New Project: 25ft Motor Cutter

After a busy summer of sailing and boating during which I have refurbished a plywood Miracle sailing dinghy for my grandsons to sail, I have made a start on a pending project in the shape of an ex-Admiralty 25ft Motor Cutter:-

Cutter on mooring - cover removed. The spar is the ridge pole.

She has remained tight and floats on high tides

A nice-looking work boat.

She had been on a lay-up mooring with a tarpaulin over her to keep the weather out. On a recent high tide she was floated off and towed to a local boatyard and lifted out.  Now chocked-up in the yard work can commence.

Towed to the boatyard..

..waiting for the boatyard hoist.

First jobs are to strip the paint and tar from her bottom to assess the condition of her planking and to get some timber and fastenings on order to replace a few of her broken timbers.

Some of the bottom planking looks a bit tired, worn plank-edges.

She is currently engineless so I will concentrate on interior repairs and painting. There is a lot to do and I would like to source some hardwood to make new thwarts, side benches, lockers and engine casing.

Delivered to the yard for me to work on her.

Redwing refit continued

Work continues on 'Pintail'... After a lot of rubbing down and a good clean out her interior was given two coats of varnish.  She has now been turned over and placed on trestles so her bottom could be cleaned and rubbed-down for fresh varnish.
There are a couple of spots where fastenings have been corroding that have been cleaned up and treated before being primed with thinned varnish.  A good rubbing-down with wet-or-dry 400 grade used wet on the topside and 320 grit used dry on her bottom and she was ready for varnish. Two coats applied coat-on-coat with a day between coats.

Staining caused by corroding fastenings and keel band

Flatting down

Varnish applied

Redwing refit

'Pintail' our National Redwing dinghy is thirty years old this year and in preparation to celebrate her birthday she's getting a re-varnish and spruce-up this spring.

All the interior gear, floor-boards, buoyancy bags and fittings have been stripped off and the hull given a good wash and scrub inside and out...

.. Followed by the labourious task of flatting back the varnish. For this I'm using 180 grit paper.  It's a bit coarse for varnish re-finishing normally but on the fiddly and rather rough bits that are normally out of sight I feel that getting a good 'key' for the new coats is preferable to use a coarser grade.  They say that varnishing is 90% preparation, 10% application; how true that is.

That's all just for now; got to get on with rubbing down...