Rebuilding Ginger Part I

 

Ginger is a Cat boat. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catboat ) This type of boat was a popular work boat on the east coast during the mid and late 1800’s and was known for it’s turn of speed and ease of handling.

 In the 1950’s Ginger was commissioned to be built in Eire Pa. by the Schuyler family and was the family sail boat for many decades until she was in need of a major rebuild in 2008. The cost of a professional rebuild would far exceed the cost of the boat itself so, Bob Schuyler offered a deal to me. If I would rebuild Ginger I could keep her. As I have always found this boat to be a beautiful “pumpkin seed” of a boat, I quickly agreed to the labor/materials cost to rebuild her in trade for ownership of the boat. When I got her to my shop I found that Ginger had many, many serious issues. Rot in many areas, broken ribs, delaminating deck canvas, serious structural issues concerning both the stem and the stern of the boat. Huge gapes in the planks with many of the forward planks pulling out of the forward stem. In total, Ginger was in poor shape and in danger of sinking if the forward planks had come loose in a rough sea.

In this first series of pictures you can see the extent of how bad some of the issues were.

setting Ginger up in the shop



The forward timber bolts had broken and the front of the boat was coming apart.

the gaps in the planking was HUGE



 

 

I put a light under the boat to show how big the gaps were in the planking

 

 

The circles on the ribs are where they are cracked at the turn of the blige.

These are the planks at the aft of the boat, notice how they are pulling away from the transom.

When I peeled back the top I found rot in the cabin side

 

The timber at the back of the boat was pulled away from the boat itself

More rot in the main bulkhead

 In total, Ginger was very sick and in need of some TLC. In the comming months I will go over the details of the rebuild that I did to her. Stay tuned!