Ok, maybe its a bit early for this but I figured you guys could help me with the colors for the boat. I'm thinking Ocean blue for the outside of the hull and Hatteras off-white for the inside. Let me know what you think!

Finally started to take her apart. I'll be removing and replacing one piece at a time to minimize any chance of warping the frame. I'm working in this order: Remove old plywood, sand, fix or replace rotten wood, fill holes, prime frame, scarf plywood, epoxy plywood, attach plywood to frame. I'll repeat this for all four segments of the boat.

Removing the old plywood:

Pretty easy really, I set my router to a depth just shy of going through the rotted plywood and cut out sections of the original hull. I could have tried to save the piece for a template but it was too rotted and I was worried about warping the frame by pulling off the whole sheet. I cut the next piece a few inches into the segment to allow room for getting the new piece fitted. I'm really glad that the plywood held up as well as it did, it really preserved most of the frame with a few exceptions.

Sand:

I do most of my sanding next to my neighbor's house. I'm sure they are less than pleased. I'm toying with the idea of creating a frame to hold the boat that I can wheel around. 80/100 grit gets everything and is recommended for the primer.

Fix or replace rotten wood:

I'm using a product called Git Rot. I had never used this before but it's a pretty cool. It's a two part mixture (3:1) that, when injected into rotting wood, soaks the wood and hardens it so that it's no longer spongy and rotten. Git rot is a bit hard to mix inside the syringe (which I did) so I would recommend something else (it requires a minute of shaking, so it got all over the place... not ideal). As far as replacing the rotting wood, I'm going to wait until the plywood is on so I don't jeopardize the integrity of the frame by messing around with removing a piece.

Fill holes:

I'm using bondo because its relatively cheap and ,being the owner of many shitty cars, am very familiar with using it. I just fill the screw holes and small rotten pockets with the stuff just so no voids were left in the wood. This is as far as I got this week, I'll be moving onto the primer next week.

Wooden Boat Show @ Mystic Seaport

Here are some pictures!

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!