The Plastic Classic Forum

Well I decided I'd better get my progress up to date, and since I'm waiting for it to stop raining so I can work on the boat, I may as well start from the beginning!

My previous boat 'Aloha' was a Jaguar 21 (You don't have them in the states), which was a relatively minor restoration, mainly cosmetic work, the worst we had to do was drop the lifting keel completely when it decided to fall out when sailing! (Still attached by the strap though)
Despite making the system better than new, It was a flawed lifting system and I lost confidence in the boat, so I sold it to someone to sail on a reservoir!

Here are some before and after pictures:




To:



So with the profits (there won't be any this time round!) I began the search for the next boat, I'd set my heart on an Eygthene 24 Quarter Tonner, a very seaworthy and well built (apart from the interior) yacht, with a 55% ballast ration and very good upwind performance.
The problem... Good examples go for £8,000, I had £5500 and that included getting it back.
So, time to search for a 'project boat'!

After extensive searching I found one advertised on a back corner of the web for £3000, after calling the owner who declared it 'Not a bad little boat, coupl'a scratches here and there!', we decided to drive the 200 miles to go and see it.
Here are some photos I took at that time:









A good inspection revealed the boat to be structurally sound, but in need of a lot of work, systems upgrading, smartening up etc.
I offered the bloke £2000 and got it for £2200. The next week we went down with a borrowed trailer which we measured up before hand and met the seller and his dad down their, fantastic people! They even shared their pack lunch with us as we had to sleep in the 4x4 overnight as we took the trailer down the previous night.

Photos:


The drive back was awful, the 4x4 wasn't really man enough for the hills round there with 1.5 tonnes of trailer, and 2 tonnes of boat, (metric tonnes) still we made it back and the work could begin!
On a slightly unrelated note, the bugger kept that beautiful kettle! :(

(As this will take a while to right i'll posting it in sections. Feel free to comment and offer advice... In fact I'd prefer it if you did! :) )

After getting the boat back it was time for an extensive sort out, we took everything ashore, and got the hose pipe in and started cleaning.
Bad Plan! The water just made it hard work, we'd have done better with a bucket and some rags, but you live and learn!

After cleaning the boat we then stripped all the rigging off the mast, it was the original 1974 stuff, some of the Talruits were fraying badly, so we slated it all for replacement, labeled and organised it all.

Photos:





As can be seen by the photos, the previous owner had basically let the boat go to rack and ruin, (and i haven't got started on the deck yet), nearly everything it came with (very little) would have to be replaced.
The short term plan was to simply get it in for the rest of the season so that i could enjoy sailing it before beginning the major work.

A rough plan was drawn up to get sailing sometime during the season, replace most of the deck hardware, the mast halyards, the rubbish dorade boxes, repaint the non slip, get some temporary power on the old electrics (luckily it still worked), replace the rigging, and just general equipment like flares etc.

First of all we had to get the boat onto its cradle, my uncle wanting his trailor back, some skillful tractor manouvering soon got us sorted out! :)


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Unfortunately at this stage i get worse at the documentation pictures (i'll improve from now on though!) though i do have some misc work in progress pictures.

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On July 20th (2008) i discovered something horrific, the drive back with a trailor that didn't support the boat well enough did THIS:




Obviously I spent some time deciding on the repair method, in the end i cleaned out underneath the stringers and lifted the boat back up in slings, as i suspected the weight of the keel pulled the hull back into contact with the stringers.
My father and grandfather were enlisted to do the fibreglassing as i hadn't done any at this stage, it seemed like a bit to large a 1st project!



As you can see they basically had to destroy the galley in order to access the stringers, they also had to cut out the inside of some of the 'dry' lockers under the bunks.


With that out the way work could carry on the more 'mundane' tasks!

Work now proceeded, after removing the deck hardware we quickly got on with painting the non-skid, and the transom (which was an appalling job, the heat made it all run! So that needs to be redone eventually! My dad helping out managed to get bits of non slip on the boat where it shouldn't be cos he wasn't wearing his glasses Grr!




As you can see the keel was painted but not the Hull, thats been left to let the mud berths here do a job at stripping the old anti-fouling!
Some rusty runs down the keel say that at some point in future the keelbolts need looking at... sigh!


Big gap in the photos now, fast forward and the boat has been launched, still minus mast and a lot of deck hardware:


Some more work later, we're ready to go sailing! :) Can you spot the new rigging?



The initial sail of the boat was in a F7 (trial by fire!) because the wind had been up for two weeks we just decided to bugger it and go sailing! She sailed fantastic, but the sails are appallingly baggy!



From now till later on in that year there isn't much to say, we got plenty of sailing in and this blog will continue from later on!

Due to a friend upgrading, a Yanmar 1GM10 became available with only around 50 hours use, and here it is in the garage:


When we lifted the mast of at the end of the year we used to the crane to swing the engine aboard, it got completely in the way during the construction process, but it saved lifting it up onto a trailer!

I also received an Aquadrive unit through the post, to recondition, i need a conversion plate for this so i may just clean it up, paint it and then sell it on... We'll see!


For some mad reason i decided to gut the boats interior completely, it just didn't seem practical trying to restore all the cracked and crazing glass fibre interior, (in retrospect that might have been a good idea!) this is when the time for the project started spiralling out of control, it took me ages to gut the boat, i naively thought i could do it in one weekend.

After much sanding, grinding, fibreglass dust i was left with this:


And this!


At this stage i decided it a wise idea to get some sort of cover over the boat so after a few failed attempts, i came up with this:

Its a wooden supporting beam with blue water piping for the crossmembers to hold out the cover, it works rather well appart from the headroom issue!

Looks like you're past the dirty work. Now comes the fun and expensive part.
Here's how I made a shelter. It gave me 7 feet in the cockpit and to work on deck I just slid the tarp the the front like a curtain. If it would start to rain it would take me less than 1 min. to close the shelter.



Have fun and keep those pictures comming.

I've got a lot more to add, i'm a lot further on then that, but i need to get to bed now!
I would have gone for a taller cover but the boats exposed to the lovely westerlies we get in the British Isles, and it rocks alarmingly as it is! The boat also needs to be moveable so i couldn't build a cover around her!

Unfortunately progress hasn't been as quick as i'd like because i'm usually on nights out, and don't wake up till late! Or i'm at work, one of the two! :)

The next stage of the operation was to put the bunks back, they both extend back into quarter berths (no cockpit lockers), i decided to start with the port berth because it was an L-Shaped one which i thought would be trickier. As it turns out the other wasn't much easier but anyway....

I started by deciding the height, in the ended i went higher than the old ones because i thought they were too low, plus with higher berths we would gain stowage space underneath them. After deciding on the height i fixed some 2x1 softwood stock onto the bulkhead with a combination of screws and 'No More Nails'.

I was then left with a bit of headscratching... What to use for a datum? In the end the boat was levelled to the mast compression post, as it turns out this might have been wrong, but its to late for that now!

With my datum set i started building a framework out from the bulkhead, up to the first of the partial bulkheads i used to support the bunk tops and sides. I added triangular supports to keep it all square.





Scribing lines don't matter as this wood will eventually be veneered, to get the bulkhead shape i used a piece of stiff wire to get an approximation of the curve and then a block of wood with a pen taped to the top of it to get an exact match. I've never been able to make a working tick stick.

In this manner i continued aft until i had fitted all the partial bulkheads (3 in total) that i would use to support the bunk tops, they also served the purpose of dividing the underbunk lockers.




I then used carbond filler to fillet the bulkheads, followed by two layers of glass biaxial tape with West Epoxy, i may add more if i decide it required.



To hold the bottoms of the bulkheads in allignment, as has been mentoned by plenty of other people a hot glue gun to hold in chocks works wonders.


The bunk front was made in two parts, foward (all the visible in the cabin part) and then aft, not shown is a mismatch where the two pieces don't mate up perfectly, im not that happy with it, but it will be out of sight in a locker and doesn't compromise the boats structure.
I also opted to go over the two stringers as shown as i will be making a locker floor in that locker so a perfect watertight seal is not important.
I then filleted and glassed the front, after i cut it flush with the bunk tops.



I made the bunk top in 3 pieces to fit it through the hatch! Sorry but no photos, i have yet to cut the locker access hatches so the tops are not permanently glassed in.

A picture of a messy WIP interior:

An issue highlighted the previous season by rust streaks were the keelbolts, they had obviously not been touched in 30 years+.

The one in the forecabin wasn't even accessible it was under a moulded in floor, which i took great pleasure in angle-griding out!
As can be seen in this photo it was a hell of a mess, all the bolts had merged with the studs through rust, this one was particularly bad... I had doubts about getting it out.



However with the help of my trusty hammer i got to this stage:


Then with careful application of massive amounts of brute force, plus lots of swearing:


And finally:


As you can see, thats rather elongated at parts, its taking some serious corrosion and stretching over the years.. Thank god i ignored most peoples advice of 'Ah leave em!'.

Anyway, now i had the size and thread (3/4" Whitworth to those interested) i purchased this lot of goodies:


And from there it was simple case of cutting the stud to size and double locking nuts on them to wind them in with grease... Aeroshell 17 Aircraft Spec grease to be precise...

Jobs a 'gud un!

With the port bunk and keelbolts out of the way, i decided that because there were some holes appearing in my cover, it might be a good idea to try and get the boat watertight again!

First off the previous owner had put holes here, there and everywhere. In order to look great cosmetically she will eventually need a full deck and topsides paint, but i want to sail her this season and don't have the time... Instead i will fill the holes that will be covered by the non-slip paint and leave the rest (covered) until i go the whole hog!

The two main holes to be filled:
- A redundant deck vent... Right next to another one!

- Hawser Hole? (Down into the anchor locker)

(I have a glassed in deck locker which doesn't compromise the watertight integrity of the foredeck, so i will use that in future.)

There are so many ways listed to fill holes like this, in the end, i filed a chamfer around the holes to be filled, covvered the bottom with masking tape and applied a couple of layers of glass cloth. Soaked with west epoxy.


When this had set, i then used carbond Chopped Strand Mat Filler, to bring up the top level, in this way i did the Anchor hole, i left it a little low in order to have some space to put some fairing compound in.


I let my friend do the big hole (as he requested!) and he did it to high, it later took a LOT of sanding hahah.


Finally from underneath i epoxied on some interweaved strips of glass.


I appreciate that this repair is far from by the book and some people might be horrified, but it since been given the stamp, mallet and hiting test and it seems perfectly strong!

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I then decided to re-install the forehatch, same company but a later (stil used because i can't afford new yet!) model which locks down with handles, the other had a quick release catch, and if someone caught it in a heavy sea it would have just blown open.

Trial fit:


I then filled the old holes, drilled and CSK'd the new, and installed on a bed of Sikaflex masked around the edge. Sorry no photos!

Down below decks again, i was fed up of tripping over the engine, so decided to get it set on mounts.
The 6mm angle iron to extend the original mounts had arrived so i cut it to an approximate length for the engine, i will later trim it to the exact size, but leaving it oversize gives me some room!

First i painted the engine bilge area, with Blakes bilge paint, it will need another coat eventually.


I then set the angle iron onto the mounts and through bolted it into position!


And LOOK it fits! :)


Unfortunately some of the initial aligning suggests i'll have to trim the edges of the mounts to prevent contact between the engine and the angle iron.


I then decided to get in the two partial bulkheads that will support the galley sink etc, the cooker will be mounted on gimbals forward of these two.
I started by installing the bulkhead support for the shelf that will go under the cooker:


I then got the aftmost bulkhead in and positioned, without going into to much detail, it was an absolute pain, to get it alligned properly etc, but lots of scrap and wasted wood later i managed!


I (stupidly) decided to glass it in and trim down the top (i'd already trimed the side) later, bad move.
The next one went in easily as i had a frame of reference, and my lovely new circular saw made fantastic cuts! :)


And now the blog has pretty much caught up to were i am on the boat!
I should be updating as i go along now...
:)

Thanks for taking the time and effort to document and post all of this. Looks like quite the project, but she will be nice when you are done!

Good luck, look forward to the updates.

RichP, I'm reading along and it sounds like your progressing at a brisk rate. I have a favor to ask, though. My opressive employer has blocked internet access to photo sites (I guess they think I should be doing something here) and I haven't seen where you've said what boat you are working on. Could you post that for us. Thanks, Dave

Hey,
Its an Eygthene 24 Quarter Tonner,
http://www.eygthene24.com/

The photos on that site should be perfectly viewable!

The progress only looks brisk because i'm backdating! Its taken me ages to get this far! Also i've slowed down because i've fractured my toe, normally that wouldn't stop me, but I work practically opposite were the boat is laid up, so it would look a little suspect me working away on it when i have a sicknote for work!

Progress has been incredibly slow, this is due to me breaking my toe and the bone its connected too in a spectacular manner by kicking a boulder down the street! (Long story)

But there has been some stuff!

After drilling the hole for the propshaft, and just look at the laminate thickness!


We then bolted the propshaft i had been given in situ temporarilly, this revealed that:
- The engine angle was too shallow and the folding prop would be touching the rudder when closed in order to achieve clearance on the blades.
- The shaft which i had been given was woefully short and i would have to buy one... Bugger!

The angle change was easy enough, a piece of 12mm ply under each of the front engine mounts gave a much better angle, and as an unexpected bonus the prop will be further from the rudder. (On the standard installation on these boats its a little two close)
I've now made some metal shims too take the place of the wood.


This arrived through the post for me! :)

Now that is one SERIOUS piece of kit, its a beast! :)

I've epoxied the bearing sleeve back onto the rudder stock, should be stronger than new now!


Quick test of all the sterngear together:


And finally i've sanded and painted the coachroof non-slip, obviously when i have time to repaint ALL the deck, this will be re-done! :)


And thats all for the moment folks!

Sounds like a topic for a new thread to me.

Hey guys,
Sorry for the lack of progress... I've been having a major motivation lack with the boats as its overwhelming me with what still needs doing at this stage...
However, i've completed a smaller project getting a motorbike back on the road and that's psyched me up for this one... That and the progress Tim's making on the boat he's currently got in which is a similar sort of thing. (Although I can't hope to work to that standard!)

So hopefully some updates soon... Gotta head down to the boat now!

OK! The project is on the way again, I think I've got past my motivation slump...

So with not touching the boat for a while I put in a few hours today tidying, cleaning to get the boat ready to work on again and also patching holes in the cover!
Going to get stuck in tomorrow, but for the moment I'll update with some photos of work I haven't posted yet:

Installing the sterntube, the shaft was installed into the engine and P-Bracket, I used the highly revered 'Masking tape method' which involves wrapping the shaft in masking tape at both ends of the tube in order to centralise it around the shaft! :)



Note it know thats a pretty big slot in the hull, I cut out the pretty poor old repair of the sterntube and replaced with mine.


Nice big mooring cleats (one for each side) at the stern of the boat, replete with nice big backing pad.


Cleaning the old gunked up cooker... To get the last bits off I really need a scourer.


Need to do something about that...

Glad to be back!