I have the opportunity to get hold of a 33 foot wooden sailboat -
basically for free (it comes from a divorce and the lady does not want
it anymore). It was a custom job and costed almost 150.000 US$ - the
rich guy tool.

The boat is 25 years old, is built of heavy mahagonay (carvel planked)
and was sitting the last 5 years *out* of the water, in a big shed.
Every winter the boat was sitting in the shed and was used only
sometime. Deck is perfect, no stains inside, no rot smell, no soft
spots.

The only problem: the boat has hairline (i guess up to 1/20 of inch
wide) cracks in some of the planks, both in the wet as in the
freeboard area.

So we had an expert had a look at it: he explained us that this is
normal - all wooden boat when taken out of the water will crack. Those
will close once the boat goes back to the water. I agree.

But then the owner of the yard where the boat is says that his applies
only for the wet area: the freeboard needs to be sealed again, and
this is their method:

cut a groove with a router over the hairline crack (let's say 1/10 of
a inch deep, 1/4 of a inch wide) and glue a mahagonay strip in the
groove. This in order to seal the boat - the thin strip has nothing to
do with structural problems or in order to stiffen the boat. This to
be repeated when new cracks appear.

Now i never heard of this method: my idea was to seal the cracks with
some caulking and repaint - if the plank then expand again they will
ev. squeeze some of the caulking out. Actually my original idea was to
do nothing at all, put the boat in the water and after some weeks
check where water is still coming in - then repair just those cracks
(judging from the water stains under the paint, this should affect
only two cracks quite high on the freeboard and close to the bow).

The method proposed by the yardowner looks overkill to me and i cannot
understand where the benefits are (the economic benefits for the
yardowner seem obvious, he would do the job). Beside this it will
alter the way the planks expand (the strip will act as a wedge) so it
will just cause cracks somewhere else.

So my question: is just applying some caulking good enough ? Or even
better the do-nothing and see what happens method even better ?

Remember i get the boat for (almost) free and I can do with less than
optimal results - no sense in throwing thousands at it.

Thanks
Matteo