Pictures: the starting point

Here are a few pictures of what we're starting with. The boat is solid with only a few spots of rot. The interior has been glassed and the resin is pulling away. There is also bubbling varnish inside. The mast has a possible rotted section above the shrouds. Hull was recently painted but will probably need to be stripped. We'll see; it should be an adventure.

First step. Get the trailer street ready with lights and bearing buddies. Then get a cover.

The deck looks great, but the caulking is cracking, will need to be redone.  I picked out the section in the center with my fingernail

The base of the mast shows where it was sticking out from under the cover,  dried out with no finish, but should be salvageable, the mast top is another story.  Did someone say spar varnish?

This is the good view, the glass issues on the inside of the hull covered by the floorboards.

One of the two mains, with a SCIRA measurers stamp from 1937

The Transom seems solid and has a little hatch to access the stem

One of the sailbags, the other one shredded when we picked it up

Here is the older sail, the same one with the measurers stamp.

From the bow,  you can see the home built trailer, and some of the issues with the deck.

Free to a good home

Yesterday, I picked up a boat from a lovely woman in Long Beach.  The boat, a Snipe, had been part of her family since the 1950s, when her father bought it from a coworker.  As we pulled off the makeshift cover, and blue plastic tarp bits sailed through the air, the smell of wooden boat was clear, but not the bad smell of rot, rather that smell of timeless craftsmanship.  For her, it was the smell of childhood.

Family lore was that the boat was built in 1948, but after some investigation, the sails revealed that it was Snipe #1953, and a measurer's stamp from August 1937 confirmed the vintage.

After lots of archeology and storytelling, we came to an agreement, this would be a "free to a good home" kind of transaction, and I would keep her up to date on the progress of my progress.  So that's what this blog will be, and interspersed, I'll try to tell some of the back stories as how we got there on a hot Saturday afternoon in Long Beach.