Enterprise Dinghy Rebuild

The picture to the left is how we found our Enterprise in 2003. Looking very sorry for herself, minus sails, rudder and with a poor hull condition and no running rigging at all. There was about 12" of water in the front of the cockpit and the buoyancy tank, where she had been stood out in the rain and weather without a cover on. The deck on both sides and the front was very badly sun and water damaged, and the rubbing bead coming away in more than one place.
A worthy project then!

The number inscribed on the transom is 9185, and according to the class association, she was built in 1963, forty years ago! If this was ever a more compelling reason to rebuild her, given that she has survived this far, then I am in fact a hat eater.

We begin

So we have begun by stripping off all the fittings and furniture, removing the deck carefully, so we can use it as a template to draw round when we get to replace it. The deck was held in place by copper pins, similar to panel pins. These came away quite easily, if there was any glue there, then it has perished away. The rubbing strip has been removed and a bit of investigation has found that there are two holes in the bow in the top side strakes about 500 mm from the stem (bow) and that on the starboard strake of the planks, there is some severe de-lamination of the plywood, so we will have to replace some of this also. It looks like both top planks will have to be replaced forward of the centre board trunk.

The brightwork (varnished wood) has been removed from the inside of the hull and cockpit. Here it is laid out with the centre board in the middle. All this will be rubbed back with a belt sander and by hand to improve the look of the internal wood, and allow us to epoxy coat it and then polyurethane varnish it. The epoxy gives strength and protection, and the PU gives UV stability and prevents the epoxy 'blooming' in the sun.

The centre board has suffered some de-lamination of the leading edge, and the lower front corner seems to have had some metal filler applied very badly to either protect or repair the board, this will be removed and epoxied . After rubbing back, these voids will be filled with epoxy and allowed to soak in, then masking tape applied to hold it all back together, then once cured, sanded back to reshape to original profile.

From above the voids look quite bad, but once filled with epoxy and sanded back, there should be no problem. The centre board seems to have a slightly concave profile from top to bottom, where someone has got a little carried away with the sander, perhaps this will be repaired also before final repainting.

The next pictures show the inside of the hull at the bow. The top side planks appear to have been holed almost opposite each other as if a pole has been run through them. Also there is some de-lamination of the plywood planking in the area of the front buoyancy bulkhead, above the upper chine. we have decided then to remove the top planks on both sided of the boat, forward of amidships, removing them carefully so as to be able to make templates from them, or transfer the shapes to hardboard as the wood is very brittle and may not last very long.

Next...Stripping!!