Memorial Day = Sanding Day

I have not been as diligent with my posting as I hoped. But every time I do some work on the boat I do post, which basically means I haven't done much.

I have been busy getting ready for the wedding. Not complaining, but hoped I would have had a little more stuff done to the boat by this point.

The good news is that I have 10 people who are interested in helping out over the fall and winter.

Here is the short list of what I did over the weekend.

Sanded the floor boards that I removed from the boat, these are nearly finished. I will be doing the Dr. Rot treatment next week. I also got the rudder sanded on one side. There was a good amount of epoxy on there so it took a fair amount of time.

Sanding is not really that interesting so I am not going to post any pictures.

Update

I have had no time to do any work on the boat this past week, but I have been in some research. It is amazing that so many people want to help out with this project.

I would like to thank Mr. Robert Astrove for his assistance in putting me in touch with so many fine Lightning people. I will going out the burbs this week to look at a wooden mast.

I plan on doing some sanding on the parts that we removed from the boat last week. They were a little damp and I really don't want to dig into removing varnish and attempting sanding until these items have dried.

A lot have people have given me some great ideas about the boat. I realize that I project like this needs a plan. The plan is still under developed but I will have a good vision ( and drawings) in place in the next few weeks. While my initial intention was to do a true restoration on the boat my mind is telling me differently. I will stay true to this era of boat building by utilizing techniques and materials that made early 20 century American craftsman and artisianship what they were, true beautiful works of art. Rest assured, I will not be putting an aluminum rig in this boat. I will sacrifice some performance for elegance.

My plan will include some modern rigging techniques and devices but will be hidden from plain view. This will give the crew a better racing advantage. I have been involved in doing complete rebuilds of Etchells and J24s and I really enjoy starting the rigging concept with a blank canvas (or veneered wooden deck). I also plan on getting out on the water for racing later in the summer. I do not have a ton of experience in the Lightning and this will be an important step in diagramming the setup.

Any of you out there have ideas are more than welcome to shoot me an email.
jbone@carltontechnologies.com

Deconstruction: Part 1

April 26, 2008.

Yesterday was the first day of real boat work. Jill and I arrived at the boat around 11am. It was a beautiful day and we were glad the yard had not moved her inside. The sun was shining, wind was blowing and the Amtrack trains were coming into town. The yard where the boat is kept rests along a canal, and the only thing separating the yard from the water are two parallel steel tracks. This made for a rather noisy morning.

We unload some tools from the car and dove right into to taking 6997 apart. Jill spent some time taking the rub rails off, doing her best to keep them in one piece. I got to work on taking the interior seating, floor boards and ghetto patch jobs off the boat. Before, I started this little project I needed to pull all of the sails, rigging and junk out of the boat.

Here is the list of what came with the boat.

1 Cedar T- Boom
1 Wooden Spinnaker Pole in working condition
3 Spinnakers (1 solid black(no SN, 1 red and white (SN 9515), and 1 blue, grey and white(no SN))
1 Jib
1 Oar
1 Rotten cockpit cover
1 Full Mast-up Deck Cover
1 Mainsail (SN 6997)
1 Mainsail (SN 2555)



This was basically organized by throwing it on the boat trailer next to ours.

Now that I had something to work with I got started. I want to point out that this boat is incredibly well built. I was amazed at some of the joining work, the quality of the woods used and the complexity of the centerboard configuration. The boat is just beautiful. Yes, currently a red-headed step child, but beautiful nonetheless.

I started pulling screws and didn't stop for about an hour. When I was done, we were left with a bare interior. Jill and I spent around an hour removing all of the hardware from the deck. It is nice to have little person like her to crawl around under the deck while I turn the screwdriver.

During the day we probably had around 15 people come up and talk to us about the boat. Most would have these enormous smiles on their faces and some would shake their heads. We had a few from the Teddy Roosevelt days telling us about how the Lightning was the first boat they sailed, some so far in age that they could have been on their third marriage by the time this boat saw water for the first time.

I popped a couple of beers, hoping it would help nurse the hang-over from the night before. It did. Miller High Life is a great brew, and with their current marketing push, seemed fitting for this type of a project. Wendall would be proud.

Jill began the necessary process of vacuuming the water, leaves, twigs, sticks, pine cones, scratch off lotto tickets and miscellaneous muck out of the boat while I moved on to the deck challenge. This was by far the most difficult part of deconstruction.

The deck is all plywood that is covered with painted canvas. It is stretched out and then stapled to the hull/deck seam. What a pain in the ass. The staples were 3/4 inch stainless prong tacks and were only a 1/4 inch apart. Like I said, a pain in the ass. The bad news was that I had to pull these staples out. The good news is that I had to pull the staples out. If the deck were rotted they would have fallen out like a pair of loose dentures. I did my best to try to keep the staples attached to the canvas as I went down the edges to save myself time picking them up off the ground. I was able to attack the transom, and port/starboard sides all the way up the splash guard.



I felt like this was good days worth of work. We packed up everything that we removed from the boat. I am planning on working on the interior at home. Today I washed and dried the spinnakers. I need to wait for a sunny warm day to get the mainsail and jib cleaned up.

There are some really cool hardware pieces that we pulled off the boat. I hope you enjoy the blog.

The Story

Last week I took delivery of a 1958 Wooden Lightning, hull number 6997. Double planked cedar hull skin with Mahogany keel and interior. Traditional painted canvas deck.

The major issues with the boat will be worked out in the next year. Deck separation from hull near the port bow but not to the stem. The stem is chewed up from docking abuse. The canvas will need to be pulled off and replaced. I am contemplating removing the plywood deck and replacing it with cedar planking, but the plywood is not in bad shape. I am looking for a nice wooden mast and do not wish to bastardize her by going with an aluminum rig. The more I get her dissected the better idea I will have of her racing capabilities, otherwise she will be a very nice day sailer.

I will be working on the boat in my spare time. After this winter I realized that I needed a challenging project to keep myself busy. I have yet to start taking her apart and will begin this odyssey tomorrow.

The picture below captures the allure of this machine. Taken at White Rock Lake in 1955.