The rebirth of B.A.R.D.

Been a while since I posted anything, but things have been busy here. We just moved into an apartment down the road from my parents house, which is awesome! Two stories, 2 bed 1 bath with a combination kitchen/living room downstairs. Much more comfortable now!

With the new apartment came the decision of what to do with my boat... I got a boat a couple years back for free from some friends of the family that had it hauled up for years, its a 16ft Kestrel dinghy which needs some fairly extensive hull work to get it back in the water, but the sails are in great condition. It will need a new set of rigging, and the iron centreboard keel is rusted fairly badly around the pivot point, so that will need some welding work as well.

The first problem was finding a location to DO the work, since it can't be done at my parents house. The apartment has a driveway of sorts, but it is a shared access point to the central field that the villas surround, so that was out of the question. My uncle had previously suggested that we might be able to use a shed on the property of his business, but there were two problems with that; 1) he doesn't own the property, and 2) it isn't close enough to home that I can just hop over and do some work on random occasions... So I had quite a problem. Fortunately, my grandparents live across the road from me now... and they have a more than adequate driveway that is almost never occupied. Success! I now have a location to do the work! I got my grandad's permission (he doesn't mind... partially because he's too old to care and he's already built more than a couple boats of his own in the same location... so it might give him some interest...)

Moving the boat proved less trouble than i had anticipated... My uncle had a trailer free on Sunday so we got together my dad, brother, uncle myself and a few others and moved the boat down the road easily. All of the odds and ends were already in boxes in my dad's garage, so it was no problem to toss them all in the back of my truck and stick them on my patio / under the stairs inside. The 20ft mast is laid down next to the hull in the driveway, so everything is sorted :) The sails are sitting happily under the stairs with the rudder, tiller and a couple other nicknacks... so now "all" thats left is to fix the boat itself!

next step... mobilising the "work force" to repair the hull... Need to sand down the gelcoat to fiberglass, fix the specific areas that need strengthening / rebuilding, then recoat the entire hull with a layer of glass (to be safe...) and gelcoat. Not too hard right...