Making progress

Had a big session today, Neil came over and gave me a hand with the sanding. We've almost finished doing the inside of the boat. We got a bit bored after a while and decided to remove some ply that had  a small amount of rot and a crack in it. It was easy to get off but it'll test my woodworking skills to replace, hopefully not too hard. Next week I've got a boatbuilder coming over to have a look and give me some idea on how to move forward.

Dogey ply taken off - shouldn't be too hard to replace

Spent a few hours sanding over the weekend - didn't really get too far. There's a fair bit of silicone to remove so I'm making sure I do it properly (or as good as I can). Getting some help next weekend - should get a lot done.

Lots of tricky spots to sand

At least I can work in the sun

I friggn hate silicone

My first Post - the find!

Ok, here goes.

My name is Greg, I'm 43 years old and in December 2010 I bought a Heron. Not just any Heron but a boat my dad had built in the late 1960's. Dad used to take us out in it at Carrum and I can remember being too young to be taken out too far so my trips tended to be farting around in the shallow water with dad out of the boat holding the front.

Dad died in 1979 and the boat was used after that but not very often, and myself and my 2 brothers didn't have anywhere to store it. It was being kept in an old neighbour's shed and for some reason my mum thought no-one was really interested in it so she sold it without telling us. It was a few months later that we discovered it was gone and mum couldn't remember who bought it. That was about 12 years ago.

So the search began. I tried every yacht club in Victoria with no luck, I even spoke to a private detective because I did have the old number-plates from the trailer but that didn't help. So I've had a search going on ebay for the last 5 years, thinking that it'll be sold one day - and then I saw an ebay email with a match for a Heron (I'd get these occasionally, but not really expecting the right boat), and there it was. There was enough detail in the listing to know it was probably the right boat. I went and had a look. The seller didn't want to sell it to me as the auction already had some bids. 7 days later it was mine. I put in a ridiculous bid that was way over the value just to make sure I didn't lose it.

When I got it home the first thing I did was take off the nameplate on the transom and underneath was the build number for dad's Heron. Now I was 100% sure it was the right boat.

So this blog will detail the restoration of 'SYDS TUB'. I'll try and update regularly and by doing this blog hopefully it will keep me motivated throughout the process.