Racing Dinghies

The 2004 August Bank Holiday weekend finally saw Rannoch take to the water. The wind picked up over the weekend and I thought it was wise not to risk Rannoch with her old wooden rig. This meant sitting out the racing for the Sunday and Monday and give us time to look at the other boats.

It seemed to make sense to find another traditional boat that could be sailed at CVRDA events when it is too windy to sail Rannoch or when we both want to go sailing. A chance conversation with Danny form the Tideway Association led me speak to a couple of Tideway owners with boats that required some work and were affordable.

In early September I ended up in Bosham and came away with Tideway 026. The boat is basically sound but needs some attention to take care of a couple of little problems.

026 as she was on arrival

In need of refastening at the bow

The boat had previously been filled with water and had rocked back on the trailer, breaking the keel, hog and a couple of ribs.

As you can see the shape of the boat is now rather interesting

A couple of broken ribs

Damage to hog

After a few weeks in the workshop work is progressing with the Tideway, now named Brambling.

The first job was to sort the keel. A new piece of mahogany has been scarfed in and a new deadwood made. At this point the decision was made to move over to Balcotan instead of epoxy as an adhesive.

Before work could start it was necessary to jack the boat up and try and get the hull back into shape.

The back end of the boat was lifted up and supported on an old TV stand and a 4 Tonne bottle jack used inside the boat to push the hull back into shape.

My favourite boatbuilding tool

This was taken after the new hog was fitted

With the hull shape back to normal the deadwood and keel piece were fitted.

This is how the boat arrived

At last, a straight keel and a fair hull

After the keel was repaired the next area for attention was the bow. The bow was in need of refastening and it looks like a combination of red lead, white lead, and car body filler has been used to fill the gap between the planks and the stem.

All this had to be dug out and after a search a large tin of Jeffrey’s Seamflex was obtained. Seamflex needs warming before use and technique of wrapping a lump in a plastic glove and being kept in the armpit for 30 minutes seems to be sucessful in making in pliable.

As she arrived complete with varnish

Varnished stipped and the Seamflex applied, it still needs cleaning up.

With the keel and bow repairs complete and most of the varnish removed (internal and external) it was time to start to replace the broken ribs.

See Restoration Part 2 for more details