So here she is on 10 April 2021, at last in Wales ready for work to commence. I’ve removed most of the clutter and debris that came with the purchase, it wasn’t even cleaned out!
One thing I had not realised is that she did not have a Bumpkin stern spar, or rather there were two rotten pieces of wood which I was told were the said spar! The Gaff that was shown in the pictures, turned out when I received it to be totally unusable and rotten. I could not see the blade of the centre plate, just the stock section above the centre box top, but with the vibration of the boat on the trailer on the first 20 miles or so there was a scraping and knocking noise which caused me to pull over, to find that this rotten piece of centre plate had dislodged itself and was hanging down below the keel. Not a pretty sight!
But hey ho , she will be now looked after and given a new life in the sun and take pride of place with my current fleet of Drascombe Luggers.
Week One
There was sufficient good wood from an odd spar that came with the boat to allow me to make a new Bumpkin. For the Gaff, I will order in a board of Douglas Fir and make 3 Gaffs while I’m at it.
All the black top coat of paint has been removed with a commercial stripper; for these who remember the paints that were sold in ‘Woolies’ many years ago, well It wasn’t even as good as that, it just fell off! There are approximately another eight coats of blue to get through before getting down to the gel coat, so quite a number of hours left. Fortunately, there has to be a little good news – there were only two thin layers of anti-foul before hitting the gel coat, amazing!
The gunwale capping was badly damaged all round, fixed with a lot of sanding down.
The gunwale rails on the early Luggers were made in one piece, but this one has had the aft section on the starboard side refabricated in sections with an open mid joint. This needed a fillet to splice the two parts together. First I machined a slot to take the fillet, then the glass fibre edge had to be protected with plastic to stop the adhesive bonding the joint to the boat. The fillet was glued in, finished flush with the rest of the rail and sanded down for a perfect finish.
So with this good progress at Dragon Design, I turned to my tried and trusted friends. Firstly Tim of Honnor Marine Classic Boats has ordered a new centre plate and is supplying the bronze stem head and tiller head fittings, whilst Dick of R&J Sails fame is beavering way making sails and covers for Angie.
I will update the website each week on the rebuild progress of this Lugger, also bringing to your attention any new availability for Lugger and apartment packages this summer.