Sunday Beach Restoration

Here is the Sunday Beach.

To me, there is nothing better than starting a new project. The Sunday Beach, I admit, is a massive project in an area I have little experience in. I barely know how to sail, let alone restore a wooden sailboat. In August of 2009 I was experiencing a rare break from projects and was looking for a way to fill my time with some new challenge. My passion for projects is paired with a keen interest in cheap shit other people are trying to get rid of. Enter Craigslist.

Craigslist is a god-send. It is the gem of the internet. It's a nonstop tag sale without the awkwardness of doing a drive-by "is that good shit they're getting rid of or just regular shit?." Once you get over the poor grammar, oddly worded descriptions and fear of getting roped into some sort of elaborate scheme, Craigslist is a great resource for these kinds of projects. I am recently recovering from a binge of Craigslist browsing but I can rest assured, I landed a sweet craigslist find.

I think I developed an interest in sailing during my time at Roger Williams University studying architecture in Rhode Island. It was hard to ignore the appeal of sailing, something about reading and harnessing the forces of nature that appealed to me. During a summer at school my friend Bryan and I decided to start work on a small dinghy we could cruise around in an inlet by his house. Shown right is what we ended up with. It was a bit small and couldn't really sail all that well, but it gave us a taste for sailing and a lot of good times.

I came across the ad on a routine cruise of my usual topics- Volvos, apartments in Amherst, mopeds, tools, bikes, homebrew, free stuff (arguably the best if not most interesting category), and boats. I typed in "sail boat" (which is a mispelling of sailboat) and the one result that came up was the Sunday Beach. It had come down in price 3 times and was now $150. Whoa. I called the owner and arranged a pickup.

Later that day I was enroute to Enfield for the pickup. I had 150 dollars in cash and my friend Hal for security, heavy lifting, and advice on fastening the 13' to my 93 Nissan Pickup (another craigslist find). We met the guy (His last name is Cavanagh and I can't seem to remember what his first name is- hopefully I can piece together who he is so I can get him involved with the story, stay tuned) outside of his barn. He told us that it had been his father who had recently passed away. He stored the boat outside but the mast, daggerboard, tiller, boom, and sail inside. He said that he could have sold just those items for much more but he wanted to keep everything together. We finished the deal, loaded it on my truck, and headed home. I was so excited that night I set everything up in the yard.

I stored it in a barn for the winter and just recently retrieved it. I brought Hal and we attached it to my 98 Volvo V70 (another craigslist find!). Now, the work begins!