy enough for two platonic adults. For sharing it with a significant other, I cut another pad and some plywood, and built a small collapsible support structure so that the gap in the middle can be filled in flush with the rest of the berth.
Here is a view under the cockpit from the back of the cabin. There is supposed to be a lot of flotation foam back here...a quick estimate tells me I would need about 20 cubic feet to guarantee that the boat would float if flooded. I am not sure if I will end up piling some disorganized scrap styrofoam back here, or if I could find a place to custom cut some blocks so that they could also stiffen the hull and support the cockpit.
From the perspective of the previous picture, move forward about two feet and turn right. Here is the where the keel trunk meets the cockpit floor. This is not a good seal. The last weekend that I had the boat out, I motored seven people a short distance to a campsite, (not something I will ever do again) and the water line was very, very close to the cockpit floor. I had two inches of water above the cockpit in one place; the keel trunk is open to the water below at one spot in the cockpit and was completely flooded. I had two people in the cabin watching the floor for bilge water, and they never reported any, but I later sponged about two gallons of water from this area. The bolts for the keel are another place where water from the cockpit can enter the hull.
Another big problem with the boat, is that the piece of fiberglass forming the lower half of the cabin was meant to be sealed against the lower hull, trapping air for emergency flotation. I don't think there is any foam in there, but I could be wrong. The seam has come open though, and bilge water freely flows under the cabin. I had a picture but apparently forgot to upload it. As it stands, the boat would sink if I managed to capsize and flood it. This is probably not too much of an issue on a lake, but I would like to at least get some foam under the cockpit before the next time I go out.
Anyway, I need to stop thinking about sailing and start worrying about why my simulations of surface plasmon resonances stopped working properly. All opinions, good or bad, are welcome on the boat.
The mast was snapped and welded back together, and the rudder has been split and repaired. There is a tear in the mainsail that was also rigorously repaired, but I am quite happy with this thing for a $1000, especially since the motor apparently cost $800 four years ago.
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