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[email protected] ohara5.0@mindspring.com is offline
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First recorded activity by BoatBanter: Jun 2007
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Default Fixer upper or leave'r in the scrapyard?

On Nov 2, 9:10 pm, wrote:
On Nov 2, 8:26 pm, "Don White" wrote:



"dEdEyE" wrote in message


news:388209_3095c551a00fbb5be62fbfd4e1358af6@boat ingforumz.com...


Greetings, I'm new here and would greatly appreciate some advise. I
do not know very much about boats or sailing but the only way I can
afford to get started, is to spend as little money and as much time
as I can. That being said, I have discovered an old fiberglass
sailboat and trailer in a scrapyard down the lane from me. Its about
22' long and what one notices immediately is that the keel is badly
damaged. The fiberglass has major cracks on both sides, indeed a
section (5" x 7") of bare metal is exposed, showing the hard foam
cross section. Consider also that there is a crack almost all the way
around where it joins the hull and the bottom of the keel is broken
from resting on the trailer. I have not been able to inspect the
inside of the hull yet, but knowing about the keel alone, is it even
worth moving the boat down the road to my house? I have more time than
money, I just want to know if this is worth the time.


Thanks for reading,


dEdEyE (Colin)


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I wouldn't bother.
Look for somethng half decent in the 18' range that you can easily trailer
to launch ramps.
Down stateside, a Catalina Capri 18 would be interesting, although a boat
with a retractable keel would be much easier to launch/retrieve from a
trailer.
My sailboat...sold August 2007http://sailquest.com/market/models/spipe.htm


There are many older Catalina 22 and Hunters of nearly the same size
to be had for very little right now. I suspect that this boat has
serious structural damage and even if you do 'fix' her, you will
always suspect her integrity.
Fixing such a boat will take more time than building a boat of similar
size. As you say you have plenty of time, I highly reccomend you look
over boats you can build such as the "Vacationer" from Stevenson
Projects. Anothr good option are the various Sharpie boats from
Michalak. These home built boats are solid often feature water
ballast for easy trailering.


Just looking again at the Duckworks website that indexes Michalak
designs. The "Caprice" homebuilt (24') is right in your size range
and is meant to be low tech and low cost yet be a good boat for
serious sailing. She looks easy to build too. He has an enlarged
version too called "Cormorant" that is 33' but this looks like a
serious project although "Cormorant" is also trailerable. The great
thing about these boats is the use of the gaff rig yawl design where
you get a lot of sail area without complicated and expensive standing
rigging. You can easily make your own sails from inexpensive polytarp
and they will perform very well.