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@Sam_Doman
Some of you might be familiar with my sailing exploits, and woodwork/boatbuilding background. Well, about a year ago, a friend and I took on a 40ft ferro-cement ketch, which had been abandoned on 'derelict row' in a local boatyard, as a restoration project. The steel ballast in the hull had rusted, and expand, cracking the hull, which is a huge job to repair, and meant the boat wasn't worth repairing commercially, hence sitting in the yard for the past 7 years. We have stripped out all of the old ballast, are in the process of repairing the hull, and will be setting new ballast when she's intact again.
She is going to need a complete re-fit once the hull repairs are made, re-decking, and all of the spars had been left to rot, so we will be re-making all of them from scratch too. It's not a small task, but the two of us are working hard on her, and we're hoping to have her afloat again by next summer. I have been keeping a blog thing, which I'm going to try to keep up to date, as we make progress. The plan is to take her across to the Caribbean in Autumn 2015, if she's in a safe state by then, and then in to Central America, and down the coast of South America, to Patagonia.
This is what she looks like in the water (this photo is about 7 or 8 years old, I think)
http://38.media.tumblr.com/395a120a0440dc307a09d3182c85686f/tumblr_ms42noNYiD1sgwna9o3_500.jpg
This is what she looked like when we took on the project
http://38.media.tumblr.com/2a26ff2d377cf540fb7bef9d81e19afa/tumblr_ms7rrwmjhc1sgwna9o5_1280.jpg
http://38.media.tumblr.com/44ea0fe67b9a4bdf46c39f49c09f57f2/tumblr_ms430sfc4J1sgwna9o4_1280.jpg
We spent months removing the old ballast (steel set in concrete)
http://38.media.tumblr.com/6ff6c5bcd9c91fbdcca2c7709835e5bd/tumblr_ms7rrwmjhc1sgwna9o6_1280.jpg
http://33.media.tumblr.com/c42f7efd3dfeb55c5b49b3f7be134177/tumblr_mtyi56Led81sgwna9o1_500.jpg
We have removed the old deck
http://33.media.tumblr.com/835efc37ea24624a6a62a00067e639c9/tumblr_mv1jicbTyH1sgwna9o6_1280.jpg
We have overhauled the engine
http://31.media.tumblr.com/66056c6bd54c8900caaee3ca40bfb3f5/tumblr_mv1lbttekV1sgwna9o2_250.jpg
http://38.media.tumblr.com/54aae165cf9f108d567bc0a2a68c1d41/tumblr_n9kitehVOL1sgwna9o2_250.jpg
And we're in the process of repairing the hull at the moment.
http://37.media.tumblr.com/90cddf0201c34053e50a05a11b7b7dff/tumblr_n9kj5nNQlu1sgwna9o9_1280.jpg
There's a hell of a lot of work to do, but we've reached the low point of the project, and are now rebuilding her and putting material back in, which is a nice feeling. I'll Keep this blog updated, throughout the project: http://ketch-annelis.tumblr.com, and I'll update this thread every so often.