Excellent question: answer = Pretty brave and not easily intimidated by the extent of the works required here. Remorseless with it too and left to my own devices I'd have a camp bed and a kettle next to the boat and that's that, set myself a three month turnaround and crack on until six months later it's done. The reality is single bloke, two kids = not possible.Rupert wrote:How brave are you? ...
Agreed, probably down to the level of dismantling the framing joint by joint to re-glue it all.JimC wrote:Well, to me that looks basically like a 100% restoration, the sort that leaves the boat with three lumps of original timber and the rest new.
Another excellent question: OK expressed as percentages here goes...JimC wrote:These cost, of course, typically more than building an all new hull. So what is there about this boat that justifies that sort of expenditure?
1) Romanticism, nostalgia, pity at the prospect of seeing it crunched and associated abstracts account for maybe 20%
2) Potential end worth/investment - 5-10% (bwaaaaahahahahaha!, in truth not even a consideration here but looking at where I'm starting it's current value "as a boat" is about as residual as it's possible to get.)
3) Educational value to the boys (and me come to that) - 10%
4) Sense of achievement and pride of owner/custodianship at seeing these two slip into the water and float! ( the boats not the boys) - 20%
5) I have to put a number on the inestimable sense of achievement and pride at seeing my two boys yarding them away under sail - gotta be 20% (combine scores with point 1)
6) Need a mast badly. The mast on Flypast is peppered with overlapping rows of pop rivets (gag) and Boat of Garter has two masts in fine condition. Whole lot better than mine anyway. Flypast's rudder has had a few deep chunks bitten out of it and BofG has one of those whizzbang pierced aluminium racing rudder stocks (requiring extensive corrosion removal) but the foil, pintles and its 1" inox tube tiller are fine. They'd look totally out of place to my eye but as stop gaps they'd do a job. Steering compass on the c/board case (again to get the boys familiar with the basics of nav) saves me £30 buying one. Suspect the c/board to be in the same good condition from what I could see, pivot was nice and tight anyway. So as a donor of working parts it has some value - 10 to 15%.
7) If the worst comes to the worst and it really is beyond salvage then there are the few hardwood mouldings and components which can be saved/stored as future replacements for F/past. impossible to say whether they're actually still servicable at this stage. I'm thinking gunwale/inwale timbers, thwart, knees et al. In which case her demise will not be in vain and a little of 643 will live on at least. value = 10%
Personal therapy: can't deny the past few years have been a waking nightmare centered principally around the NHS's parlous 'care' of my Wife and the requirement to deal with a mental health system in functional collapse headed up by a reckless gaggle of over-promoted @r$e covering lackwits in full denial of their manifold and repetetive incompetence. Takes it out of you I can tell you. It was beginning to have serious effects on me and thus I needed to back off, hand the whole catastrophic mess to the lawyers to sort out. That gave me space to mentally breath and fill my mind with something more worthwhile than writing endless $****y letters to apathetic directors of nursing, dysfunctional Care Quality Commissioners, Parliamentary O/men with 18mth backlogs etc.
These boats have if nothing else restored my mood at a point when I was emotionally 'burnt out' and my energy needed to be urgently redirected from the ongoing rolling farce to the boys and something concrete (wooden in this case).
Also there are no 'externalities' here; the end result will be in my hands and mine alone rather than the capricious hands of disinterested public servants, basically if anything goes wrong it'll be MY fault. Tools don't give endless excuses and prevarications, they don't b/s you and the finished product is only ever as good as the skill and diligence one brings to the bench. I like that condition of things, shame it doesn't apply more widely. Gonna give that a score of 15% at least.
(OK the sums are all wrong but all the above percentages are subject to much variability depending on proximity to open water, balminess of the weather, urgency of the need to get the boys and I out of this damned flat )
9) I have the space to house it and a two year window (before the demolition crew arrives to flatten the factory) in which to at least stabilise the hull to the state where she can be safely trailed to a new home.
10) Love the smell of fresh planed timber in the morning. = 3%
With you, fair point well made. it's something I have noticed myself, they're pretty skeletal inside. That's why the first job will/would/might be to get a jig around her ASAP then nudge it into compliance by taking comparative dimensions off Flypast. Easy when you say it fast but it would need much forethought in working out the sequence of work.SoggyBadger wrote:The thing is with an Osprey is that unlike say a GP14 there isn't much of a frame to re-skin so since the hull is in such poor condition you're basically building a new boat. So a thumbs down from me I'm afraid
The detached deck panels can be pushed back down and still land precisely where yhey came from so at this point I'd say the hull is still in shape.
In the course of corresponding with the owner I did suggest that the best hope for BofG would be to find a yard or college or wooden boat building firm who want a project boat but that might be years before a recipient stepped up. This boat has run out of time, it's now or never and if she's in dry storage she won't get any worse.Michael Brigg wrote:Guvnah,!!A reminder of the vessel in question...
I love this post. You have said so much that is what CVRDA is about.
Renovate and restore, not bodge and break.
Do not start a project unless you can properly finish it or hand it over to one that can.
All you need is love... and perhaps a large fortune.
Might have to go back anyway as I left me specs on the foredeck when we were covering her back over!