State of Play

Spoke at length with Rick this morning. Pretty much all good news. The only significant rot is along the waterline, with some smaller patches of worm damage around the keel deadwood. There appears to have been some selective refastening done in the past, and overall the outer fasteners are very good, and the inner fasteners are excellent. Essentially, there is absolutly no need to re-plank the entire hull. The centreboard case looks good, but cannot tell entirely until she is lifted again to drop the board out. The rudder is near perfect, thanks to its copper sheathing, and with no apparent play in any of the bearings.

They are peeling off all the stemwood and will laminate up all new sections, will selectively re-plank where required, and will still have to open up the hull completely in three areas in order to deal to some delignification on the inner planking where the bronze strapping is rebated in; the impressed current cathodic protection system has done a great job of protecting the metal fittings, but at the expense of some alkali attack.

On the downside, the work is proving slower than expected, in no small part due to the high quality of construction; just getting the boards off is proving a mission. We are now working towards dropping her back in the water at the end of July.

I advised Rick that I have decided to finsh the transom bright. He laughed and told me that he was going to finish it bright whether I wanted it or not! Just looks too cool.

So, with a lot of work, hopefully in the not too distant future she will look something like this once again: