Last Autumn I purchased a Lysander 19 sailing boat, which needed a bit of work doing to it. Before I could even start I managed to break my collar bone in a cycling accident and consequently nothing got done. The only thing I managed to do was to paint over the bare plywood areas with some exterior primer and undercoat in an attempt to preserve it over winter and stop it delaminating. I then covered it with a fairly rubbishy plastic tarpaulin I had and left it on the caravan park at work until yesterday when I collected it and took it home some 6 months after it was parked up.
What I aim to do over the coming weeks is carry out some work to the boat in order to get it in the water in time for summer. Over the winter I noticed there were a limited number of websites devoted to doing up small sailing boats in an economical way. The majority were from America and were tailored to full restorations. What I want to do is show you how you can buy a small sailing boat, do it up so that it looks smart and start sailing it on a budget. The tools I’m going to use are those generally available to the average DIYer and the materials I’m going to use should be easily found in most folks garages or DIY shops and require no specialist application. As you’ll see from the You Tube video, at the moment this old girl isn’t looking her best. The primer and undercoat did their job but sitting under a badly fitting cheap a has caused a build up of water in the bilge and the existing paint has developed a layer of mould. Nonetheless the wood is still strong and even taking the cover off for a few hours had a remarkable effect on how dry the wood felt.
This boat including trailer cost me £400 from e-bay and it came with absolutely everything required to sail it immediately. The sails are good and so is the mast, boom and all the fittings. What it needs like hundreds of other boats lying around in caravan parks, on driveways and in the corner of sailing clubs is a bit of TLC. The first decision to make is exactly how much work to carry out. I’m a firm believer that the effort has to mirror the reward. With the best will in the world this boat is never again going to have a flawless shiny finish. In areas the first layer of plywood has spoiled too far to be able to varnish it without the varnish looking dark or having green patches. In other areas there are some gouges out of the wood so the best thing will be to paint it. Before I can do anything I need to pump the water out of the bilge and to do that I fitted a new bilge pump which I got for £12 off e-bay. Watch the video and see what you think for yourself.