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A couple years ago, I rescued this kinda' cute little Glen-L 13 from a chicken barn. You see, it was all pretty innocent at the time. I was simply asked for my opinion on whether the boat could be sold, and for how much. Sounds pretty innocent, doesn't it? Well, doesn't it?
If ammonia, and feathers and straw, can preserve an old wood boat; then that little girl should probably last as long as the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was, shall we say, pretty deep and well-spread. But, the trailer looked serviceable-after rewiring, new lights, and painting, and replacing the hubs and wheels and tires, and changing out the coupler and safety chains and replacing the rollers, and redoing the wooden parts.
There was this one-piece wooden mast that somebody had lovingly crafted from several telephone poles somewhere along the line, a flat-profile wooden boom, a pile of ancient wire rigging, and some ancient sail bags stuffed up hither and yon. But, she hadn't been neglected. At least, not lately. She sported a snap-on full cover, mast crutch, hand-made seating, and some stained-dark pine trim. Something about her just said, "Take me with you."
OK. We all knew that was coming.
Suffice it to say that I was neither looking for another boat, nor did I really have a job for another boat. But, that's rarely a reason to behave rationally. So, after several washings and flushings and general scrapings; little Punkin' Seed went off to a corner at storage, to await developments. Sort of a seasoning process, if you will.
That was a couple years ago, now. I did bring that little spit kit home again sooner or later-last winter, before last summer, and did some basic spruce ups, re-rigging, and painting.
And, she participated in the Eastern Washington Movable Messabout in September 2014.
But, she also LEAKED. Even though I had poured about a gallon of epoxy directly into the bilge and painted it on all over the interior, mostly to seal in the residual chicken stuff; SHE STILL LEAKED.
I never could exactly see where it was coming in. The various bilge compartments were by then basically individual sections, as I had completely filled the limber holes with epoxy by then. Each section of the bilge would accept water at a different rate than its neighbors. A most curious situation.
And, we broke some stuff. All the rigging had been pieced together with odd parts from my spares containers (coffee cans). Some worked better than other pieces and parts.
So yesterday, when I was sending the latest Frankenbot creation off to storage for a bit of "seasoning," I sort of tripped over little Punkin' Seed. She's been parked upside down between the cars out in the garage for quite a while now. And since there isn't even enough space left, over where the rest of the fleet is wintering, to probably park a small tricycle, what with the over-population of boats this season; it was pretty much a no-brainer to bring PS in to the operating room for the rest of her restoration and re-rigging.
And, so it begins. Again.
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