I hate fiberglass, I hate it so much!

Ok, I feel better now that I got that out of the way.

One of the projects on my to do list while we are camped out at the “Casa de Bailey” was to fix up the Eric and Susan community fiberglass skiff. The skiff started out as a Carolina Skiff J12, but it’s life on the island has been pretty hard. Originally the skiff was actually a Christmas present for my friend Greg, the son of George and Gillian who own the St. Francis  Resort where we hold our poker games.

At some point Greg moved on to bigger and better boats and the skiff was sold off to a local cruiser. From there it gets kind of murky, but i know of at least four other cruising boats who have owned it at some point over the last seven or so years.

Last year, after Hurricane Sandy, the dinghy came to grief and washed up on the beach behind the Chat and Chill. Our friend Eben tracked down the owner and bought it to use while he and his family were stuck in the harbour fixing up their own cruising boat.

One year later, he had his boat ready to go, so I bought the skiff from him on behalf of Eric and Susan so they would have wheels when they come to visit their floating condo, Elysia.

The skiff is too big for it to go up on the deck of Elysia and it isn’t safe to leave it floating in the water behind the mother ship due to risk of theft, so Amy and I sort of babysit it instead.

Note to Older Sister: See, I can babysit.

For a while, we ran our 15 hp Yamaha on the back of the skiff, but getting it up on plane with two of us and any gear was a fifty/fifty proposition. When I found a used 30 hp Yamaha for cheap, I jumped on it. It needed some love to get it back in to a sea worth state, but now we’re good to go.

In preparation for the new (to us) engine, I wanted to spend some time repairing the fiberglass on the skiff. There were several stress cracks to grind and fill, but there was also two large sections of the bow missing. The missing pieces of bow allowed the skiff to flex really badly on the front end and I sort of worried about it breaking up if I put it hard into a wave.

I’ll spare you the blow by blow details of the rebuild, but I have included pictures that more or less follow the progress of work. In the end, it took six days, 3 yards of fiber cloth,1 yard of fiber mat, 14 disposable paint brushes, 20 disks for the sander, 5 cut off wheels, 12 showers, 1 pool noodle and 2 quarts of resin to complete the repairs.

I still have to fair out the work and then paint it, but that can be done on the beach and I have other projects that require the use of Bailey tools, so they are taking precedence right now.

More to follow, end of line …