On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 12:40:24 -0500, DSK wrote:

A general question- what is the most ambitious boat repair
or improvement project you've accomplished? What project
would you like to take on?

I know of people who have rewired boats, repowered, repaired
major hull damage, and so on. I met a lot of sailors who
seem reluctant to take on big projects, and we other who are
perpetually working on their boats.

At the moment I'm putting a new deck on our tugboat. But I'd
rank that as mundane, the toughest project I've tried is
making a competitive racing baby out of a 20 year old
Lightning. This went through 3 phases, the first two were
moderate successes and I never got to try the final result.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King

A complete refit on a Columbia 8.7 which included:

1.Removing approximately 10 square feet of rotted balsa core and
replacing then reglassing in the deck and cabin trunk

2. rebedding all thru hulls and thru deck cover plates.

3. changing all fasteners that were into the core to thru the core
with appropriate back plates, decorative where necessary.

4. rebuilding the entire teak interior

5. replacing all the exterior ports (the original columbia design for
them was terrible) with solid polycarbonate surface mounted ports.

6.rebuilding all the hatches.

7. all new running rigging

8. A complete paint job with a catalyzed polyurethane (imron)

9. Sandblasted the lead keel and did the appropriate bottom work while
out.

Hundreds of other little projects during the refit. Took about a year
of spare time work to get it all done.